Picwing Blog

When we think of organizations that do “good”, we typically of charities, churches, non-profits, and philanthropists. We certainly don’t think about businesses that are run for-profit. Indeed, large businesses tend to earn titles such as “evil empire”. And this makes complete sense, since no matter the cliché mission statement, the primary purpose of for-profit businesses is, well, to turn a profit.

At Picwing, though we always thought we were providing a nice service to people, our primary purpose of building a healthy and profitable business was always first in our minds. There’s nothing wrong with that, and no one should tell you otherwise. But today, I realized that in the journey of building a business, you’ll do good things for people and society in ways you would have never imagined.

This morning, I got a call from a customer who has just signed up for our printing service. He informed me that he had signed up because he was being deployed to Afghanistan this Friday, and wanted an easy way for his loved ones to mail pictures to him abroad, where he wouldn’t have access to internet.

My heart was really touched. This man was going to Afghanistan in service to our country, and yet he was spending his last couple days in America concerning himself with trying to make it convienient for his friends and family to mail him pictures. My heart truly goes out to the sacrifices of our servicemen and service women.

At the same time, for the first time in a long time, I felt really good about what we were providing to people. Never had I once imagined that Picwing would be used to help loved ones keep in touch while separated because of armed duty. It was a great feeling to know that in some indirect way, we were helping to make someone a little happy despite being in the middle of war zone. And this is when I realized that, so long as you’re working hard and not trying to be evil, your business, no matter how big or small, will do good and meaningful things for people even if you don’t intend to.

It’s always great to know when you’re doing good. But in many cases, you’ll do good for people and not even know it. I was lucky enough to get a call to find out about the good thing that Picwing was being used for. But had he not called, this would have just been another customer. How many other similar customers do we have that we don’t know about? It’s great to know that, even if you’re not aware that you’re doing something good, you probably still are.

I can think of many examples where businesses do good things in unintentional or unknowing ways. I remember when I was younger, Google, which was just an inkling search engine at the time, was the last resort that helped me to find the phone number of the random hotel my parents were staying at when I needed to contact them for an emergency. Twitter, started as a way for geeks to keep in touch, helped let the world know sooner of the Mumbai attacks. Free open source software, like Linux and Wikipedia, is making technology and education available in 3rd world countries. Even small businesses like DigiTimeCapsule, are doing good by bringing joy to countless soon-to-be mothers.

Regardless of if you are part of a for-profit or non-profit business, you should be proud that you’re somehow, in some unlikely way, doing good things for people in this world. It may not be obvious, or immediate, but you’ll be doing great things in many unintentional ways.

Addendum: I would love to hear if your company/business has done something good in ways that you didn’t expect