🌱 WORD OF THE DAY 21 Ṣafar 1447 AH – August 15, 2025 ‘Sustainability’ 🌱

Coach Ward

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

3–4 min read

Sustainability — a word that gets tossed around a lot in boardrooms, marketing campaigns, and social media hashtags. But for me, sustainability isn’t just about solar panels or recycled packaging. It’s about whether you can keep doing what you’re doing without burning out, going broke, or running the whole operation into the ground.

Early in my career, I was the king of unsustainable business habits. I’d overcommit, overdeliver, and overwork… until I eventually crashed. Sure, I got quick wins, but I couldn’t repeat them without sacrificing my health, relationships, or sanity. And in business, if you can’t sustain it, you can’t scale it.

Why Sustainability Is More Than “Going Green”

In business, sustainability is the balance between growth and endurance. You’re not just building for today, you’re building for tomorrow and the day after that. It’s about having the systems, resources, and habits that keep the engine running without constant breakdowns.

If your business model requires you to sprint endlessly just to survive, you don’t have a business, you have a treadmill. And treadmills don’t take you anywhere.

The High Cost of Unsustainable Practices

Let’s not sugarcoat it, running on fumes has consequences:

• Burnout – You can’t make good decisions when you’re running on empty.

• Inconsistent results – The stop-start cycle kills momentum.

• Resource drain – Overspending time, money, or energy in the short term leaves nothing for the long haul.

How I Learned to Build Sustainably

1. Set realistic growth targets – Scaling too fast is just as dangerous as moving too slow.

2. Protect your core resources – Your time, money, and health are your “big three.” Guard them.

3. Automate & delegate – If it can be done without you, let it.

4. Review your pace regularly – What worked at the start may not be sustainable as you grow.

The Personal Side

When I launched Coach Ward Business Solutions, I vowed not to repeat my old patterns. Every new service, every new project, and every new client is assessed with one question: Can we sustain this at the level of quality we promise?

It’s not about being flashy, it’s about being reliable. And in the end, sustainability creates trust, trust creates loyalty, and loyalty creates longevity.

Definition:

The ability to be maintained at a certain rate or level without exhausting resources or causing harmful effects.

Etymology:

From the Latin sustinere: sub (“from below”) + tenere (“to hold”), meaning “to hold up” or “to support.”

Synonyms: viability, durability, endurance, stability

Antonyms: short-termism, instability, fragility

💡 Your Turn: Look at one area of your life or business. If you had to keep doing it exactly the way you’re doing it now for the next 5 years, could you? If not, what needs to change?

Let’s keep growing, one word at a time!