Welcome to The Good Business Optimist Company.

The Optimist Company is about an increasingly prevalent approach to business that can be labeled many things: Doing Well By Doing Good. Profit and Purpose. The Triple Bottom Line. As much as we like how those sound, we like The Optimist, too. It suggests an attitude that businesses can contribute to their community, however they define it, while also making money.
Optimists are businesses that are ethical, innovative, socially entrepreneurial. Those that show how to be corporate citizens, activists, philanthropists, and humanitarians. Those that strive beyond short-term financial performance to actually drive change in their neighborhood, industry, country or world. Those whose very business models are entrepreneurial approaches to issues from global health to poverty to education to natural resources.

Since business is about people, Optimists are also people who are conscious of their impact on the world around them- from the environment to their neighbors. They tread lightly. They give back. The teach. They leave the environment as they found it, or better. They Go Green. They Seek Sustainable. They are LOHAS types; Considerate Consumers. A company's Optimists can be its employees, who work hard and often make some sacrifices to represent a company that shares their attitude; its customers, who often think a little more about what they're buying; its leaders, who ultimately determine what priority will go beyond profit.

There's plenty of bad news in business and life, and we can't avoid occasionally shining a little light on the ugly side of commerce. But mostly we're here to to tell the stories of Optimists: the companies, business leaders, start-ups, and entrepreneurs who are doing business in an inspiring new way. Our real goal is to get our hands dirty with several related Optimist projects- but more on that to come.

The Optimist Company believes that there is a big market for good businesses. That by doing good things for a community (however you define it) in addition to just making money, a business is better off. That not only can businesses do good; they should!