photo credit: melalouise

This year, I started a web marketing optimization company (called [meta]marketer) and we’re truly doing well. I found a business partner I respect and admire and who shares many of my core values, and we hired someone with a lot of smarts and talent and who also wants to make a positive influence on the the world. We’re small, but we’re growing, and we have big plans.

And then there’s this blog, which has been a great opportunity for me to focus my thoughts and remind myself why it’s important to me to lead with integrity and be a force for positive change in the business community, however small my impact. Sometimes it’s a lot to keep up with, especially when I’m up to my ears in leads I need to follow up with and client meetings to attend to, but it’s worth having a place to come back to and renew my passion for good in business.

And of course, there’s my life partner, who, despite being wired for art and beauty and hedonism and everything non-corporate, understands my corporate idealism and patiently puts up with my excessive work hours and workload.

I’m healthy, I’m happy, I have good prospects ahead of me, and I love the people around me.

If that’s not success, I don’t know what is.

I hope you have a wonderful, happy, healthy Thanksgiving and a restful long weekend, and that you come back to work next Monday recharged and ready to do good work.

photo credit: netwalkerz_net

Clearly we here at Corporate Idealist have been on a work-life balance / productivity kick lately. We’ll be taking our own advice and working more balance back into our topic mix over the next week.

Meanwhile, have a puppy in a basket, and as we approach the weekend, let’s hear from you: what topics should we cover more? What do you want to read more about?

And have a happy weekend!

photo credit: Pink Sherbet Photography

At a party a few nights ago with the #RoadTwip crew, I was asked what the goal of this blog is. I said that I think there are steps people need to take, sometimes in sequence, sometimes all at once, to help themselves feel more empowered and like their work has relevance. Those steps aren’t always upward and they aren’t necessarily linear. But my hope for this blog is that it might provide some inspiration for deciding what that next step is, and then taking it.

Somewhat along those lines, Po Bronson wrote a fantastic article in Fast Company, debunking some myths about making changes in your career. In it he addresses the importance of having work that feels right:

Michael Dell once invited me to a meeting with several CEOs on the topic “What do employees want?” The CEOs took turns describing all the benefits they provided and how they gave out free M&Ms on Wednesdays and appeased their employees with stock options and free parking spaces. My point was essentially that employees don’t want M&Ms; they want to love what they do. I thought everyone would laugh at me, snickering “How indulgent! How naive!” Instead, the roomful of CEOs stood up one by one to agree: The value in their companies came from the employees who were motivated to be there. One passionate employee is worth 10 dispassionate ones.

Honestly, I think this is one of the best articles I’ve ever read on this subject. It’s definitely worth reading the whole thing.

Do you see progress in your professional life as a series of steps? Are you waiting to take the next one? Do you know what the next one is yet?

Got ideas on what we should discuss? Inspired enough to write a post yourself? Leave us suggestions in the comments, or email us a sketch of your post idea.

This blog exists because of people like you in the working world who appreciate business for values beyond the obvious: making money. Hey, we like making money too, but we feel better about our earnings when we’re doing something meaningful and constructive, and when we’re helping people if we can.

We also believe in the idea behind work-life balance, but we believe that our work should ideally be a reflection of us, so that our lives at work are balanced.

We think everyone’s motivations are different, and that those differences can be cultivated to make for an incredibly rich work environment.

Image credit: Eneas, via flickr

But here’s where we want your input. This blog will be meaningless without input from you. So please, tell us: besides the paycheck you take home, what are the moments in your working life that make everything more worthwhile?