Companies built on love outperform the S&P 500 by 14 to 1. Conscious capitalism, stakeholder leadership, healing organizations — Raj Sisodia proved it with data, then spent a year in the Himalayas and the Amazon proving it on himself.

Raj Sisodia, Co-Founder of the Conscious Capitalism movement and author of sixteen books including Firms of Endearment and The Healing Organization, grew up across four countries and eight schools before the age of 18. He trained as an electrical engineer in India because that was what you did if you were good at math. He stumbled into a PhD at Columbia almost by accident — following seven friends to pick up a GMAT application and ending up the only one who made it to New York. From there, he built a body of research that fundamentally challenged Milton Friedman's doctrine that the only business of business is profit. Then, at 60, he turned that same rigour inward: pilgrimages to the high Himalayas, silent retreats with Peter Senge, and the painful reckoning with a father who once pointed a gun at him.

This conversation runs close to what I have lived. When I watched Satya Nadella introduce "model, coach, care" at Microsoft — a framework Raj references directly — I saw firsthand what happens when a leader chooses purpose over power. And Raj's conviction that business must actively heal what it has broken echoes what drove me to create Live for Good: the belief that the organizations we build should leave people stronger, not depleted.

In our conversation, we explore:
 → Why companies that spend 95% less on marketing than competitors have the highest customer loyalty — and what that reveals about extraction-based capitalism
 → The four pillars of Conscious Capitalism — higher purpose, stakeholder integration, conscious leadership, conscious culture — and the specific acronyms (HEALING, SPICY, SELFLESS) Raj uses to make them actionable
 → The Bob Chapman story: how one CEO refused to lay off a single employee during the 2008 crisis by asking "What would a family do?" — and emerged stronger than every competitor
 → His year of conscious awakening at 60 — pilgrimages, silent retreats, ayahuasca in the Amazon — and what four women forced him to confront about his own unhealed trauma
 → What conscious capitalism demands of AI: the marriage of humanity's most important idea with its most powerful technology — and why the market will ultimately correct for unconscious companies

🔑 Key Themes: Conscious Capitalism, Stakeholder Leadership, Purpose-Driven Business, Healing Organizations, Personal Transformation, AI Ethics, Positive Leadership

🎧 Related Episodes:

•  Paul Polman (ex-CEO Unilever) — Becoming a Courageous Leader: how Polman proved companies can grow while addressing environmental and social challenges
• Vincent Stanley (Director of Philosophy, Patagonia) — Leading with Purpose: why purpose-led constraints drive innovation and stakeholder alignment 
• Dr. Martin Seligman (Founding Father of Positive Psychology) — Paving the Way to Positivity: the science of flourishing that underpins conscious leadership
• John Elikngkton : Rethinking Capitalism: A Conversation with the Godfather of Sustainability

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