How to scale your business sustainably
September 23, 2025 | Tips
From smashing glass ceilings to changing the unchangeable, IdeasFest 2025 gave us heaps of inspiration for this year’s Pitch Up! season. Here are five sustainable scaling tips by entrepreneurs who’ve all grown businesses from the ground up.
With insights from Carl Churchill, CEO of V Rum; Jake Karia of Jake & Nayn’s; and serial entrepreneurs Rachel Murphy and Mya Mourak, read on for how to grow your business without losing your values, people or mind along the way.
“There is no barrier. You are your own glass ceiling.”– Jake Karia, Jake & Nayn’s
1. You are your own glass ceiling
Early-stage entrepreneurs can often get stuck dealing with the day-to-day operations of a business. But achieving greatness, as Jake Karia, founder of award-winning food-to-go brand; Jake & Nayn’s told us, can take a leap of faith. For him, it was a chance meeting between his brother and a Harvey Nichols buyer, who introduced the luxury retailer to Jake & Nayn’s products. Taking that leap showed him that high-end was possible, and from there they dared to meet with similar retailers. Karia went on to say: “I think that’s what pushed it and showed me that there is actually no barrier. It’s only yourself.”
“Sustainability is really around ultimately getting to a place where your business survives, but for as long as you want it to.”– Carl Churchill, CEO of V Rum
2. Play the long game
Business is about longevity; creating opportunities for the people within the business, creating a brand that people like and the customers love. But it always starts with a strategy. It’s about planning for the future, experimenting and innovating a business that can operate outside of just the individuals who created it.
Pitch Up! offers land, resources and expertise to businesses and start-ups, providing a low-risk testbed for growth, new products and systems, so that growth, innovation and experimentation can happen without sacrificing any other part of the business.
“People are the best and worst thing about running a business.”– Carl Churchill, CEO of V Rum
3. People (are the) power
Great people can make or break a small business. Carl Churchill, CEO of V Rum, has found the best way to run a business – whether it’s writing code or producing sustainable rum – is to take his team on that journey with him. An entrepreneur is used to going it alone, but key to business growth is good people, and importantly, ensuring that they feel valued and heard. As Rachel Murphy, serial entrepreneur and founder of The Grafter said, it’s important to create an environment where your team can be honest and open; “where you’re having those conversations and you’ve got that transparency”.
“It doesn’t matter how much you grow, the DNA doesn’t change.”– Carl Churchill, CEO of V Rum
4. Building blocks
One of the most difficult aspects of growth is maintaining the core values and principles of your business as it grows. The speakers all agreed that one way to ensure business growth is sustainable is to make these values part of the DNA of the business early on. Then they guide everything else. As Mya Moufarek, founder of Marketing Cube said; “codify them at the start”. The business can then evolve, but its core values don’t change.
5. Change the unchangeable
Looking at an industry and asking, “Why doesn’t it work like this?” provides a point of difference for your product that enables it to stand out from the rest. Just like the founders of V Rum, who looked at the rum industry and wondered firstly why sugarcane wasn’t grown in the UK. And then why none of it was sustainably grown. Asking questions allowed them to develop a product that provided an answer.
O
If your business needs some input to grow, get in touch and we can work together to fit it into Pitch Up!’s circular communities.