With four years of insights from
Zebra Growth’s work with regenerative organisations, this framework helps you launch offerings, adapt messaging, and create partnerships that support both impact and financial health. It’s a practical, balanced path to achieving lasting growth and impact without compromising values.
As an impact entrepreneur, you’ve likely felt it—that disconnect between your mission to create positive change and the traditional marketing approaches that seem to pull you away from your values. You’re building solutions for a better world, yet the conventional growth playbook feels extractive, perhaps even toxic to everything you stand for.
The current marketing landscape has become a barren field. Traditional Go-to-Market (GTM) strategies, rooted in colonial mindsets of extraction and control, have created environments where teams wither and creativity struggles to take root.
Marketing departments have become pressure cookers of reactive decisions and fragmented campaigns, where creativity bows to campaign calendars, team wellbeing is sacrificed for pipeline targets, and deep stakeholder connections dissolve under the tyranny of monthly revenue goals. This cycle leads to burnout, complacency, and a frustrating sense of moving too slowly toward your impact potential.
Impact-driven organisations, despite their best intentions, find themselves adopting these same destructive patterns because they see no alternative path to growth. This extractive approach severs our connection to purpose and breaks down the delicate ecosystem of relationships that sustainable growth requires. When our teams lack the nutrients of strategic thinking and creative space, we’re not just underperforming—we’re actively contributing to a system that harms both people and the planet.
Yet marketing holds untapped transformative power in the present moment. While organisations set distant sustainability targets for 2030 and beyond, marketing is the daily catalyst that shapes how organisations show up in the world—influencing decisions, communities, and stakeholders with every campaign and customer interaction. We don’t need to wait decades for change when marketing has the potential to reshape business impact today.
Your journey toward regenerative marketing begins with understanding the tools that will guide your way. Let’s explore the Go-to-Ecosystem (GTE) framework—an alternative approach that puts life at the centre of how impact-driven organisations grow…
The Go-to-Ecosystem Framework and Tools
This insight led us to explore and develop the Go-to-Ecosystem (GTE) framework—an alternative approach that puts life at the centre of how impact-driven organisations grow. As you begin this journey, you’ll discover a framework that reimagines marketing as a source of abundance—where campaigns nurture communities, metrics measure flourishing, and growth strengthens the entire ecosystem. By shifting our language from “market” to “ecosystem,” we acknowledge the interconnected nature of sustainable growth and the importance of every relationship within it.
To support teams in adopting these principles, we’ve created the GTE Cards—a practical tool designed to help organisations learn and implement regenerative marketing practices. Available first in digital format and soon in physical form, these cards will be your guide, offering prompts and guidance for integrating regenerative thinking into daily operations and strategic planning.
Building a Regenerative Alternative To Traditional GTM
This framework and its accompanying tools emerged from our recognition that impact-driven organisations needed a different approach to bringing products and services to market—one that would respect natural business rhythms, embrace sustainable growth patterns, and place human dignity at its centre. An approach that will help you break free from the toxicity of traditional marketing.
In collaboration with nRhythm and their With Life framework, and inspired by our role in the Regenerative Marketing Movement, we’ve developed an approach grounded in living systems principles—meaning it mirrors how healthy, natural systems function through resilience, interdependence, and adaptation. Living systems principles unlock a different way of working–just as a forest thrives through the smooth flow of nutrients between all its elements, organisational health depends on how effectively energy and information flow within teams.
This manifests in tangible ways: team motivation, connection to purpose, and excitement for responsibilities. Instead of rigid, extractive structures that prioritise short-term efficiency—often leading to burnout and depleted creativity—we consider how energy flows through an organisation, creating space for natural growth and innovation to emerge.
Over the past four years, your fellow impact-driven organisations have helped shape this vision through partnerships across the globe, from government accelerator programs and university classrooms, from early-stage startups to established B Corps. Our approach has been further shaped by deep collaboration with thought leaders in regenerative design, including our strategic partnership with the With Life Ecosystem by nRhythm and Capital Institute.
The shift to regenerative practices unfolds naturally. Each interaction has deepened our understanding of how living systems principles can transform marketing from a tool of extraction into a force for regeneration, catalysing not just organisational growth, but personal transformation within teams. Through this framework, you’ll discover how to build financial stability while fostering ecosystem health, finding that sweet spot where personal alignment meets impactful growth.
The GTE framework and cards represent a living system themselves—continuously evolving through practical application and community feedback. Built on principles of resilience, interdependence, and adaptability, they offer practical tools for sustainable growth aligned with your values. While we’ve seen promising results across continents and contexts, we remain transparent about its emergent nature, actively gathering case studies and learning alongside our community as we navigate this new territory together.
The Framework: A Living Systems Approach
As you navigate toward more aligned and sustainable growth, the Go-to-Ecosystem framework takes practical form through a set of digital cards—a format chosen to make these principles accessible and actionable in daily work. Each card becomes a stepping stone on your journey, offering guidance to align marketing with purpose, while honouring your values and wellbeing.
Each card builds upon the last, guiding regenerative leaders and marketeers through a structured yet adaptable process. This approach recognises the deep scaling potential that emerges when we honour the interdependencies within our ecosystem—reducing costs and effort while nurturing organic, sustained growth that benefits entire communities.
The journey begins with the foundational ‘Essence’ card. Created in collaboration with the With Life Approach, this card guides you through exercises that ground your marketing activities in your organisation’s core beliefs and purpose—preventing the all-too-common disconnect between marketing actions and mission that leaves many impact entrepreneurs feeling frustrated and misaligned.
The framework and accompanying cards unfold across three interconnected phases that mirror natural rhythms, supporting your path to sustainable growth:
- Ponder: An annual practice of deep reflection where you step back to align your vision and map your ecosystem relationships. Through thoughtful consideration rather than rushed strategy, this phase helps you explore your essence, release anxiety, and ensure your goals remain rooted in your foundational beliefs and values. The cards in this phase guide you through connecting your strategic vision with your deeper purpose.
- Prepare: A seasonal planning phase where teams transform insights into action with mindful readiness. During this quarterly cycle, you’ll design your presence, nurture partnerships with intention, and create marketing structures that energise rather than drain your organisation. The cards help you define priorities and craft resonant messaging that aligns with your ecosystem.
- Play: The phase of active experimentation and engagement, including essential periods of rest and renewal—because regenerative growth requires both action and recovery. Through iterative cycles, you’ll test ideas, launch initiatives, and adapt based on feedback while staying responsive to your ecosystem. The cards support this dynamic process of meaningful engagement while honouring the need for sustainable pacing.
Who This Framework Serves
When you’re building solutions for a better world, every marketing decision should move you closer to your impact goals, not further away. These tools resonate with organisations at different stages who share a common challenge: bringing their impact-driven offerings to the world without compromising their values or wellbeing.
We developed these tools for change-makers like you who recognise the potential in your offerings but find yourself caught between growth and purpose. You might have tried everything you can think of, exhausted your current approaches, and now need a structured pathway forward. Perhaps you’re feeling the strain of financial instability, or your current marketing approach lacks the structure needed to create meaningful traction. Maybe you’re preparing to launch something new and want to begin with integrity, aligning health and financial goals from day one.
The framework and cards are your companions when your team feels disconnected from purpose and drained by constant stress, when you’re tired of reactive, uncoordinated approaches to growth, or when you seek to create genuine impact rather than just maximising profit.
How To Make The Most Of The Framework
Your journey into regenerative marketing deserves thoughtful guidance. To support your exploration of the GTE framework and cards, you’ll find everything needed to get started: practical guides for using the cards and clear pathways for implementation that align with your values and goals.
Each card in the framework mirrors the interconnected nature of living systems, structured to guide you from purpose through to practical action:
- The Purpose section grounds you in ‘why –connecting each marketing activity to your deeper mission
- The Outcome section reveals what becomes possible when marketing flows naturally–showing you clear indicators of success
- The How section provides practical steps that honour both growth and wellbeing – giving you actionable pathways forward
Begin by setting aside 1-2 hours to familiarise yourself with the core principles and explore the first set of cards. We recommend starting with the Essence card and moving through each phase at a pace that works for your organisation. These tools aren’t a quick fix or rigid template; they’re an invitation to thoughtfully reshape how your organisation approaches growth while maintaining financial stability and team wellbeing.
You can explore the framework as a leader seeking to chart a new direction, with your team to align purpose and action, or alongside partners to strengthen ecosystem relationships. Use it to guide specific projects and launches, or as a foundation for long-term organisational transformation.
As these tools continue to evolve, we’re learning alongside organisations like yours. The GTE Framework and cards represent our first iteration, built from our experience implementing regenerative marketing approaches with clients globally. We’re continuously gathering insights and refining our approach through real-world application.
If these principles resonate with you and you’re seeking more hands-on guidance, we’d love to explore how we can support your regenerative marketing journey. Whether you’re looking for structured implementation support or simply want to learn more, let’s connect and discuss how these tools can serve your unique context.
Join other impact-driven organisations exploring this regenerative approach to growth. Download the free digital cards and begin your journey today.