 Boom, what's up, everyone? Welcome to Simulation. I'm your host, Alan Sokian. Very excited to be talking about conscious capitalism for our second round with Alexander McCoban. Hello. Hey, thanks for having me back. I'm so excited. Thank you for coming on. We have a lot to catch up about. Over the last year, it's been, since we had our first conversation, you guys can find that on our channel. So as you don't know, Alexander McCoban, CEO of conscious capitalism, which is dedicated to elevating humanity by improving the practice and perception of business. And you can find the links in the bio below to consciouscapitalism.org, as well as the Twitter profile, consciouscap. Alex, let's start things off with one of our favorite questions to ask our guests. What are your thoughts on the direction of our world? I think it's easy for people to focus on the negatives today, especially because they make the headlines of the news so frequently. But overall, I'm optimistic about the direction of our world. We're living in the best period to be alive in human history. People have longer life expectancies, higher quality of life, access to more opportunities. We're actually on the verge of eliminating extreme poverty in our lifetimes. And it's all because we have more opportunities to collaborate with, interact with, and build things with other human beings that we've never seen in human history before. So there are challenges facing the world. There's a ton of work for us to do. But honestly, I'm optimistic about where we're going because the potential for us to address those problems is greater than ever before. And how do we most optimally work together in the globalized 8 billion human geopolitical climate on tackling these problems? Through free exchange of ideas and activity between individuals. This isn't something that is simplified or easily planned from the top down. The world is so complex nowadays. We need more opportunities for people to interact with one another, to collaborate, to explore new ideas, to build new things together, new businesses with one another that are going to tackle the problems that we're facing today and the problems that are going to come up in the future. And there's an opportunity for us to lean into that and to do so in a way that, from an elevated perspective, in a way that I don't think we've ever seen in human history before. So when humans meet around the world to creatively endeavor into projects together, that acts as like we're running tons of different permutations of ideas collaboratively together. And what would be the best way to enable that free idea flows, free markets to pursue equal degrees of economic freedom? How do we get to those things? So you hit the nail on the head there. It's the free flow of ideas and free markets for people to interact with one another. And this is giving away my bias, but I hear it conscious capitalism because it's correct. We need more conscious capitalism. We need more people to understand how capitalism and business are fundamentally human endeavors. They're about people serving other people and that at their root, capitalism and business are good, ethical, noble, heroic. And that free market capitalism has been one of the greatest ideas humanity has ever come up with. And if we lean into it the right way, building businesses on concepts like higher purpose and stakeholder orientation, we are going to unleash the potential of humanity in ways that we can't predict right now. Higher purpose, inclusive stakeholder, these types of things. Yeah. Yeah. And then what is a, let's get into kind of like a bit more, we did a lot of our episode on the mission last time and what's happening, but we're going to do a big update on what's been happening. Let's get a quick bit on this people serving other people on the mission and the ethos of conscious capitalism. So conscious capitalism is a way of thinking about capitalism and business that emphasizes the human nature of these endeavors and it encourages businesses to run on four tenants to fulfill that potential of being a human centric endeavor. Having a higher purpose than just maximizing profit, stakeholder orientation, finding win-win-win solutions for everyone in business impacts rather than prioritizing one group above another. Conscious leadership, moving past just analytic or even emotional intelligence and getting into systemic and spiritual intelligence where business leaders embody the values of their company in their daily lives and their activities. And conscious cultures where people are able to bring their full authentic selves to work every day to not only put up with but become even more inspired by their work and contribute to their activities in a more meaningful way. So let's unpack a little bit so we're trying to identify what our North Star is, what gives us the most meaning and purpose in life and usually the more that we align that with some sort of a selfless endeavor of serving other people, providing civilization with value or families with value or communities with value, these types of things, the more it is that we feel like a more divine potentially alignment with source or spirit. And it's not just divine. There's something called the happiness paradox in philosophy where if you want to be as happy as possible the worst thing that you could do would be to make decisions based on what's going to make you happy. If you do that for a weekend you're going to be pretty miserable at the end of it. You're going to be run down, tired and regret some decisions. But people who put their own happiness to the side, they don't make it their end. They adopt something else as their higher purpose whether it's their family, their community, a principle and ideal. Those people happen to become the happiest individuals in the world. So it's not that happiness or profit are bad things but that adopting a higher purpose than those actually is what life is all about. That should be our goal. And if you do that, here's the benefit. You're actually going to be happier. You're going to make a greater profit as a business than if you were to set those as your goals and make your decisions based on that. Yeah, that inclination towards being in service to others seems to be one of the most important callings for a higher purpose period and I love that one. And then also within stakeholder orientations what you called it, I like to think of it as inclusive stakeholder. Let's talk about maybe what this could evolve to be, like how similar they are. On an inclusive stakeholder basis, it's so much about like one of the models that Silicon Valley started to do in the right direction was that employees gained ownership of stock of the company. So that moved somewhat in the right direction. Now I think where it's moving even further is where the company is based. So like Uber or Twitter are right here in downtown San Francisco. Well what about the inclusive stakeholder of the city with the company? Why is the company not a shareholder in the company? Why is there not already a better social fabric designed around the city with the company in it? Also things like all of the people, the customers. So like the fact that we each take 100 plus Uber rides let's say a year that are customers of this company. Well why can't we each gain a very small token of shareholder ship every single time that we take a ride with the company because we are the ones that have helped to build the value of the organization. So what are your thoughts about something like that moving in towards that inclusive stakeholder future? So I like the term inclusive stakeholder. I think that sounds very aligned with our stakeholder orientation term. Let me give some background as to where we come from with this which I think is going to lead me to a very different conclusion from you actually. Oh interesting. So the biggest problem with the conversations around stakeholders and shareholders is that most of the time people bring into it a fixed mindset or the idea that this is a zero sum game. The only way you benefit shareholders or you benefit customers is to take from someone else. You have to take from the employees. You have to take from the suppliers and that's the only way you're going to lead to greater returns for investors or that customers are going to get cheaper or better goods. That's the wrong mindset. That's fundamentally antithetical to what business is all about which is a positive sum game where you get better because I get better. We serve each other and we're both better off for the transaction somehow that's been lost in the theory around shareholders and stakeholders. And conscious capitalism is bringing this back to the idea that you can find win-win-win solutions that benefit every stakeholder group and that's the mindset that business leaders need to go into their activities and even the really difficult decisions with. So what this actually does is instead of elevating the role of shareholders it actually emphasizes that that's just one group amongst many that the business impacts including the community, the environment, employees and customers. So rather than asking how do we get other stakeholders to become shareholders I actually think it's important for us to ask why is there this aura this mythical status around shareholders and businesses today rather than a deeper appreciation for the other stakeholders that a business impacts and the interdependence between what they do and shareholders such that we understand that businesses are a nexus of contracts and agreements and you need to give as much credence to the other stakeholders as you do to shareholders. Yeah, yeah I dig that, I dig that too. This is there's so much good overlap with where we're looking at heading and what we're discussing here what's been happening in the last year with the momentum. So is this right that normally organizations reach out to conscious capitalism learn about the ethos learn about how they can start implementing some of the practices to become more consciously aware themselves as businesses that's usually what the trajectory is. That's right and it's more than that though it's also as a philosophy for business something that businesses express interest in or that they start to advocate themselves even as they're going down this journey and what we've seen over the past year is an incredible uptick in interest in conscious capitalism at every level from startup businesses to some of the largest companies and the most influential investors talking about conscious capitalism as the way of the future. To give just two examples, conscious capitalism was offered at the Milken Conference this year as the solution to the challenges facing capitalism today. Then Larry Fink the CEO of BlackRock the largest investment platform in the world has said on CNBC we need more conscious capitalism in the world. They're getting on the bandwagon with this. There is so much momentum carrying this forward and it's such a contrast from where things were a decade ago when this idea was met not only with skepticism but derision to a certain extent that thinking forward to the next 10 years I think we're going to move past just the inspiration or the exploration of this to a strong community of practitioners of conscious capitalism sharing their best practices building one another up and making this the norm where conscious capitalism is going to become redundant and the way that people just think talk and act within capitalism the new norm yeah yeah so what does it look like when an organization comes on that says massive as like BlackRock or like that's as small as like a ma and pod business like what would be the differences for being able to leverage conscious capitalism it's gonna vary company into company because it's not just their size it's also where they are on the journey some businesses are coming in because they know they're not conscious right now they don't have a higher purpose beyond just making a profit that's all they've been doing for generations perhaps or they know they're prioritizing one stakeholder group above others and it's harming certain individuals we get businesses that come in like that where they maybe they have a new CEO or someone who's been around for a while says we need to change and so we start by just introducing them to the community other business leaders that they can learn from get inspired by and take ideas back from and then as they get more interested in this we introduce them to more best practices and opportunities we have learning and development workshops courses and site visits where businesses can take their leadership through to understand how to put this into practice and then we build them up so that they become effective practitioners and keep working on that for other businesses they're pretty far along already they're what we call unconscious conscious capitalist where they say this is what we've been doing for generations we just never had a word for it or we called it something else and when they come into the community they've already got examples that we want to share with others so we are going to introduce them as a model that other people should look up to and that we want to use to inspire people outside of business to appreciate the role of capitalism and to go into business themselves to make the world a better place so it's about meeting them wherever they are on this journey so there's tons of like workshop site visits these types of things and also that it's fun hearing when people come on and they're saying things like we have been doing stuff we just haven't had the word for it that's that's great so yeah this is that awakening that's happening the evolution that's coming together and then what are the best practices that are being shared across the businesses so it varies in each business is putting their own practice out there so I'll give an example that was highlighted at our annual conference a month and a half ago there's a company called televerde based out of Phoenix Arizona they establish call centers to support some of the biggest companies in the world and they source the majority of their employees from incarcerated women whoa they they are looking to not only provide high quality service at their call centers they're creating opportunities for women who have been convicted of crimes and most likely based on statistics that when they leave prison if they're not given the opportunity to develop new skills or to have employment potential after they leave are likely going to engage in recidivism yeah they create opportunities for these women to develop new skills to prepare for the workforce and give them a give them a substantial wage while they're still in prison so much so that actually 25% of the women that start working for televerde while they're there would stay with the company after they leave prison and we're we're in the process of sharing their practices with other companies in the network because when we feature them at our annual conference they highlighted to so many businesses how easy it is to forget about that about women or anyone in this situation in your hiring practices if you're not reflective on it do you have a box that asks the question are you a convicted felon most businesses do and they simply move those resumes to the side don't give them a second look is their way to establish a relationship with a with a prison in their area to provide workplace re-entry there are lots of opportunities like that available that televerde is sharing with the conscious capitalism network now is this part of the private prison business model I mean are they also involved in no this is something entirely different they're not running prisons at all they're working with inmates in prisons to provide them with employment there and prepare them for employment afterwards so then this is so cool that you can do something like where normally you would get people that leave the prison system and have such a high chance of recidivism and you can help be that that pillar that is so needed in people's lives of you walking out of the prison you have a work opportunity that that pays well gives you some meaning that starts you on a path that's away from going right back to prison falling into the same traps I love that that's a really powerful best practice that's absolutely right yes stuff like that so cool give us another highlight from the from the conference that was that just happened so this was actually a theme we also had Johnny Scholl the CEO of the Society for Human Resource Management talking about the need for us to provide more opportunities for inmates to enter the workforce again in an important way but we also actually had it's we had other speakers that were highlighting things like the need for more conscious capitalism in the world of finance which is something that hasn't been addressed nearly enough Ron Shake one of our new board members is the former CEO and founder of Panera Bread incredibly successful company he won at the game of public of public corporations Panera was a public company for a long time before he actually decided to take it private again just before he stepped down as CEO because he started to see the challenges that the company was going to face in the long term in the public markets short-termism activists investors the and the and the threat to their core values as time went on rather than as compared to if they were privately held where they were able to think more long-term they're able to take care of all of their stakeholders in a way that's aligned with their core values and so fulfill their higher purpose and there's a real challenge right now for public businesses in particular but really any business in thinking through how it raises capital to make sure that its incentive structure is aligned with its higher purpose and what it's trying to fulfill because if unconscious capitalism meets or if conscious capital meets unconscious finance it's a real challenge for conscious capitalism to win to be perfectly honest so we need conscious finance with conscious capitalism so we absolutely do so what would it look like like what does the conscious financed company look like it can come in a number of different ways it could be that it's an evergreen and outside investor where they plan to never sell their investment and so the company knows they're able to look long term could be family-owned so that you know that you've got people who are committed to its values could still be entirely owned by the founders or a small group of investors that makes total sense the co-op model is very co-op model is a possibility you could even have a public company that's established as a B Corp to provide a greater protection for the business's higher purpose there are different models being developed right now for this the one thing that we know is what unconscious finance looks like which is just pump and dump strategies for recent for funding for companies especially with short-term traders that are looking to just get as much money off of the stock and extract value instead of finding ways to create value with the company yeah and then you mentioned B Corp thoughts on B Corp's good stuff great organization and movement that's very aligned with conscious capitalism we've we are very good friends with one another's organizations a lot of businesses are overlapping between both there it's another layer of protection if you go through the legal process with B Corp to take the higher purpose of a business and write it into the bylaws and provide protection in case you do face activist investors short-term thinkers people that don't want to maintain those principles as a business grows and evolves as it's necessarily going to yeah I think this might be one of the first times when I'm actually more consciously realizing that investing in finance into businesses is like really opening up a very sacred door you have to be very careful with where the money comes from that gets finance in the business who and their ethics that are how aligned are they with your ethics of the business all this is a very sacred relationship it's a marriage really because you are intertwined with them for the rest of your life if you do for better or for worse through sickness and health for richer or for poorer that's what you're committing to when you take on outside capital and you can find the perfect match that you're going to be happy with the rest of your life or you can find a miserable relationship that you're going to regret suboptimal stuff and then this is also very true for the employees of the companies as well that it's so important to treat them with a most optimal dignity the greatest amount of value for them to feel like they actually have a meaning and a say in the direction of how things are operating from highest efficiency because we actually when we talked to worry brothman his idea of inclusion in the workplaces like do you want to know what's happening at the edges of the company because usually what's happening is someone that's like maybe a custodian at like a Panera bread could maybe tell you about make give you some unique piece of advice about what they're finding in the garbage that can then spark you to realize oh we need a different maybe biodegradable or why are we throwing away such an excess amount of an individual item in the store these types of things so you the custodian in this case would need a very direct way to talk to the management team in order for the information actually be communicated so these are the interesting things that can happen when we have an inclusive workplace we have an inclusive stakeholder system when we're providing more value than we're extracting all these types of things so how do we what what do we do with like all these things kind of seem like they're pointing us in the direction of of like getting further away from self-dealing and more towards that inclusive stakeholder the inclusive fitness era conscious evolution towards what capitalism maybe like a conscious capitalism the next generation is like a 2.0 around the world could look like what are some of the yeah go where no one has gone before exactly that's exactly what we're doing yes yes and now where does something like we're just something like a a decentralization the protocols of decentralization where do they fit into the conscious capitalism movement so in within a business that's where you start to think about your culture and how you make sure that people are empowered within it and decentralizing decision-making to such a level where they are able to have a voice they're able to contribute in a meaningful way such that you are allowing them to really be human in their work rather than automatons as well as more effectively and efficiently contribute to the organization's activity if you're outside of that then it is asking ourselves how do we share these best practices how do businesses connect with people in a more decentralized manner and the opportunities are tremendous right now this is one of the reasons why businesses need a higher purpose and need to be more authentic in what they do think less about marketing campaigns that are removed from what they typically do and better represent who they are fundamentally to their customers because information is decentralized nowadays the businesses aren't in control of the narrative in the way that they used to be 50 60 years ago they need they need to put out there what they're doing so that consumers know that they're being honest they're authentic with this point otherwise consumers future employees future investors are going to be able to call them out on it right away this is happening already in a relationship of of an inclusive stakeholder with the technology like potentially like a like a decentralized ledger of what the company of the relationship between the like give it an example like a physician and a patient where you only see them for 20 minutes they're out the door you give them whatever they need out the door versus actually being able to slow down connect with them and on a deeper emotional level but also say that you know you're not just giving them whatever and get them out the door but it's more about hey I'm gonna tie my stake as a physician into your stake as a patient together and I'm gonna give you an outcome here that's going to propagate for the next one year three years five years in your so my my rewards are tied to your health being most optimal things like that or a teacher and a student is another good example of that these types of things how can we get more creative in the ways that we support one another that's what this is really calling for it's moving past old models that are very transactional one off relationships between individuals to recognizing our interdependence and how when you benefit I benefit in making that even clearer developing the incentive structures for it and being very explicit with that the opportunity with the ledger is that we're able to keep track of that more easily than ever before and facilitate relationships that didn't happen before yeah it's fascinating what opportunities are available to businesses nowadays yes yes and now let's let's let's explain this point because geopolitically there's there's like different experiments that are happening with with what is an optimal way for businesses to engage with the government infrastructures and engage with the people of the so there's this kind of like how do these three things play out so one of them is kind of like the strategy of capitalism in the United States with the democracy or the representative democracy another one is kind of like a style of governance like in China where it's a little bit more of like an authoritarian style of governance and another example is where we see like pushback in many ways of like when capitalism kind of over reaches too far the self-dealing over reaches too far there's like an upheaval of socialism or communism but that actually isn't as optimal as would be if conscious capitalism came in to fix the situation so tell us about what your thoughts are like geopolitically around the world with these different experiments that are happening and is conscious capitalism would you say the most optimal or are there good things from other places to take in as well what do you think so there are challenges in the United States right now there's no question about that but especially when you compare the American system and approach to evolving the relationship between business and government it's far it's it surpasses and is in moving in the right direction in a way that is in stark contrast to say systems like in China or Venezuela where you have more socialist or communist systems and you see the backlash against those systems coming from the people themselves who see the negative impacts of it on their daily lives whether it's the turmoil in Venezuela that's been going on for the last several months and really the last several years or decades under 21st century socialism there that's coming to a head or the protests in Hong Kong right now where the people want to retain a level of independence and separation in order to retain their liberties both civil and economic and the challenge going forward is is finding the right relationship there in such a way that people understand how business is able to better their lives and is not self-dealing it's not a way to advance the interests of a small group at the expense of others especially utilizing the government's as a means to do so that is one of the reasons that Venezuela has been going through so much turmoil in particular it did not have a conscious capitalism beforehand which created the backlash and the desire to experiment with 21st century socialism and we actually have entrepreneurs from Venezuela who have fled the country who are speaking at conscious capitalism conferences about their experiences and what they're seeing and are trying to introduce a conscious capitalist approach to the future of Venezuela as the solution to their problems and in fact are even saying that if we don't get widespread conscious capitalism as the next evolution of the economic structure in Venezuela it will any alternative to the socialism that they've experienced for the last several decades is going to be short-lived there's going to be a backlash against that afterwards there's and there's not only a need for conscious capitalism but honest but it's also an opportunity for us as well though to create an even better future because it's not stagnant it's not static it's something that we keep replenishing re-envisioning and evolving going forward to find a better way for us to lead and work with one another to elevate humanity through business and let's do the environment as well because this is a massive part of we come from the same thing we come from nature from source from spirit we it nourishes us every moment of every day with air with food with water with all these basic needs that we get to live with live from and through with but at the same time there's it's evident that we are in many ways destroying the ecosystems there's not a stake that the eco that the organizations have and the countries have with the environment where we can't destroy it along the way of maximizing yeah well the environment is a stakeholder too yeah how do you get conscious capitalism a strong foothold in places like Venezuela when the level of capitalism that's trying to get a foothold in Venezuela has all the guns I I think that's something that we're going to have to wait and see with unfortunately now there are actually some businesses that are already practicing conscious capitalism in Venezuela there are examples to point to they're just not widespread right now and we need to be supportive of those businesses and examples so that there is an opportunity for them to spread going forward that and you you find examples of conscious capitalists everywhere in the world in any kind of society we need to tell their stories and we need more people to know that they exist and there is this opportunity for their society going forward maybe that that's actually the answer I want to give to your question identify the conscious capitalists yeah who are they and yeah and uplift them at greater extents let's hit on environment so how do we get the environment as it is an inclusive stakeholder in the process the environment has to be a stakeholder for companies that are taking the stakeholder orientation that that is what that we are a part of the environment as you said we come from it is the source of everything that we do and we need to make sure that as businesses we're taking care of that in the same way that we're taking care of other stakeholders and that's going to be different for different businesses but but should be one of the challenges that a business takes on for itself is there any good code that we can take from a because it seems like as we become more aware as a species of the Anthropocene of how we're affecting our our environment and how we can increase our awareness of how to have inclusive stakeholder with each other and how to maximize each other's well-being that as that gets lifted up as like let's say conscious capitalism at the same time there seems to be some practices that are also really optimal for getting things done in fast bits of time in places that have maybe like a more authoritarian style of moving so like we want to do something we know we want to get it done we're going to dedicate a lot of our best resources to it and it gets done instead of has all like the crony corruption that that can occur that hinders the process so do you think there's good codes from maybe like the Nordics or from China or from other places in the world some philosophies maybe from Africa or from Southeast Asia that that could be implemented into the conscious capitalism ethos so the conscious capitalism ethos is not an American ethos I want to be very clear about that totally this is a universal philosophy that has its origins from spread out around the globe that's actually to my point that there are conscious capitalists everywhere in every society and this philosophy has been developed in its own way by leaders across the world it's important for us to draw from the very best of conscious capitalists everywhere not just in the United States and that's even one of our emphases is to make sure we're sharing the best practices between them in their what they're doing how they think about this and utilize that as effectively as possible yes do that in such a way that we're not just saying we're going to tackle a single problem to the exclusion of others we this is such a complex world nowadays we need multiple strategies and solutions to problems we need multiple perspectives taken into account to ensure we're not ignoring other stakeholders and by and so by trying to solve one problem creating a dozen others at the same time that's really that's so important with this and why taking a stakeholder orientation where you include the environment as a stakeholder and find a win for that while you're finding wins for your employees your customers your suppliers your investors and that everyone else that you impact is so critical yeah yeah and I see you know around the world that conscious capitalism bringing itself up there's like examples of maybe things like the future of sustainable cities in places like Sweden that could maybe be kind of like helped be brought into like other conscious capitalists around the world so it's kind of like that is what I meant like kind of like the transfer learning from certain places into the yeah absolutely okay okay stuff like that okay because it's it does at the end seem like moving into the exponential technology age with all of the the pressing issues that are around synthetic biology or neuro tech or super intelligence that this the race to be the winners in these fields is so financially lucrative that people will be willing to take whatever means they need to get to the end that is what conscious capitalism is responding to we can't we it's not sustainable for us to live in a world where that is the priority and it doesn't elevate our existence to do so we should have businesses that seek to thrive and individuals who want to create incredibly successful businesses but do so for a higher purpose and with stakeholder orientation conscious leadership and conscious culture and then what another example of the conscious culture from the organizations that are currently at play around the world within this cat conscious capitalism ethos what are they doing with the employees that they that they have in their companies what is like one of the main paradigms that they follow with their employees one of the most important things is to create an environment where the employees feel that they are trusted and supported in such a way that they can bring their full selves and meaningfully contribute to their work and that's accomplished in different ways for different companies a used car dealership based out of Texas even as adopted that as its purpose creating a culture of love and care for all their employees for others it's about so in facilitating transparency so people know what's going on for others it's about creating opportunities for them actually hiring anyone who is on a list to give them a chance at life and to give them a chance to support their families so it's expressed in different ways and it's exciting to see all the different cultures out there what's most important for companies as they build this out and what what role does United Nations or like or like the use of psychedelics play into inspiring more conscious capitalist how many people have said what's the role of United Nations or psychedelics in this one solution I don't I don't know how many times that has been the combination these are different but these are different approaches to it some people are incredibly inspired by the sustainable development goals that the UN has laid out and they're building businesses around that some people have used psychedelics and it's opened their mind to a new state of consciousness and they're beginning businesses that way or people are changing because of it these are different motivations and opportunities for people to think outside of the box and decide what their life purpose is about and create businesses built around that and that I think is really exciting because you don't know where someone's inspiration is going to come from and we should embrace and lean into whatever that source is for people and they should lean into it themselves they should explore the different possibilities to inspire them to give them their life purpose so that they're able to build businesses on purpose as well what do you think happens when so many more children are born into the world of a of a more conscious capitalist world where there's more degrees of freedom where there's more creativity being unleashed more purpose being fulfilled what do you think happens in the next couple of decades at that I think children are gonna be a lot happier with their parents who are more fulfilled from their work and are better parents and family members as a result of it think they're also going to grow up more excited about going into business and then actually become happy productive business people themselves as a result because they see it as an expression of who they are where we move away from the nine to five drudgery thank God it's Friday and no longer have to work anymore to an integration of their lives both as children and adults where they're happy for work because they see it as an expression of their purpose and just what they want to do with their lives yeah okay I feel pretty good on what we talked about yeah I feel pretty good what do you think how are you feeling about the direction of the world after this I'm feeling good I am feeling good feeling very realistic there's lots of things to yeah to do in order to get to the world that we want to yeah that's absolutely right none of this is the short change the challenges before us or the work that we're gonna have to do for it but the opportunity is there for us and we've got so many people who are committed to making that happen actually we were talking before about this great sign yeah dreams don't work unless you do and there are dreams out there and there are a lot of people willing to work for it now and we can unleash that potential yeah yeah and that creative potential is going to end up pushing a lot of the suffering out of the world is gonna end up increasing the amount of degrees of freedom that people have it's going to make our planet more sustainable for generations to come so to unleash the creativity is to solve the problems in many ways that's exactly right okay and let's let's wrap on a couple thoughts um did we do you think that we did a decent job on the update where there are things that you wanted to hit on that that we missed on the update I think that's pretty good actually okay I could go through numbers and stuff but that's boring for people so which number specifically yeah just just the our organizational growth but that's not the interesting part it's the movement is the examples I think I think we covered a good was just the first conference yearly no no no you done a couple years it's tough to say actually because they've redefined it this was maybe our ninth annual conference wow yeah but you came on in 2014 2016 2016 okay okay damn nine wow and the organization is now what a couple hundred the businesses a couple hundred people people a couple dozens people we're 13 full-time staff but we've got about 3,000 volunteer leaders around the globe and we've got a couple we've got about a hundred businesses that are the most intimately involved as our partners and many more that are growing right now excellent excellent excellent and the model is usually they also help contribute to your growth as like a nonprofit is that what it normally is we're interdependent absolutely these are partners with us so that we support their activities to implement conscious capitalism and they support the growth of the conscious capitalism movement yeah yeah okay okay cool um so 3,000 now volunteers that are working actually don't hold me to that I'm gonna have to look at those numbers but uh we've got several thousand very actively involved members of the community and off the check on on the numbers for volunteers cool and who are some of the companies that have signed on the last year that you're most proud of so a lot of them are mid-market businesses and I'm really excited to have companies like last parking involved now they're one of the largest parking companies in the United States but they're just built on a concept of love and their CEO's personal story and why he went into business is just so inspiring it's really cool and we actually just got Mars signed on as a partner in the last couple of weeks the candy the candy company they're a large conglomerates are working different areas but they just have an incredible joy they're delicious and they've been run on core principles since their founding that you know long time ago and work with their employees their stakeholders their suppliers in important ways and yeah exciting to see them get on board more ethical ways yeah because the way that we source chocolate from around the world needs to be ethically yeah that's absolutely right stuff like that yeah so getting them on to the yeah conscious capitalism boat is awesome okay let's see if you've updated any of your answers since the last time I think we've had some new questions too all right let's do it what's your most controversial belief nowadays I wouldn't say it's a firm belief but that activist investors are doing more harm than good unpack a bit for us activist investors more often than not are seeking short-term rewards they're not contributing to value creation for the company they're extracting value from it okay I used to believe that activists investors were good we're good played an important role in the market process to check management and to ensure that a company was being run the way that it should I'm now much more skeptical of that and then what do you think happens pre-birth and post-death I think we have energy and matter constructed differently that's all do you think we come from anywhere beyond the 3d reality into these earth suits I don't know I don't even by the 3d reality that we have lots of things that exist that we that we know exist in the world that are not part of 3d reality like numbers and concepts and the interplay between those things and 3d reality is ever present so where what we are in the concept of the self that I think is a bigger challenge that I don't have an answer for but I I think that I think there's so much opportunity for us to really think through what it means for matter and energy to exist before to exist when we're alive and to still exist even after we die as we maintain at thanks to the constant the law of constant matter and energy and then what do you think we're in a simulation I don't think it really matters we might be but doesn't really change what we're going to do for the most part even if we are and what do you think is the most beautiful thing in the world I remember that question from before I'm pretty sure I said the same thing I'm gonna say again it's love love is by far the most beautiful thing in the world wherever you see it you smile and having love is the greatest thing that one can have beautifully said Alexander thank you thank you so glad to be here God this is really nice it's good to hear the update from you thank you keep up this great work you too this is a lot of fun we're all we're all really proud of what you guys are doing with the conscious capitalism congrats and the way you're inspiring other people around the world to care about it and you're getting these ideas out there this is just such a great project thank you thank you we're very grateful to hear that thank you thank you and thank you to those that watch we greatly appreciate it we'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below on the episode also go and check out conscious capitalism.org check out the Twitter page go and share this more talk more with your friends families co-workers people online on social media about elevating humanity by improving the practice and perception of business around the world conscious capitalism remember that spread it share it let's do it everyone and also shout out to Ron Vagus for producing and directing thank you very much Ron and also check out the links in the bio dissimulation support the artists entrepreneurs the organizations around the world that you believe in support us our links below to our patreon our PayPal as well as to our cryptocurrency links are below and also if you want to design cool merch like this what's the most beautiful thing in the world to get paid for the designs and spread thought provoking questions that links below to our UB store and go and build the future everyone manifests your dreams into the world thank you so much for tuning in we will see you soon peace