Ep. 165 — Alexander McCobin & Dan Golden: Profit Is the Means, Not the End

5 min read

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Episode Summary

You built the company. You care about your people, your customers, your community. Then someone shows up with a bag of money, and you have to decide whether the person on the other side of the table sees any of that the way you do. That’s the conversation I wanted to have with Alexander McCobin, CEO of Conscious Capitalism, and my friend Dan Golden, founder of BFO. Most owners I talk to have been running on these principles for years without knowing there was a name for it. They take care of their employees. They pay their vendors on time. They turn down customers who treat the team like garbage (Dan actually fired one of his biggest clients for exactly that). We got into the four principles Alexander teaches, why founder-driven private companies are some of the most active in this movement because they have the freedom to play long, and the hard truth that the person buying your business probably doesn’t see your culture the way you do. Conscious companies outperform the S&P over the long haul. The harder question is whether you carry the philosophy all the way through to the day you cash the check.

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## Top 10 Takeaways
  1. Your profit isn’t the end of the business. It’s the means to serve everyone you touch.
  2. Four principles run a conscious company: a higher purpose, serving everyone you touch, conscious leadership, conscious culture.
  3. Most founders are unconsciously conscious. You were doing this before there was a name for it.
  4. Private companies get to play long. Outside capital takes that choice away from you.
  5. Raise too much money and you’re not driving anymore. You’re on the hamster wheel.
  6. Conscious companies outperform the S&P 500 over the long haul. The data backs the philosophy.
  7. The consumer is already shifting. The harder work is educating the owner sitting in your seat.
  8. Fire the customer who treats your team like garbage. Your team is watching how you respond.
  9. Two questions before any big decision: Does this feel right? Would it feel right for the team?
  10. Sell without filtering for values and your legacy gets gutted the moment you cash the check.

Sound Bites

“I would consider myself, before I found this movement, unconsciously conscious.” (@00:04:56) — Dan Golden

“Businesses are aggregations of people. An economy is an aggregation of people. And the purpose of business is to make people’s lives better.” (@00:09:02) — Alexander McCobin

“We fired one of our biggest clients because of the way they were treating our team.” (@00:38:00) — Dan Golden

“I weigh happiness at a seven out of 10 and money at a five out of 10. It’s really tough to quantify some of this stuff.” (@00:36:00) — Dan Golden

“Our long-term goal is for conscious capitalism to be redundant. We need to get to a place where this is just the norm.” (@00:47:45) — Alexander McCobin

About This Episode

Alexander McCobin is the CEO of Conscious Capitalism, Inc., the organization founded around the philosophy popularized by Whole Foods co-founder John Mackey and Raj Sisodia. He holds degrees in philosophy and economics from the University of Pennsylvania and a graduate degree in philosophy from Georgetown. Dan Golden is co-founder and president of Be Found Online (BFO), a digital marketing agency that has made the Inc. 5,000 list six straight years and was named #1 Best Place to Work by AdAge. This is one of Ryan’s earlier conversations on a theme that becomes a backbone of the iBD methodology: that money and meaning are not opposing forces, and that owners who treat them as such usually end up regretting how they exit.

Resources Mentioned

  • Conscious Capitalism, Inc. — The organization Alexander leads. — consciouscapitalism.org
  • Conscious Capitalism by John Mackey & Raj Sisodia — The book that named the movement.
  • Conscious Capitalism CEO Summit — October 15–17, 2019, Austin, Texas.
  • Conscious Capitalism Annual Conference — April 14–16, 2020, Jersey City.
  • Terms of Endearment by Raj Sisodia — The pre-Conscious Capitalism research showing conscious cultures outperform Good to Great and S&P 500 companies.
  • Good to Great by Jim Collins — Referenced as the comparison benchmark.
  • Business Roundtable — Their 2019 statement reversing the shareholder-primacy position.
  • Barry-Wehmiller — Bob Chapman’s “truly human leadership” multi-billion-dollar manufacturing conglomerate.
  • Greyston Bakery (Yonkers, NY) — “We bake brownies to hire people,” open-hiring model, supplies Ben & Jerry’s.
  • Sunny Vanderbeck — Private equity investor and author, Selling Without Selling Out.
  • Ray Dalio, Simon Sinek (The Infinite Game), Jack Stack — Referenced as voices in the same long-game conversation.

Connections

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Concepts referenced:

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