Survival Over Profit: What I Tell My Own Board

There is a moment every board eventually reaches when the spreadsheets stop feeling reassuring. Cash flows still add up, margins still look serviceable, but something feels off. Suppliers are under strain. Energy costs refuse to behave. Insurance premiums creep upward. Logistics timelines wobble. Customers grow wary, not indulgent.

In those moments, the usual playbook—optimise, trim, wait it out—starts to sound hollow. But here’s an idea that makes some boards uncomfortable: survival, not short-term profit, must guide decisions in a climate-strained economy. Not survival in the abstract sense of resilience decks and glossy pledges—but survival grounded in what actually reduces harm today.

When the Environment Becomes a Business Risk

For SMEs, environmental stress is no longer a distant policy issue. It shows up in practical, irritating, expensive ways. A heatwave that knocks out productivity. A disrupted supply chain because a raw material is suddenly scarce. A city’s power grid buckling under demand.

These are not future scenarios. They are operational facts.

Boards often talk about sustainability as reputation management. What needs to be argued instead is more blunt: sustainability is risk management. Ignore it, and the operating environment itself starts to fail. No amount of quarterly efficiency can compensate for that.

Why “Later” Is a Dangerous Word

Many companies are still betting on future fixes. Carbon markets that will mature. Technologies that will scale. Policies that will stabilise conditions.

The problem with this logic is timing. Environmental damage compounds faster than corporate roadmaps adjust. Waiting for perfect solutions often means missing the window for workable ones.

SunMoney’s message to boards is direct: fund the things that cut harm now. Not pilot projects designed for applause. Not initiatives that only exist in annual reports. But systems that materially reduce waste, emissions, and dependency—today.

Work That Actually Holds

At SunMoney, this thinking shows up in unglamorous choices. Waste-to-materials systems that turn liability into usable input, community-backed energy projects that give smaller investors a chance to invest in sustainability comfortably -  circular processes that make local operations less exposed to global shocks.

None of this is flashy. None of it promises overnight returns. But it does something far more valuable in volatile markets: it stabilises the ground beneath the business.

For SMEs, especially in regions where infrastructure stress is becoming routine, this approach matters. A neighbourhood power solution that keeps operations running during peak demand isn’t a climate story—it’s a continuity plan. A zero-emission recycling unit that handles waste locally isn’t an ESG headline—it’s cost control plus regulatory insulation.

The Real Test of Boardroom Courage

The hardest part of this shift is psychological. Boards are trained to chase growth curves, not durability. Funding resilience can feel like admitting vulnerability.

Yet the companies that last tend to be the ones that quietly invest in systems that don’t break under pressure. They spend less time explaining intentions and more time reinforcing fundamentals.

A business can be profitable and still be fragile. True strength comes from reducing exposure—to energy volatility, material scarcity, regulatory whiplash, and environmental backlash from communities that are increasingly unwilling to absorb corporate externalities.

SMEs Don’t Have the Luxury of Delay

Large corporations can afford postponement. SMEs rarely can. When capital tightens, every decision carries weight. That is precisely why sustainability framed as survival resonates more than sustainability framed as virtue. For SME leaders reading this, the question is not whether to “go green.” It is whether the business can keep operating if conditions worsen. Can it absorb price shocks? Can it function during power instability? Can it comply when regulations harden instead of soften?

These are not ideological questions. They are balance-sheet questions.

Redefining What Success Looks Like

One of the most uncomfortable truths is that success metrics need revision. Growth without durability is a gamble. Profit without environmental stability is temporary. Boards that redefine success as the ability to endure—through heat, scarcity, regulation, and public scrutiny—make different funding choices. They prioritise systems over slogans. Infrastructure over image. Habits that stick over campaigns that fade. In markets where volatility is becoming the norm rather than the exception, this mindset separates businesses that survive from those that simply looked good before conditions changed.

The Cost of Being “Rich on Paper”

Being rich on paper and poor on air is not a strategy. It is a warning.

No SME operates in isolation. Businesses breathe the same air, draw from the same grids, depend on the same communities as everyone else. When those systems degrade, profitability becomes increasingly theoretical.

Funding real work—waste reduction, local energy, circular operations—is not about moral superiority. It is about keeping the lights on, literally and figuratively.

A Practical Leadership Lens

What makes this argument resonate is its practicality. Founders and operators don’t need sermons. They need frameworks that help them decide where scarce capital should go when uncertainty rises. Survival over profit is not anti-business. It is pro-continuity. It asks leaders to look beyond the next quarter and ask a harder question: will this business still function if the world keeps getting hotter, tighter, and less forgiving?

For those willing to answer honestly, the path forward becomes clearer. Fund the work. Cut harm now. Build systems that hold.

Everything else is just noise.

About the Author:

Zoltan Rendes, Partner and CMO at SunMoney Solar Group is a visionary playmaker who believes in always putting himself out there to break new ground to try and make the impossible look like a walk in the park. SunMoney Solar Group is currently running the world’s most extensive global Community Solar Power Programme that is a unique, sustainable, and futuristic initiative to allow all kinds of investors to invest in reducing the world’s carbon footprint and saving the planet. The European Union has recently appointed Zoltan as their Climate Pact Ambassador in Hungary. He is tasked with advocating for environmentalism and working further to implement sustainable practices within the EU's borders.