Businesses Should Exist for More than Just Making Money

RCS Influencer Charles Antis shows how he integrates cause marketing into everything his business does.

Editor’s note: Watch the video to see and hear what Charles Antis and his Director of Cause have to say about how his company gives back. You can read the transcript below the video, but we recommend seeing it for yourself.  

Hi, I'm Charles Antis. I'm CEO and founder of Antis Roofing and Waterproofing here in Irvine, California. This month on RoofersCoffeeShop, we're going to talk about cause marketing. The only way that I can do that is invite you into my building. Let's look.

Here we are at Antis Campus. Yes, there's a name for it. First thing you'll notice over here is, for 30 years... we're celebrating 30 years, we've been keeping families safe and dry. Oh, we also have a few recognitions from Habitat for Humanity, from Alzheimer's, from United Way, from the Ducks, from the City of Irvine, for things that we've done for our community. Why does that matter? Oh, right here we have an impact report showing the donations we've made to the non-profits we're partnered with.

Come on in. Roof God. Roof God is a symbolic gesture to let our internal and external stakeholders know that we exist to keep families safe and dry. Right here we have our ‘be’ values. Be good, be accountable, be generous, be a leader, be passionate.

Susan, say hi.

Susan:   Hello!

Charles: Susan's our VP of Cause and Administration.

Susan:   And... We have so many examples out here. Did you already show them the trucks?

Charles: You didn't even know I was taping this and look at you going. Come on in. Yeah, let's ... We'll go out to trucks.

Susan:   Well, I just told these students at the college where we were talking about cause marketing on Saturday.

Charles: Let's come into my office.

Susan: I said, now that you'll see our trucks everywhere you grow and you're going to be reminded of what we're talking about as a wonderful example.

Charles: This right here is the wall that I like to work out some of my mad thoughts, so it's my inspirational wall. Right over here is something that we worked out lately, which is something that we say a lot at Antis. There's 200,000 parts in the average roof that we sell, every nail matters. That works for talking about quality in roofing, it also works for talking about quality and what matters in the community.

Keep coming, keep coming. We got more. Right here are the posters where we just honored our technicians who do great things that have a hunger to grow and is a lifelong learner. Always one step ahead of new work. We honor things that really matter. So, for us, cause marketing is a real thing. It's intentional and it's internal and it's external. So, what that means is, we don't just do something, we do it with a purpose. Susan, could you explain more?

Susan:   Can I explain more? The other part to this, I think that we talk about outwardly, is also what we're doing to build that with our employees. So, we fall into our community in a very big way, but we are also very mindful and lots of decisions that we make so that we are sure to do it with our own family, our own internal family. And just this week, yesterday, you announced something really big.

Charles: Aguinaldo?

Susan:   Aguinaldo. Do you want to talk about that concept?

Charles: Yeah. In addition to the external nonprofits and the roofs that we donate to keep families safe and dry, we focus on our people first. When we have a good year, we love to share with this annual Christmas bonus, which is based on a deep Mexican tradition. Most of our employees are Hispanic, and most of the Hispanic employees are from Mexico. And Aguinaldo is a renewing at the end of the year where a company shares with their employees so they can grab what they need for their family for the coming year. And this year, many of our employees earned as much as an extra month's salary, and that was very exciting.

Susan:   It is exciting. It's part of being a responsible and caring employer, which is also... All of that is wrapped up in your corporate social responsibility practices.

Charles: And we know this, if you're going to exist in the world, you better have a reason you exist other than making money, or you won't be in business.

Charles Antis is the founder and CEO of Antis Roofing & Waterproofing. See his full bio here.