This new operating system for business is in far greater harmony with the ethos of our times and the essence of our evolving beings,” To put it more simply, conscious capitalism promotes the idea that businesses can serve the interests of all major stakeholders—customers, employees, investors, communities, suppliers, and the environment and, as Mackey notes, be“grounded in a higher sense of purpose to enhance its positive impact on the world.” I identified with this book since I had used a similar ideology since 2007 in my last company, PHACTS.  My company was in the healthcare IT sector.  Our competition included some of the largest companies on the Fortune list.  It occurred to me that our company could partner with our stakeholders, namely our employees, customers, suppliers and our world, while exceeding our goals to become a profitable company.  How did we get our stakeholders to buy in to this concept? First, my business partner and I became the investors.  We self-funded our venture and committed to demonstrate what others might call “customer service DNA”, or a desire to serve all of our stakeholders. We added employees and gave them all the same job with different skill sets.  Namely, each employee was to “work towards the success of their co-workers, customers, suppliers, vendors and our world.” I printed this job description on cards for each of them to keep in their wallets.  I assured each employee that if they did their jobs, they would be assured success in return. Each quarter I gave them a book, like Karmic Management by Michael Roach or Good to Great by Jim Collins, along with a bonus check based on profitability to reinforce this idea. For our customers, we explained that our desire as their vendor was to be their partner.  We wanted to help them accomplish their mission of reducing costs, improving patient safety, and increasing productivity and accuracy within their health systems.  In return, we needed their support financially to remain viable and healthy so that we could accomplish the collective goal with technologically advanced systems and the highest levels of customer service.  Accordingly, our customers committed to paying us 50% of the purchase price for the capital equipment and software in advance and became much more involved in the process of planning and implementation so that everyone experienced a good installation and use of the products. For our suppliers, we committed to using part of the prepayment from customer partners to ensure that our suppliers were healthy financially and could take greater care in the design of the equipment to favorably enhance the use by our customers.  Serving our world meant that we all maintained a conscious awareness of how to help each of the stakeholders customers, communities that they served, and the world in which they lived.  We financially supported charities that they regarded; we created and implemented new technologies to further enhance the operation of the products while reducing energy, noise, and space costs; we recycled all materials discarded during implementation; and we planned for additional time on site for training and implementation so that we wouldn’t have to return to the sites unexpectedly and incur additional costs and energy consumption and emissions for flight and car travel. We get to have free will and choice about how we relate to everyone in our business world.  When we recognize that in helping other partner-stakeholders with their mission, we are going to be helped in return and we can become more creative, satisfied, fulfilled, and prospered while achieving our goals. Who could you begin helping today? To learn more, sign up for our monthly newsletter.