Dear all,

We have important (and exciting) news to share with you.

We are launching a new House of Beautiful Business membership program, and we’d like you to become a HoBB member—a.k.a. a HoBBster.

As a HoBBster, you will benefit from:

→ A special 20% discount on every event, program, and product offered by the House, including

→ Our House of Beautiful Business festival, May 15-18, 2025, Tangier, Morocco

→ The Polyopportunity gathering, September 19-20, 2024, New York

→ Our books, learning and development programs, card game, and more

→ A special 20% discount on HoBBster activations—select events and programs offered by individuals and organizations within our community (including local hub events and experiences, conferences, knowledge intensives, learning journeys, and retreats). Upcoming programs include:

→ The Arctic Adventure expedition to the Northern Lights, September 15-20, Lofoten, Norway, with HoBBster Adi Cohen

→ The Imagining Summit on a more beautiful future with AI, October 12-14, Bend, Oregon, curated and hosted by HoBBsters Dave and Helen Edwards

→ Belonging Retreat (BEtreat), an expedition at the intersection of identity and purpose, South Africa, dates TBC, with HoBBster Kim Dabbs

→ The opportunity to affiliate your own events and programs with the HoBB as HoBBster activations and have us promote them to the whole HoBB community (with a 10% commission for us)

→ Exclusive access to members-only programming (e.g., special Open House sessions, dinners, or retreats)

The membership costs 475 Euro per year (+ VAT), is valid for 12 months, and does not auto-renew (because who likes that?). It will help us fund new community activities, grow the overall House platform, and enhance our impact.

Why a Membership Program and Why Now?

The past few months have been a time of reflection at the HoBB. We’ve had many illuminating conversations with our community that have pointed to a common feeling:

The House of Beautiful Business is truly unique. It’s appreciated (even loved) for being a real community, rather than just promoting the idea of one. Our members forge deep and authentic connections; they learn from each other and have real power to build bridges between cultures and worlds.

At its best, the HoBB is a safe space, a brave space, where you can think, see, and feel the future and pursue our joint mission:

To create a life-centered economy through bold ideas, deep experiences, and real community

“The ‘economy’ is our material relationship with each other and with the rest of the living world. We have to decide whether we want that relationship to be based on extraction and exploitation, or on reciprocity and care,” writes anthropologist Jason Hickel.

The HoBB is a space where we can practice such reciprocity and care, a space where, to quote Brené Brown, “we can belong without having to fit in,” where we can be bold and experimental without fear of losing face, where we can find kindred spirits but also disagree respectfully.

This kind of space is a precious and important resource in this era of division, distraction, disconnection, and loneliness.

If there’s one thing we’ve heard from all of you over the past few months, it’s that you want to be more actively involved in the HoBB community; you want to find more meaningful ways to work, connect, network, and collaborate throughout the year, beyond our annual festival.

To some degree, this is already happening. You are collaborating in our House Work groups, maintaining global and local messaging groups, and hosting and attending local events.

And whether or not you become a HoBBster, you will still enjoy:

→ Our free bi-weekly Beauty Shot newsletter

→ Our free archive with hundreds of hours of recordings from our festivals and online programming

→ Our free podcasts (e.g., the Tangier Memos)

But there is so much more we could put our energies towards! We want you to spend more time in the House of Beautiful Business. And we want our community and movement to grow.

More Value for Everybody... and a Way to Fund the House Long-Term

All this explains why we’ve decided to do things a bit differently. The new HoBB Membership program responds to the community’s incredible strength. Unlike the membership program we tried a few years ago, this one uses a platform model that will encourage you to become more involved.

The HoBB Membership not only offers you an opportunity to take part in more HoBB community events, but it also creates an opportunity for you to run more HoBB activities or programs (HoBBster activations) yourself.

How does this work? As a HoBBster, you can produce and host HoBBster activations—learning journeys, conferences, workshops, masterclasses, retreats, and more—provided they are in keeping with our activation guidelines. The HoBB will endorse and promote these activations to the entire community.

Fellow HoBBsters receive a 20% discount when they attend. We get a 10% cut from the total revenue generated by the HoBBster with their activation.

As more events and programs take place, our community will become larger, livelier, and increasingly influential. The plan is to create more value for everyone.

But in the spirit of transparency, there’s another reason behind the new membership program: The HoBB needs more funding.

Our community has grown enormously in the past few years, while our funding model hasn’t evolved to sustain it. We now number more than 50,000 passionate, purpose-driven business and nonprofit leaders, creatives, innovators, and activists with in-depth expertise and diverse experience. But we haven’t found a way to generate enough revenue from our events and activities such that they can support our community’s continued growth without relying heavily on corporate partners.

Our funding comes primarily from revenue generated by consulting and partnerships; in fact, our consulting work is what pays the small team to work on our festival and community activities. Meanwhile, the incredible intelligence, expertise, and abilities of our community—namely your talent—have remained largely untapped. It amounts to a lost opportunity for us all.

And it’s simply not sustainable.

The new membership model addresses all of these needs and opportunities. It creates reliable funding for the HoBB, which will enhance our festival and other community programs, while creating more value for those who want to be more actively involved.

There will be more events and programs to attend around the world, more ways of promoting them, more people who are eager to participate, and more knowledge exchange. If our community expands while our members become more active, we’ll have more collective power to shape the life-centered economy and realize a more beautiful future.

Thank you for being such a passionate and loyal member of the House! If you believe in our mission and the potential of this community, then please pitch in and become a HoBBster. We appreciate your consideration!

All the best,
Till Grusche & Tim Leberecht, founders of the House of Beautiful Business