There are a couple of bad reasons people care about profit. For some, it’s ego. For a few, its greed – the movie stereotypes are alive and well. That’s why profit often gets a bad name.

I often see this play out in the “bad” way when business leaders are trying to get their people onside to build a more profitable business. Two recent clients have confessed that they’re almost apologetic about wanting to run a profitable business when they speak with staff, lest staff think its “management lining their pockets” while they work hard.

There are 2 really great reasons to care about profit, and they can engage everyone in your organization. Give these a try the next time you’re talking to the troops.

The satisfaction of a job well done. A sustainably profitable company requires everyone collaborating to get the job done right. Sure, some firms try to profit at the expense of their customers, employees, or the environment, but that’s not sustainable. Profit is a great measure of two key areas:
1. how much your customers want, need, and value the products and services you provide; and,
2. how efficiently, effectively and passionately your people create and deliver those products or services

Profit means you solved your customer’s problems and got it right the first time – and isn’t that what we all aspire to?

Job security and the ability to give back. We can’t do good until we’re doing well. Employers and employees share a common goal of wanting to provide secure employment, compensate and reward their employees well, be a contributing member of the community, and achieve greater goals by leveraging that profit into more of the things that it can do and deliver. Profit is the means to the end for most business owners, not the be-all end-all in and of itself and that’s the message employees need to fully absorb.

As a colleague of mine says, you can buy your way out of a lot of the everyday challenges in business when you’ve got an abundance of profit. You can hire more people, buy better equipment, create a more conducive and safer work environment, expand and grow in new markets, and innovate in ways that keep you ahead of the competition. That creates a level of security for everyone. Without profit everyone is in survival mode, which is very different from thriving.

So let’s celebrate the positive side of running highly profitable companies:

Profit means possibilities.
Profit means we control our own future, rather than being at the mercy of economic uncertainty.
Profit means we never have to go hat-in-hand to our bankers, instead they welcome new opportunities to invest in us and in our vision.
Profit means never having to look a good employee in the eye and tell them they’ve been downsized.
Profit is where all the fun is in business!

So put the fun back in your business with a proven leadership path to profit. Download this 3-part series of Profit videos and proudly engage your employees in being part of creating Profit, Passion, and Growth in your business.