Good Leaders: How does your job help you do good?

If goodness radiates from leaders who are in a good place – both personally and professionally – then Amanda Brinkman is the perfect person to close the spring Good Leadership Breakfast Series. She’s our speaker next Friday, May 18, because of how she leads in her day job as Chief Brand and Communications Officer at Deluxe Corp, and for how she leads her life as a parent and champion for charities and small businesses. Her recent TEDx talk illuminates her brilliance, and confirms my claim that she comes from “a good place.”

A few tickets are available here to meet Amanda Brinkman, on Friday, May 18, at Golden Valley Country Club.

Disruptive change at Deluxe

The business story behind Amanda’s impact as a leader is compelling. Deluxe Corp is a century-old publicly-held company that made it’s reputation printing paper checks for financial transactions. The convergence of credit cards, electronic and online banking quickly threatened the company’s livelihood. In search of a new strategy to revitalize the outlook of the company, Amanda was a crusader to help Deluxe executives and Board understand the idea that their path forward was to embrace the needs of America’s small businesses as a core value driver.

“Yes, our small business customers still need checks,” Amanda explains. “But the opportunity is to stand alongside those customers in a way that’s more than just selling them things. They need marketing help to survive against the online and big box retailers who threaten their day-to-day survival.”

Standing alongside customers

What’s transpired for Amanda is a personal brand – doing well by doing good – that embodies her approach to live. “Goodness was always a part of how I was raised – getting involved, and giving back,” she explained. “But, I always had a fascination with TV, and the business of advertising, which seemed to be at odds with business!” So, it’s not surprising that Amanda found a way to bring her passions together at Deluxe.

A recent Women@Forbes article highlighted Amanda’s incredible career, and shared the inside story of her role as the creator of the Small Business Revolution – Main Street online TV series. The amazing success of the program has made Amanda a TV rock star, and a media darling. And more importantly, she has helped Deluxe Corp have a seat-at-the-table in the major media, and in congress, about the needs of small businesses in America. “It’s so fun, because what we are doing right now is a culmination of many of my life goals – doing good for people, changing people’s lives, and we are using our advertising money to do good.”

Amanda was one of the interviews Paul Hillen and I did for the How Goodness Pays book project, it should be no surprise we are featuring the Deluxe Small Business Revolution story, as one of the signature stories. We can do well, by doing good.

Good leaders blend their personal and professional lives to follow their dreams. And they succeed when they focus on standing alongside their customers and do more that just selling them things.

Please share with me: How does your job help you do good?