While many businesspeople will preach the powers of ruthlessness, there is sometimes room for kindness on the road to success.
In a time of recession, many people would argue that there is little point in niceties - it's everybody out for themselves, because not everyone is going to survive.
However, the benefits of kindness were recently demonstrated in an article on CNN Money entitled 'Freebies for the jobless: From free dry cleaning to a no-cost vacation, these 5 businesses have come up with creative ways to help out unemployed residents in their communities'.
The first business featured was National Drycleaners, a run-of-the-mill dry-cleaning store, which will have benefitted from the online PR generated as a result of the article.
Company owner Mike Erstad took the decision in May of this year to offer free cleaning to those who were out of work.
The idea behind the charitable stance was that the unemployed would quite often not be able to afford getting their suits dry-cleaned, but were arguably in greater need of doing so owing to the likelihood of having to attend many job interviews.
While many would argue that Mr Erstad was wasting money and that if people really needed their clothes dry-cleaned then they would find a way of affording it, his decision actually did a great deal for the company.
He said that the offer attracted a great deal of press attention, which, put another way, is free publicity - and all just by being nice.
The business owner told the news provider: "I could never afford television time, but we got our name out there at no cost. When you do good, good things happen."
He went on to say that the initiative had been greatly appreciated by his paying customers too.
He said: "We sure have gotten good feedback from people coming into the shop. They tell us that they think it's a great thing we're trying to do."
The charitable approach adopted at National Drycleaners could prove to be a highly profitable initiative for the company - Mr Erstad will hopefully never have to consider laundering money at least.
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