Doing Well While Doing Good

Don't be ashamed of it

Some things in this world are completely backwards, and one of them that I’ve been struggling with is the notion of doing well while doing good.

Somehow, we have arrived at a point where if you are doing something good, like helping those in need, then doing well - or making money - while doing that good is frowned upon. We question people who make a lot of money from doing good deeds. I suppose the reason is that if you’re doing something good, it should come from the heart and not be about making money. In fact, we have warped this train of thought into a strange acceptance of a status quo where people doing a lot of good are expected to make low income. Just look at the pay for teachers in public schools who are entrusted with one of society’s most important good - namely, the education of our children.

Conversely, we turn a blind eye and accept people who make billions selling “vice” products and services. Hey, it’s the free economy right? As long as it’s not illegal, anyone can make as much as they want - forget about the destruction and harm caused to society. How many examples do we have of this? Big Tobacco can probably give you a laundry list.

The strangest thing to me is that we have even institutionalized this mindset. We have created categories such as “non-profit” companies to define a barrier whereby the entity itself is supposed to divert its assets into more “good” which generally means the pay for working at such places is low. Do we really believe that regulating the balance sheet of these companies will yield in more good being done to society? I don’t know about you, but I don’t really think so. I’ve read about too many non-profit organizations getting called out for, well, taking profits in creative ways. If anything, the term non-profit has morphed into some low-key virtue-signaling tool that people use to bolster their branding and perhaps their egos. Being associated with or even working at - for a stint at least - some non-profit entity apparently commands some badge of higher moral ground. The more badges, the better.

The most nefarious part of all is how some of the perpetrators actually claim to be doing good, which is a half-truth. We have situations where organizations that are supposedly doing good, end up doing bad with the very thing that’s supposed to be good - such as the large pharmaceutical companies. Unlike the typical targets of the past that include Big Tobacco, these drug companies are supposed to be producing medicine to help people. Yet the very medicine they produced was weaponized to fuel the global opioid epidemic in the name of the almighty dollar. If you never read the scandal of Purdue Pharma and how it ultimately plead guilty to a federal felony, I suggest checking it out when you have some time. The part that gets me is how they paid their way out of lawsuits through a settlement.

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So, have you every stopped to wonder why things are this way, and how we’ve been so brainwashed to simply accept and not even bother to ask why?

Let me ask the obvious question: why aren’t we configured to reward those who do good the most? Shouldn’t people producing goods and services that do good for humanity get rewarded the most? Wouldn’t that incentivize us to strive to do good, even if for egotistical and selfish reasons to get rewarded?

The truth is that humans, in general, don’t demand good things. We can prognosticate about it, glorify it, but when it comes down to paying for it - we simply don’t. Free capital markets have delivered this verdict to us over time and again, over decades, centuries, and even millennia. This is the crux of the matter when it comes to movements that cater to the general good of society such as sustainability. People talk about it, but when it comes to putting in the effort and money as individuals, the “not in my backyard” mentality rears its ugly head.

So this is where a public institution such as the government enters the chat group. Much like parents, these public organizations are supposed rear us because we can’t walk the talk. And for that reason, they aren’t as effective as we’d hope them to be, simply because they are synthetic and “forced upon us.” I mean, how many times either as parents or kids have we realized that no matter how much parents try, things really never change unless the kids decide to change themselves from within, organically.

This leads me to the point of this post: if we are able to drop this nonsensical notion that doing well while doing good is disingenuous, then we have a chance of creating an organic change and view of what doing good actually represents. We want people to do extremely well while doing good, so that more good can be done. We must break the cycle and install common sense back into our minds. After all, it’s what is done with all the profit as individual human beings that matters, not the fact that profits were made. Branding an entity as non-profit is not going to cut it - we need to challenge ourselves to be genuine people aligned from inside to out. And be wildly successful while doing it.

FoFty’s Principle #7 was created to highlight this important point:

7. We are not ashamed of doing well while doing good

I challenge you to have no shame in doing exceptionally well while doing good. It’s not only “ok” to make a lot of money while helping the world, it’s an absolute necessity. All that is required is being genuine and authentic about it.