By Catherine Lang-Cline
Odds are, being a good human in business will not make you number 1. Business is too often about the numbers, the profit, the margins, and how much has been delivered. Don’t get me wrong, we love a profitable year because that just means that we have done a really great job. It means we have marketed ourselves well and we have provided a lot of work for creative people. Our biggest return on investment is how much we have helped–whether or not we have been good humans. This formula has worked with a number of successful companies like Nordstrom’s, Tom’s, and Southwest, all amazing companies but not the largest in their sector. There are 100s more that put people before profit, but here is our story:
After working for a number of great advertising and marketing departments and getting paid pretty well we had to figure out what Portfolio Creative was going to be about. We started it with an idea. The idea was to have a service that could connect creative talent where the client could stay within their budget and the talent could make what they were worth. That’s it. Months of planning and 6 months after “opening our doors” we could actually pay ourselves. The risk was worth it. We then started to invest in the company with people, software, and all the stuff that makes businesses work to connect more people. Most importantly, we learned that this community believed in us, and not being the Lamborghini-type, and we wanted to give back. We wanted to be good humans.
We are good humans because we:
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Love reinvesting in the community, this region is ours and it is worth investing in
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Volunteer hundreds of hours of our time serving on boards to better the region
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Take action to empower artists, women, minorities, and small businesses
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Believe in and trust our talent, clients, and internal team to work hard and dream big
Also we:
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Know advertising and marketing and only send the best choices to our clients
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Believe that artists should get paid what they are worth and we will work toward that
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Try to find solutions for any business size
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Are very flexible to get a project rolling
When your ROI is more about “How can we help?” vs “How much money can we make from this?” you know that you will never be the largest and you will probably never be the most profitable. But we know that, in our little piece of the world, we are making a difference. This creative community helps each other whether you are the artist or the client. That makes us fit in here perfectly.
