Yesterday, I went to see Martin Scorsese’s new movie The Wolf of Wall Street.

It was an entertaining movie with superb performance by Leonardo DiCaprio despite of the over the top profanity, sex and drugs.

I’m not going to review the movie in this post, but merely share my thoughts triggered by the movie.

The main thought is about the purpose of what we do.

As we reach the end of 2013, we think about what we’re going to do in 2014. The obvious pragmatic answer, like many other businesses, is we need to figure out how we can grow our business and generate more profit. The question is why? What’s the purpose of expanding our business?

If we grow rapidly and become really big, would we be happy in the end? Would the reward justify the sacrifice?

Back to the movie, Jordan Belfort, the main character played by DiCaprio achieved the success that he dreamt of. He made more money than he knew how to spend and with it came all the fun with drugs and sex, but he lost himself and worse yet, he lost his family.

So the takeaway here is money shouldn’t be the end goal. It should be a mean to an end. The end needs to be something that is more rewarding and more importantly expresses who we are and what we believe.

We want our work to empower others. We lend our talent to give voice to others to tell their stories.

We have been doing this with our series “My Body, My Story” and our work in general where we collaborate with our clients/models to express their stories.

In addition to our services, starting in 2014, we will start setting aside percentage of our profit to contribute financially to non-profit organizations that fight human trafficking.

Human trafficking is the biggest injustice of our generation. Today, there are over 27 millions of men, women and children who are in bondage as slaves with the average age of victims of 12 years old.

Art has the power to do good. We want use it to bring as much good as possible for our generation. This will be our contribution.

You can learn more about the fight against human trafficking at: A21 Campaign and International Justice Mission.