The clean up crew

About a month ago, Jon Ball pulled me into his office to discuss a new plan of action for the Page One Power company. This wasn’t like other meetings we’ve had where we discussed the direction of a blog post or the type of content he wanted. This time, he was jazzed up about doing something good for the local community.  He wanted to start-up a new initiative… that giving back to the local community with small service projects.

“Just something,” he said, “I want to do something. I mean, yes, we’re a national company but we are situated here in Idaho and its a community that has been good to us. The least we can do is try to give a bit back.”

Of course, being a complete sucker for do-gooder-y, I was amped. Not to mention, as the social media manager, I was envisioning golden-laced photo ops of Page One Power putting out fires and rescuing missing children. In terms of marketing, it was a mother-load for spectacular PR. The possibilities were endless… and oh, my social media marketing nerves were twitching.

But, really, for co-founders Jon and Zach, that isn’t what it’s about.

Maybe they’re great actors, but I doubt it. They legitimately seem give a damn about making their little chunk of the Boise metropolis a little better. Today we inaugurated our first mission, and I couldn’t help myself but to have t-shirts made up, and then to blog about it… and photograph it…and Tweet it…. you get the idea. I wanted the potential of some really good PR. The P1P guys? Well, they just want to be able to tell their wives and kids that they did good things today, not just in terms of being good or honest businessmen, but for the sake of being good humans.

 

Kyle Smith

 

It's not all trash...some of us found usable gift cards.

Hard Workin

You could argue that it’s a bit on the Pollyanna side, but when you work for a company that doesn’t just engage in fake caring, well that’s something to be applauded. The team headed to a local park, and scouted out every stray bit of refuse we could find. But, being located in the pristine area of Eagle, ID., it was painfully, shockingly clean. (I’m convinced this place is inhabited by aliens… we barely netted enough trash to fill up one bag, after an hour worth of scrounging! We even joked about dumping out the garbage cans and picking up that trash.)

Back of shirt

Sure, they humored me and my efforts to tag them in photos and to wear the blue t-shirts, but at the end of they day it wasn’t just a fluke photo op. Plus, they have more in the works. Every month there will be canned food drives, blood donations,donations of time and resources to the soup kitchen or  salvation army, flower planting and litter pick-up projects. Really, they’re just getting started. In between all of that, they are also busily growing their niche in the custom link building world from a backyard operation to an ever-larger company.

Zach Ball

So, today,  after the photos of “P1P Cleans Up” were posted,  I considered what it means to work for a company that cares. Some of us haven’t seen more than 10 minutes of the outdoors in months, and here we were walking around in the grass, interacting with the natural world.  It was a sight to behold.

We’d been outside, had the computer glare washed from our eyes in the light of the sun, and we have a few new freckles for the experience, and maybe even the beginnings of a summer sunburn. We may not have saved a life, but we did leave the park a little more sparkly than it was before.

That, at least, is a start.

We look forward to many, many more P1P Gives Back projects to come.

Champions

 

About Kaisja Clark