Tag: Dollars

Kindness is Costless…isn’t it?

Published on by Kieran Johnson - The Generosity GuyLeave a comment

“Kindness is costless but also priceless” Warren Buffett

True kindness does cost you something, but not necessarily money. Perhaps that’s just how Warren Buffet sees the world, through a zero-sum game of whether something costs you money or not.

Because I know that kindness costs time, energy, mental space, the opportunity to do something else and sometimes, yes, even money.

But the impact of a kind act is so much more valuable.

Warren is right about the money with this point, it is priceless.

You cannot calculate the dollar value of a genuine kind act from one person to another because it would fall short.

Some things are not able to be bought and therefore there is no space for kindness and generosity within the financial economy. For those that focus solely on dollars and cents, this makes no sense, or cents, so it isn’t something they get involved in.

In this, Warren Buffet is an anomaly. One of the richest men on the planet still has a philosophy of kindness.

He knows that some things are worth more than money.

My Origin Story

Published on by Kieran Johnson - The Generosity GuyLeave a comment

It was one of dozens of similar conversations. But something finally broke with this one.

I sat down across the table from a financial planner, and they began to tell me how many millions of dollars their firm managed and all of a sudden I realised, I didn’t care. I didn’t. I had no interested in their millions of dollars and how much money they were making for their clients. In that moment I discovered that I wasn’t motivated by that at all, which was a bit of a shame because I was working for a bank at the time and my job was to encourage financial planners to put their clients’ money into the banks products. I knew I was in trouble.

It was that moment I began to search for my purpose, something that I could get excited about, something that motivated me. It led me through a journey of community radio, Bible College, youth work, international development work and a master’s degree. I always say that my life has been a weird concoction of career snippets that have somehow managed to feed into each other and create the place where I want to be. Ending poverty, one family and one community at a time. Facilitating generosity to bring about significant change. I’m so glad I had that realisation many years ago and walked away from the banking world.

Not that there’s anything wrong with making millions of dollars for your clients, just as long as you give lots of it away and do something significant with it.