Building an Anti-Fragile Career for Climate Resilience | Lilli Graf

Jeni Miles speaks with Lilli Graf, founder of IMMA Collective, about why climate resilience begins with how you make a living. Drawing on regenerative business principles and antifragility, Lilli explains how solopreneurship, community and redefining "enough" can help purpose-driven professionals build careers that don't just survive uncertainty, but grow stronger because of it.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• Identify the single biggest lever for personal resilience: Lilli found that, of work, finances, location, family and community, how you make a living has the greatest impact.
• Distinguish resilience from antifragility — bouncing back versus growing stronger through stress, drawing on Nassim Taleb's Antifragile.
• Apply the barbell strategy to career risk: keep 80% secure and channel 20% into high-conviction experimentation.
• Reframe scarcity as a learnt capitalist mindset, and define your own version of "enough" rather than chasing endless growth.
• Build community as infrastructure — solopreneurs who connect and collaborate become "antifragile forests" rather than isolated trees.
• Recognise that failure only happens if you stop trying; fast, cheap failures are how regenerative businesses redesign themselves.
• Prioritise the quality of relationships over scale, especially as AI reshapes how solo businesses are built and differentiated.

TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 — Introduction: realigning careers towards a resilient, regenerative future

01:18 — Leaving a stable corporate job to follow climate resilience

04:27 — From freelancing to founding IMMA Collective

07:41 — Realising climate resilience is personal, not just organisational

10:00 — How you make a living is the biggest lever for resilience

10:27 — Resilience vs antifragility: lessons from Nassim Taleb

13:21 — AI, English as a third language, and levelling the playing field

14:03 — What working in climate resilience looks like in practice

16:48 — The barbell strategy: 80% safe, 20% high-conviction risk

19:52 — The "Robin Hood strategy" for funding purpose-led work

20:58 — Redefining "enough" and challenging scarcity mindsets

23:35 — Why Lilli turned down outside investment

26:53 — IMMA as a food forest, not a monoculture startup

30:34 — Can existing businesses shift towards regenerative models?

33:26 — Coping with the emotional weight of systemic change

39:27 — Advice for anyone considering the leap into solopreneurship

41:25 — Closing thoughts and thanks

ABOUT THE GUEST:

Lilli Graf is the founder of IMMA Collective, a global community helping purpose-driven solopreneurs build sustainable client pipelines. Her background is in service design, working previously with major London design agencies on venture building.

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RESOURCES:

Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifragile_(book) — the book behind Lilli's barbell strategy and antifragility thinking

Love & Order (Eliza Yvette Esquivel): https://www.love-and-order.com/ — foresight and Protopian leadership practice for visionary organisations
SporeSight: https://www.sporesight.co/ — Jess's work applying fungi-inspired thinking to regenerative futures
Elise Ford: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elise-ford-59a75157/ — specialist in polarisation and collaborative leadership capacity
Caroline Harris: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/caroline-harris-7a791117 — IMMA member helping people clarify their next career step
Radhika Bhatt: https://www.linkedin.com/in/radhika-bhatt/ — IMMA member specialising in freelance and solopreneurship clarity
Work With Source by Tom Nixon:

https://tomnixon.co.uk/
Inner Development Goals: https://www.innerdevelopmentgoals.org/