First off, if you don’t think that giving back to your community is important, you probably shouldn’t bother reading the rest of this article. It’s not for you.
I’m not here to change your mind. But if you do think giving back is important—just not yet—I’d like to challenge you on that. You should start giving back before you think you’re ready. Before it’s comfortable.
Sometimes I’ll hear people say that their business just isn’t in a place to give back, financially or otherwise. They don’t have enough time for their employees to volunteer, and they don’t have the bandwidth to help out their clients or referral partners unless it’s a mutual thing.
But here’s the thing: giving back needs to be a habit if it’s important to you. And it’s a matter of priorities. I think you should give back before it’s comfortable because that will make it easier to continue to give back in the future whether business is good or bad.
At T&S, we have volunteered as an organization in the past, but we started volunteering more proactively last year. And it was hard to get that habit started, even though it was important to me and the rest of my team.
Don’t worry about how much or what you’re able to give—just find what you are able to give that will be useful in your community. If it doesn’t look like much, that’s okay. You’re building the habit of giving back.
You’re making sure you run the kind of business that gives back to the community, and that’s valuable even if the dollar amount or the time you can give isn’t very substantial (yet).
There are a few different ways we give back at T&S, but this isn’t a plug for my company, so I’m not going to get into them. The only reason I mention it is because we have giving back baked into our business model and company culture. And it’s a lot easier to continue a habit than it is to start one, isn’t it?
If giving back is important to you, find a way to do it before it’s convenient. Make it a part of your business philosophy. Just starting out? You’re in the best place to start giving back, because you’re creating a habit that will grow as your business grows.
Want to talk more about what that looks like practically in my world? Send me a message or leave a comment, and let’s talk about it.