Beyond Profit

How do you measure business success beyond profit? How does it connect to your deeper purpose in life? Your why? Discover one entrepreneur’s amazing journey and how you can connect your business beyond profit too.

What You’ll Discover About Creating Goals Beyond Profit:

* The personal awakening that led Steve Farrell to create a goal beyond profit * How to find our own goals beyond profit * How to achieve a goal beyond profit and still keep your business afloat * Why going beyond profit creates positive energy and improve relationships * And much more

Guest: Steve Farrell 

Steve Farrell attained the pinnacle of success as a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, founding two high-tech firms. Then he pivoted to lead Humanity’s Team, a global nonprofit helping people everywhere awaken to our interconnectedness through platforms such as their new Humanity Stream+ streaming service. After contributing to the Gold Nautilus Award-winning book “Our Moment of Choice — Evolutionary Visions and Hope for the Future,” Steve’s new book, “A New Universal Dream,” details his journey from a young entrepreneur to a life in service to humanity.

Related Resources:

If you liked this interview, you might also enjoy our other Entrepreneurship episodes. Contact Steve and connect with him through his website. And check out his book A New Universal Dream.

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How Your Business Can Make a Difference Beyond Profit

How do you measure business success beyond profit? How does it connect to your deeper purpose in life? Your why? We’re going to explore that and more when we come back, so stay tuned. This is Business Confidential Now with Hanna Hasl-Kelchner helping you see business issues hiding in plain view that matter to your bottom line. Welcome to Business Confidential Now, the podcast for smart executives, managers and entrepreneurs looking to improve business performance and their bottom line.   I’m your host, Hanna Hasl-Kelchner, and I’ve got an amazing guest for you today. He’s Steve Farrell. Steve achieved what most would consider the pinnacle of success as a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, founding two high tech firms. But when he discovered that the American dream of bigger and better fails people, he pivoted to lead Humanities Team, a global nonprofit helping people everywhere awaken to our interconnectedness.   Steve’s new book, A New Universal Dream, details his journey from a young entrepreneur to a life in service to humanity, and shares how he found his why. So let’s find out more about how we can strengthen our own why and find success beyond profit.   Welcome to Business Confidential Now Steve. Hanna, thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here. I’m excited to speak with you here because you’ve had an amazing journey in business, founding two high tech firms in Silicon Valley that many people listening might say are a huge sign of success. But somehow you felt something was missing in pursuing the American dream and it inspired you to go beyond profit. Would you please tell us what happened to cause that shift? Yeah, let’s jump right into that story. So as you mentioned there in the 1990s, I was in the right place at the right time because there was two young guys there. I was thirty-two at the time when I walked out from IBM and with used furniture in a very small executive suite. We started a little company that grew into INS, the first company that was successful. Then there was a second company that came right behind it. This first one we took to $75,000,000 in 10 years. And then the second one, it took us two years to take it to seventy-five million. And this was not how I grew up. I grew up with a single divorced mom and six sibling in a about a 1300 square foot house with a dog. So this was really pretty spectacular for me, being there in this kind of elite of Silicon Valley, because that what those business successes walked me into was the Young Entrepreneurs Organization, where I became president of that organization, and then into the Young Presidents Organization, where I became an officer of that organization. And people like the governor of California, the guy that runs the largest real estate equity investment trust in the world, or called REIT Prologis, was in my chapter and other equally amazing women and men. But during this time, as you mentioned, I went through my own, I’ll call it personal awakening experience or the other way we could refer to it as is. I answered the call. So what was this awakening? And what was the call? I know we’ll get to that, but those were the things that steered me away from that success that I was experiencing at that time. Well, let’s talk about that awakening and the call. What happened? I mean, we might have had something like that happen to us and not even realize it because we’re not listening. So what was it? What’s the it. For Me, my co-founder of this organization I’m with now, been with it for 21 years. It’s a nonprofit called Humanity’s Team, and my co-founder is Neale Donald Walsch, who wrote the conversations with God series. So. And that’s a spiritual book series. Maybe a lot of people are familiar with it. It came out in 1995 through 2017, those nineteen books. So for me, it was a spiritual thing, which today is really more based in science. Now quantum physics is saying where I say, oh, everything is deeply connected. You know, there’s a universal consciousness animating all of life. There’s entanglement, these kinds of terms. Most people are familiar with these terms, this science, this research and say, yeah, yeah, I hear that. They’re not necessarily clear on the implications of that, but the notions of a deeply connected world is understood by most people. So that’s really what this spiritual material was about, that I was reading back in the 90’s that now is being affirmed by science. You know, basically, Hanna, what happened to me is, as I was reading about this deeply connected world, and I was as I was looking out my window at the world around me, it wasn’t too terribly different from today. You know, where we have extreme weather, which certainly has gotten worse. And all of these other challenges, people feeling alone, you know, sort of feeling more isolated and things kind of this illusion of separation is what Einstein called it. So I was looking at the deeply connected world. I was looking at the challenges here for people in the world around me. And this was the call, you know, it was kind of like a tap on the shoulder of Steve, you know, was the tap on the shoulder. Do you see these things? Do you want to live into these things? You know, there’s perhaps a truth here that you didn’t grow up with, you know, in this whole Newtonian, Darwinian sort of survival of the fittest type science that most of us grew up with going through school and up through college. I really paid a lot of attention to this research and I concluded that it’s true. You know, we actually are part of a deeply connected universe and that the world around us needs some help. This became my why you in your introduction. You know, you brought in this why thing. This why thing is hugely important. Most people have seen the YouTube you know, with Simon Sinek right. That talks about Apple and the Wright brothers. Most people are familiar with that Ted talk that he gave. He said most people in business just don’t get it. They’re out saying, oh, we’re a manufacturer of these kinds of machines. We make them in blue, green and yellow. They cost this much. Would you like to buy one? Right? Or you could take the approach Apple takes where their why is right in the middle. You know, we think that a small group of people can change the world. We’re the crazies. You know, we think that computers are more than they’re empowerment vehicles. They’re more than just computers. And we make them in blue, green and yellow. At this price point, would you like to buy one? This is sinus pitch, right. And that you can see on YouTube. And of course the one that we’re drawn to is the one with the why. Right. And the why is just where we bring in what is deeply important to us, what is meaningful, what’s purposeful. So in my so-called awakening experience, or answering the call, this was the first thing I did, is I just looked at how we could make our businesses more meaningful and purposeful. There were a whole bunch of actions I took. I threw away my day planner because I was too transactional. I decided I’m not telling other people to do that. I just needed to do that myself. And I created without using the term conscious business. I created a conscious business and we grew to $75 million in ten years. And then the second business to $75 million in 2 years. There’s a magic in this why or conscious business. But I was intrigued, not just with the magic of creating a lot of money. I was more intrigued with the magic of I wonder if I really applied myself and went in this whole, you know, conscious living or conscious business direction if I couldn’t maybe have some impact, you know, and help other leaders too. I sold everything and I moved my family from Silicon Valley to Boulder, Colorado, where we are now. I launched this nonprofit, 501c(3). It’s all about conscious business and conscious living. We’re now the largest global streaming platform for that’s what I call consciousness raising master classes and transformational education in the whole world right now. Well, I can see you continuing to achieve. And you’re an overachiever, which is why I’m glad to have you on the program, because I think it can provide a tremendous example.   But I’m also thinking there may be some people listening right now who say, well, gee, that’s nice, Steve, you’re a successful entrepreneur. You built two businesses, each to $75 million. You can indulge in the luxury of these thoughts and pursuits and live beyond profit. But what does that have to do with me?   You know, it could be someone living paycheck to paycheck. It’s in more of a small startup mode. Maybe they don’t have quite the vision that you do. They’re more of a business lifestyle type thing as opposed to I’m going to try and get it far and wide. They want to keep their business afloat. So what does this have to do with them? Everything. Everything. See, here’s the thing. Because I know this. Because I lived it. This is really my story too, is when we’re in that paycheck to paycheck transactional thing, and I was massively in it. That’s why I just threw away my day planner. Life is stale. It’s I’ll do this for you if you do this for me. That’s what transactional means. Also, we’re not very successful in that model. This is why I brought in the Simon Sinek Ted talk is everybody’s out doing that. You know. Yeah we sell this and it’s in these colors and these prices and you don’t find success in it. You just really won’t grow that way. Whereas if you study the science, it says everything is deeply connected and you really understand it, and then you start living into it and you start embodying that deep connection and embodying it moves us away from transactional. It actually even moves us beyond relational. And relational is where we’re listening to each other, but we move over into this more conscious way of living where it’s more than just living relationally. You’re actually listening with some heart. You’re listening with some connection. You’re becoming more open hearted. You’re becoming more in service as we move in that direction. I mean, just imagine where vendors, customers, and employees that you’re interviewing feel that new energy. You know, that’s authentic. That’s real, where it’s really open hearted. I was scared to death when I threw away my day planner. I mean, I thought I might be throwing away this career that I built. And just the opposite thing happened Hanna. I was growing substantially before I went through this process. And then I hit my hyperbolic curve once I began this process I’m describing. And of course, you can see why. Because again, as a customer, as a vendor, as an employer who wouldn’t want to work with an organization where you’re truly open hearted and listening beyond the transactional? So what I’m talking about will help you move the dial in the direction of something that feels just a whole lot better. It’s actually transformational. That’s why they call it transformational education. And your business is more successful and everything actually works better. So I would urge, you know, there’s no socioeconomic class where this doesn’t apply, where you just kind of sit in the transactional stale doesn’t work very well model in my opinion. Well, you’re living it. And so I was wondering if you could share some examples of how you’ve moved beyond profit. You know, you’ve given us the, the foundation of why it makes sense and that it’s supported by science and it’s partly spiritual. So all of that meshes together. And it certainly makes sense that you want to go from, you know, beyond something that is transactional.   But could you give us an example of maybe a small step that someone might consider helping move them in that direction? There are many. Let me go ahead and just get to three here to get started. So one is this whole launch. Or if you already have a business as I did, I wasn’t launching, I was more transforming. So launch or transform a business, which means go into a higher purpose. Like what is the higher purpose that is going to better serve the community and customers and people, you know, figure out what that is. So in our case, it was just let’s build a really beautiful, powerful business that really is serving our community. That’s not just focusing on revenue growth and profit growth, but that’s focusing on creating a, you know, a better community. We weren’t so much interested in creating a better world at that time. So we adopted a local high school. South San Francisco High School didn’t have resources. All of the best teachers were being skimmed off to other areas in Silicon Valley. We came in and we just started helping them for free, and we didn’t need any publicity or anything. There were a whole bunch of other things we did. We started something called Open Book Management, where we trained people how to read financial statements because most people don’t take business classes or accounting in college. So we trained them, you know, how do you read an income statement. How do you read a balance sheet? And then we started going through all of our financials with everybody every month. And then we created a bonus that we were all riding on together and other kinds of things like that. So these were some of the directions that we went in that were higher purpose, which made people feel more involved in the business, more involved in the community, more involved with kids in the community that were underserved. So identify a higher purpose that your business can serve – one or two. Start recruiting to this profile of this higher purpose, not just understanding it. This is where we got in trouble and stumbled is when we first did this and recruiting, we were just paying attention to who understood higher purpose and that sort of logic center of bind dot call it. But the people in many cases these people weren’t living it, and when they weren’t living it, then you got in trouble because they still had sharp elbows. They might understand it, but they weren’t really devoted to it. It wasn’t their lifestyle. This is important. So recruit people that not only understand this conscious business thing, but that are living it, and they tend to listen better. They tend to be more in service. They tend to be more inclined to want to work for a business that has a higher purpose. These are some of the things you’ll notice in the as you’re recruiting. These people really recruit. Well, okay, that’s two three create a culture now where all of this conscious practice stuff is going on okay. So that means that we see there’s a deep connection with each other. I’ll use some terms that maybe aren’t normal business terms, like we see them in this deeper, deeply connected world, that people are an aspect of us, that we’re an aspect of them. Quantum physics is saying this is true, actually. Some people may even want to go study. There’s a whole explosion of articles out right now. Even in the last few months, Popular Mechanics, and other mainstream magazines where it’s saying we’re even conscious at a cellular level, you know, and that we’re conscious across the universe, conscious across the planet. All of this, people really understand and get in touch with that science and then start living into it. Well, if it’s this is ultimate reality then I need to live into it. Let me actually just go a little deeper on this point. So back in the early 1600s, okay, there was this guy Galileo. Most people have heard of Galileo. So he was an astronomer, physicist, scientist and very esteemed in his day, lived in Italy. So the telescope had been invented. So he made himself a telescope, started looking up into the night sky. And at this time, in the early 1600s, people probably have heard this story. The belief and cannon, which is a religious term, which means that it’s really important, was that the Earth was the center of the universe, right? Everybody believed the Earth was the center of the universe. Well, Galileo said, hey, you know this isn’t true. The Earth is actually not the center of the universe. It’s in a solar system that isn’t at the center of the universe at all. Right? That doesn’t sound like such a big deal or so dangerous, but it was very dangerous at the time. And the guy was put under house arrest, and he was almost killed because of his science. So one man, in a sense, carried the burden for all of us by revealing what ultimate reality was that we weren’t living into at the time. Okay, now likewise today, you could call it a Galileo moment because, again, quantum physics, Einstein, and actually even Plato and Hippocrates and 450 BCE, 2500 years ago, and many other scientists. Boehme, Schrodinger. I won’t name a bunch of names because I’m not sure they’re going to mean anything to people, but if you do a little research, you’ll see this notion of deeply connected world is actually true. And the Einstein quote that the greatest illusion in the world is, he said, the illusion of separation. So if we do a little homework and really understand this deeply connected world thing, it becomes important. And we say, well, maybe it is the Galileo moment. Maybe the ultimate reality is other than what the science that taught me, you know, coming through school. Because if we really if our beliefs start shifting in that direction and we start living in that direction, it’s transformational. I tell people, as I look out on the world through my two eyes, I experience a whole different world today than in the early 90’s, before I went through my own process. Now, once you go through this process, you see this deeply connected world and you start living into it. You can not only live into it yourself, but as a leader. We’re talking to leaders here now. In conscious business, you can create a culture, okay? A business culture where you’re listening well, where you could even use the term sacred, where you’re seeing yourself as an aspect of them and they as an aspect of you, which means you deeply affect them, they deeply affect you. You start creating cultures where you’re listening better, you’re respecting better. You’re inviting people to contribute more. You’re more grateful for those contributions. So all of these kinds of things happen in a conscious culture. These are some of the things that happen that also drive unbelievable business success. Because again, imagine employees, they love these things. They feel like they’re being listened to. They can see your gratefulness more, right? People start contributing at a much higher level where these things are going on. So building a conscious culture is a third thing I’ll bring in. I can kind of stop there, but these are three tools that will help really set your business on fire. And moreover, you’re just going to feel like you move from that transactional to relational to something even better than that, your life becomes amazing. Very good. Well, you know what you said before about the interconnectedness and employees feeling listened to, it’s so interesting because it really ties in with the whole concept of employee engagement.   And even if people aren’t making that conscious effort the way you’re describing it, we are interconnected, whether they realize it or not, mostly in a negative way, because employees do sense when they’re not being treated fairly, and it affects their performance, and it does impact how the business ultimately performs, how they deal with their customers, how they deal with their job function.   So being able to bring positive energy to the situation, to the relationship, can certainly be a tremendous boost to the culture and just the overall business and what people are trying to contribute to society with their goods and services. I do have one other question for you, Steve. What do you think the most important thing is that you want listeners to know about being able to make a difference beyond profit? The most important thing that I would want them to know is that the science is true. And you even have physicists like Nassim Haramein who are saying, if you understand the science, that part of what makes it transformational is, you know, you were inseparable from the universe. That’s what a deeply connected universe means. They’ll also uses other terms. It says you’re sovereign to the universe. So usually we hear sovereign and country, right? He’s saying, no, you’re sovereign to the universe. You’re inseparable from the universe. So he says, then he turns it around and says, the universe can’t be without you. Okay, now we’re getting into empowerment. It’s like, whoa, he said. So the posture that you walk around in the sense of self-identity, the sense of self, the bigger self that starts emerging, the sense of importance where the universe can’t be without you. Right? It is transformational. I know you can hear that in my voice, and it’s what I want for every person listening. So, you know, in today’s age where there’s this sense of overwhelm and exhaustion and fatigue, weary grief, you know? Right. Like you keep going on anxiety, sometimes. Depression. This stuff is an elixir. It creates a whole new life. But by simply living into the science that’s here now. So that’s what I would want. Even ahead of business success for everybody that’s listening is to really understand this, live into it, and walk around with that kind of posture, that kind of self-identification, that kind of empowerment that we all deserve. Very good. Well, Steve, thank you so very much. It really has been an enlightening conversation, and I appreciate your time and insights about the value and importance of being able to make a difference beyond profit, and finding out more about our why and how we can contribute in a more meaningful way, not just the transactional, as you said and described very well. It was what we’re so used to.   If you’re listening and you’d like to know more about Steve Farrell, his book A New Universal Dream and his work with humanity’s team, that information, as well as a transcript of this interview, can be found in the show notes at BusinessConfidentialRadio.com.   Thank you so much for listening. Please be sure to tell your friends about the show and this episode and Steve’s teaching and leave a positive review. We’ll be back next week with another information packed episode on Business Confidential Now.   So until then, have a great day and an even better, more deeply connected tomorrow. Thank you.  

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