Changing the World Through Business
My friend David Krug and I have been talking a lot lately about how easy it is for business, just for business sake to have a huge dehumanizing effect. In the business world, where bottom line is number one, you can tend to see people as objects to squeeze money out of, or at best as animals with particular psychologies to take advantage of.
As we see from the recent fiascos coming out of China, it’s easy to sacrifice quality and human value, in favor of the all mighty dollar.
Don’t get me wrong. I love business. I think business ultimately improves the physical living conditions of many people around the world. But I do think that there’s a huge temptation to dehumanize people in pursuit of the bottom line. Something we should all be careful against.
Well, instead of just ranting and raving, my friend David Krug is doing something about it. I think we can all draw inspiration from his efforts.
But let me tell you a little about David’s story, because it’s more than you see in that article. The fact is that David and I have been playing the Internet game for years now. And while it can be addictive and lots of fun to toy around with linkbuilding, SEO, arbitrage, affiliate sales, etc. there’s also something, at least to us, that seems a bit empty or even phony about doing all that just as an end in itself.
So last year David and I (it was David’s idea) starting throwing around the idea of using our skillz to sell real, quality, tangible products online. There’s something satisfying about being able to touch and feel the thing you’re selling. A level of satisfaction that we just can’t get by pushing words and content (it’s not that we don’t love words…we both do. it’s just that to make a living with words, you almost always have to sell your soul in one way or another, and it’s very easy to feel manipulative).
Anyway, David is making this a reality. He’s already sold several wood products such as doors and some uber-cool log siding products. He’s making this vision a reality, and I just think it’s freakin’ awesome.
But David isn’t stopping with the satisfaction he receives from selling real, quality products. Nope. He’s taking humanization to a whole ‘nother level. His company Gold Creek, LLC is is donating 5% of all its profits to Habitat for Humanity with the hope of increasing that to 10%. What a great, self-less idea. I admire it tremendously.
As Warren Buffett said recently, we have so much surplus in this country, but not enough fairness. Krug is taking steps to increase fairness in society and I truly believe that the reward for this is much greater than “the bottom line.”
Let me warn you, David, though. Never put Gold Creek, LLC in the hands of investors!
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Share your thoughts!!!