This last summer, I met a fascinating woman named Paula at the BlogHer conference. She worked with a firm called GoldenSeeds, a company that supports and invests in woman-owned businesses. I made a light-hearted comment to her, saying “I want to be just like you when I ‘grow up’ - to be able to hang out at conferences and find talented women to give my money to”.
We laughed, of course, but it spurred a wonderfully inspiring conversation.
My life made a dramatic shift almost 4 years ago when I made the decision to make “contribution” one of my highest values. I found that when in sales, if I focused on getting the deal, I never did nearly as well as when I focused on serving my clients.
And as we chatted about making ‘giving’ a high priority in business, we both agreed that although it can be a difficult mindset to attain, letting ‘contribution’ lead your business decisions creates the most rewarding and successful companies we had both ever known.
I was so impressed as she talked about her company’s mission - they seek to find businesses that are not only led by women, but that exist to empower women as well. They also are extremely mindful of work-life balance issues and offer advice and coaching to women entrepreneurs - even to those that they don’t invest in.
Paula repeated a phrase that has stayed with me ever since our conversation - she said “we believe in giving of our time, or talent, or our treasure”. And I thought about all of the ways that entrepreneurs can take this to heart - even the youngest of entrepreneurs can give one of the three:
Time :: Volunteering hours to help other business owners succeed, whether it be via mentoring, consulting, or labor.
Talent :: Offering your expertise as advice, guidance, and as a teacher or leader.
Treasure :: Giving your money to businesses who need capital in order to grow and succeed.
Thus far in my career, I’ve mostly given of my time and my talent - and only recently have I been able to start giving of my treasure. I’m no angel investor, but organizations like Kiva let me “play angel” with small amounts of capital until I ‘grow up’.
How are you giving of your time, talent or treasure? And are there ways you or your business can do more to help other entrepreneurs succeed? And how do you think your company could benefit from giving more to your customers or clients, or to your community?
This entry was posted on Thursday, October 4th, 2007 at 5:06 am and is filed under Inspiration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.2 Responses to “Your Time, Your Talent & Your Treasure”
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October 5th, 2007 at 8:11 am
Investing in one’s local community really makes sense. It is a great way to connect to others and demonstrate social responsibility!
Heidi
http://www.h2mediabuzz.com
October 20th, 2007 at 12:06 pm
We’ve never had a whole lot of money to give away, so I’ve chosen to give my time and talent to Hands & Voices (www.handsandvoices.org) and help other families with deaf and hard of hearing kids. In the last four years, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting many families that I’ve helped–a return that can’t be measured in dollars.