Five Years of Giving Dangerously

Five years ago, I began a radical experiment that would change my life: I started a for-profit company built on generosity. I did it because, despite everything I’d been taught from my first days in business school onward, I really wanted to believe that you could be generous and successful in business at the same time.

Note that I didn’t say that I believed this. I wanted it to be true, but I had little proof. In my experience, the takers, liars, and assholes seemed to be the ones who shot ahead at work while the givers overworked themselves into middle management obscurity. “Charity’s for home,” one boss advised me, “At work you take care of yourself because no one else will.” I hated that advice even while acknowledging what seemed to be a hard truth. So that’s why this started out as an experiment: I had a hypothesis that things didn’t have to be that way, but I desperately needed proof.

As I shared here, the first year was both difficult and rewarding, but I was ready to call my experiment at least a partial success. I determined that, at a minimum, I could “give first” in my business relationships and make a living as a consultant. I had also managed to build a small but steady business without doing any “selling” in the traditional sense. I wasn’t hustling for prospects: clients were coming to me, sent by people who had already benefitted from my help. So…