Personal Thoughts about Empowered Profits

Summer is always a time for reflection in our company. The bulk of our work usually happens in the spring and fall leaving summer a time for regrouping and planning how to be more efficient and balanced in the coming craziness. While this summer has been incredibly busy for us, we have all made an effort to continue thinking about where we are headed and how we will get there. Part of this has been clarifying the core beliefs of our company and how we share that with the outside world. One of the areas I have been spending some serious brain time on lately is how we have an obligation as a company to continue doing our part to make the world in which we do business a better place.

Recently I was editing some audio voiceover for one of our oldest clients, Clover-Stornetta Farms and I heard a line in the narration that made me stop and think - “it is important to support the communities that support you”. What a simple and elegant way to sum it up - I thought. The challenge for us is that we do business all across the country, so in a sense, our community is our country. Obviously we live and work in the Bay Area, but our opportunity of contributing as a company is as large as we want to make it.

One of the most important parts of our mission statement is what we call “Empowered Profits”. If we are successful in what we do, we should be profitable as a company - this is the goal of business after all. One of the things we feel strongly about, however, is that we are not just defined by how profitable we are, but what we do with those profits. You may remember my thoughts about this after we worked with the Organic Center - if not you can read it here. The steps we take as a company to support our beliefs has the potential to truly help others committed to doing good things in the world.

While it is a fundamental core of our company to support our beliefs, I also feel a personal satisfaction in giving to causes I believe in. At the moment, this is probably one of the last things most people can imagine doing. As gas gets closer to $5 a gallon and the price of everything is going up, it is hard not to just hunker down and hold on tight. But this isn’t very satisfying and pretty soon you start to feel like you are just hoarding dollars so you can fill your tank - something I wish we didn’t have to do. While I do think it is necessary to be financially prudent right now, I also have found a great satisfaction in being more charitable at the moment. Whether it is giving away clothes to the Goodwill, or buying the FEED bag when shopping at Whole Foods, it has helped me remember that it is possible to do little things here and there that can have a big impact in other peoples lives.

All of this got me thinking, we all have the opportunity to do things within our world, and our communities to help make it a better place. For those of you who know me, you know how much my animals mean to me and that the Humane Society is one of my favorite charities. In fact, they are my first choice for where my share of our companies contribution budget goes each year. They are also doing some critical work in my home state to help better the lives of millions of farm animals - something I care deeply about.

California is one of the largest and most productive agricultural regions in the world. It is also home to some of the worst farm animal abuse in our country - especially in the large conventional dairies of the Central Valley. The Humane Society is working in conjunction with the Californians for Humane Farms - the sponsor of the Proposition 2 also known as the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act. You can read more about it here. I would encourage you to spend some time reading through the facts and learning about ways that the most basic humane standards can be achieved for our farm animals. While I am certainly not trying to ask anyone for money, I wanted to share this with you all while it was fresh on my brain.

I know this may seem a bit random for our company blog, but indulge me for a second if you will. We work with many companies within the natural foods industry who are committed to not doing these types of things. Part of our job is helping them tell their story to consumers who want to do the right thing with their dollar. While I can choose to support them with a financial contribution, I also know that helping spread the awareness of the issues will bring far more benefit to their efforts than money. Part of having a progressive company is sticking to your values even if it falls outside of the normal corporate mold. If our company - or more specifically my writing on our company blog - can help make life better for these animals, I am all for it.

As you can see - it is definitely summer at InHouse Creative. Come September I will be back in the airplane grinding through how many terabytes of server space we will need to allocate for the fall workload. I am thankful for the chance to reflect however and I appreciate you reading this post. I hope that you find some satisfaction in your own support of your beliefs.

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