Embracing Adversity to Navigate toward Fulfillment and Impact

0:00 The topics and opinions express in the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests, and not those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability, explicit or implied shall be extended to W FOURCY Radio or its employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W FOURCY Radio. What's Working on Purpose? Anyway? Each week we ponder the answer to this question. People ache for meaning and purpose at work, to contribute their talents passionately and know their lives really matter. They crave being part of an organization that inspires them and helps them grow into realizing their highest potential. Business can be such a force for good in the world, elevating humanity. In our program, we provide guidance and inspiration to help usher in this world we all want Working on Purpose. Now, here's your host, doctor Elise Cortes.

1:04 Welcome back to the Working and Purpose Program. Thanks for turning again this week. Great to have you. This show has been brought to you with passionate price since February of twenty fifteen. I'm your host, doctor Earliest Cortes. If we've not met before and you don't know me, I'm an organizational psychologist and loco therapist, speaker and author. My team and I at Gusto Now help companies to enlivenen and fortify their operations by building a culture and leadership activated by meaning and purpose. Our mission is to help our clients create a destination work for workplace where people flock to join, are intrinsically motivated to perform at their best, can grow too the Florida potential, and are committed to stay and identically deliver on the company's mission, all which translates to higher profits. You can learn more about us and now we can work together at gustodashnow dot com or my personal site of Thescortes dot com. Getting into today's program we have with us today. Piem Zamani an entrepreneur, investor and the founder of One Planet Group and the author of Crossing the Desert The power of embracing life's difficult journeys, which we'll be talking about today, among other things.

1:59 Born and I Samani was forced to flee at the age of sixteen due to his religious reliefs as a Buhie. He and his brother founded autoweb, one of the first online car marketplaces, which they took public in nineteen ninety nine. Since then, he has built and currently owns multiple technology and media businesses, has invested in more than fifty companies, and is striving to redefine capitalism in an attempt to elevate business to serve humanity. He joined it today from Denver, whereas his home is the Bay Area in California. Piem welcome to working on Purpose. Thank you, ele, It's good to be here. It's great to have you. And let me just start by saying you are why America is great.

2:41 Thank you. I appreciate that. And I love this country and I love what this country has done for me and so many others. As I talked about in my book, it really represents hope to the world. So that's a special thing, a special place to be. Yeah, it is special place. And I know. I'm a native born American and I had the opportunity to live in Spain and Brazil for three years. And I am in twenties, which greatly colored my life, and that's why I still speak Spanish and Portuguese. That's why my company is named Gusto. Now I'm married to Costa Rican, which is why I have the name that I do really really really impacted and colored me and living here. One of the things that's really really interesting is I see the the people that I get to work with who come from a different country. They bring a whole different level of appreciation for America grit to persevere, and I think sometimes we Americans have maybe lost that. And so when you come in, I am you bring us this beautiful inspiration that shows us what America really can be.

3:44 And I really want to celebrate that. Well, you know, I appreciate that. Often. I tell people that, you know, if today you're a teenager in you know, some other part of the world, you've lost hope because of conflicts, because of social undress, all kinds of stuff that you may be dealing with, there is a country that gives you hope. And that country is not China, is not Russia, it is not Saudi Arabia. That country remains the United States. And I view that as almost like a spiritual destiny that this country has sometimes we don't really appreciate what that truly means to be the hope to the world. And sometimes I feel like, you know, the way that you know, we see the politics operating in this country, we are forced or asked to lose that hope and allow that light to dim. But I don't think that's going to happen. I think that there's a foundation here that's very special and it's meant to be special.

4:48 I agree, And even when I lived outside the United States and I could see it through other people's eyes and it gave me another perspective, But yet still I was so happy to come home and appreciate it, and grateful for the opportunity to live abroad, but still very happy to come back home to America. So I'm very curious as a person who didn't grow up really steeped in a particular religion, PEM exposed somewhat to Catholicism, but I really consider myself really more of a spiritual person. On a spiritual quest, I am really really interested to understand why your faith as a Bahigh was such a I don't know a threat is the right word to your country of Iran, or why it was so unacceptable.

5:30 You know, by faith came about about one hundred and seventy years ago, and tens of thousands of Bahighs have been killed over the years in Iran, where the religion came from. But after the Iranian Revolution there was spike again in the things that the government did to basically keep the population of the high is down and to try to get rid of them. However they could, so they killed hundreds of the highs, and they expelled many bhighs from their jobs, their schools and so on. And you're right, the question is why. One of the fundamental reasons that they did that was because as the highs, it sounds simple, like you know, but in that dogmatic kind of environment, it is not as simple as behigh as we believe in a concept called the progressive revelation, meaning that we think that there was never a beginning to profit. There will not be an end to profits of God. If there's one God, there's one truth, they all I mean, no profit ever came and said from now they don't have a soul. There is no life after death. The essentials are always the same, the non essentials change. But just because of the fact that we don't believe that any of the profits of the past were the last profit. That's something that the Iranian government that's run by clergy, they view that as to be blasphemy and to them that is punishable by death, so they do whatever they can to keep the population down.

7:00 Top of that are profit founder who came from Iran and he's buried in Israel because back in the eighteen hundreds they sent him to exile to Ottoman Empire, to a place that was named Palestine. He died there, So now our holy places, surprise, are in Israel. That wasn't by choice. He was sent to exile by the same people. But they kind of accuse us of being connected to the state of Israel, and they call half a million behighs in Iran spies of Israel, so that gives them one more reason to, you know, mistreat the highest. However they can. The stories and the details that you share in your book about just being bullied and just what it is to even just walk home the short distance from school to home and everything that you endured was just heartbreaking to me. I just I cannot fathom all the things that you have gone through to be persecuted for your religion, for your faith, and yet you really, you know, you stuck with it, you come to it, you never never abandoned it. Even coming here to the States, you never abandoned it. And I just really applaud you for your conviction, for your strength.

8:10 Well, thank you. I appreciate that. You know, I feel that ultimately that spiritual connection that we as humans have that is what makes this life special. And you know, I'm somebody who even I was born in the Bahi faith, I was also taught that we It's one of the tenets of the faith that you are required to independently investigate the truth, meaning that religion is not inherited. You need to find out on your own what is the truth that you want to believe in. And frankly, I think that if that wasn't the case, if I was forced the faith as something that I have inherited from my parents, I don't think that I would have handled that well. The fact that I was allowed to have freedom to choose and that I was taught different religions and I realized that for this day and age, this provides the best remedy for the ills of the world, and that made it that turned it into something that was acceptable to me, and also studying it by itself.

9:19 And also the other thing that has really attracted me as both a young person and now is the fact that there is no conflict. There shouldn't be a conflict between people, because if I believe that religions are part of one progressive revelation, then there's truth in Jesus, there's truth in Moses. It is and it's not or there is no conflict. They're the same voice from the same truth, So why would there be any conflict. So the unifying message that I learned and I was taught was something I didn't want to give up, and I thought that I wanted to live a life of impact, and I felt that these Birch timeless spiritual teachings would give me the best in a sense foundation for that. So, I mean, I'm still learning. It is something that that that never ends, but I feel like it's something that's been very helpful to me.

10:18 It's very inspiring. And then on top of that, you know, here are You're sixteen years old, You and your brother make your way to the United States without your parents, without your family, and you start school and you you say you really don't know much English, and here you are, you know, doing your very best to earn grades. You wanted to to get a four point average, which I believe you did, and so listening to you now you have a nice accent, but your English is beautiful. Piem, thank you, thank you. I mean it's I remember. One of my first memories from coming to the US was that it's probably the second or third day, I was walking with my cousin, who was a person who had sponsored us to come to the US. He was walking on the street with a friend and he passed by and said something and I couldn't tell what he said. And then another person he said the same thing. I'm like, Sean, what are you saying? He said, I don't know what you're talking about. Okay, next time you say, I'm going to say right down and there. And he was saying, how are you doing?

11:20 And of course I wasn't taught that. I was thought, how are you doing it? Are you doing right? And even if I knew how are you doing? Which I didn't really know that well, but but you know, it was. It really took took a while, but I feel like, you know, the first twelve months in the US. Going to high school was extremely helpful. It really allowed me to you know, become an American. And then I talk about that in the book. You know, like one of my best memories from Sundays in the late eighties was listening to Casey Kase. Yeah remember them. Yes, those kinds of things. Experiences allowed me to really become a part of this country, and I really cherish shows.

12:07 One thing I really want to call out listeners and viewers to this very very point about language is there is a tendency for people who don't speak anything beyond their own native language to hear someone else working at speaking their language, and when it's chopping, they assume they are ignorant, and that is just not the truth. I really want to hammer that home and just spell that myth it is. It is absolutely inaccurate. I would challenge anyone here listening to go learn something about another language and then see how difficult it is to express yourself and listen and learn and try to understand in that language, and then come back and listen to your friend who's come and speaks English as a second language. So I just had to say that I won't get off my soap box. Oh ah, I'm glad you said that. Also, speaking louder won't help e.

12:50 There, no, no, yeah, speaking loud American English doesn't do it. Yes, I know. One of the other things I want to celebrate about your book is, you know, as somebody who really works to activate meaning and purpose inside organizations and really also as a logo therapist, which is really to Frankel's work in existential psychology to accept the idea that meaning is our chief concern. It's also a really chief source of energy. I am just so present to the power of the human spirit to persevere in your story. I am like, it's just indelible in you. It's indelible on every page of your book. Well, thank you. I you know, I appreciate that. I think that in my formative years I had no choice but be a survivor and going from one calamity to another, from one channel to another. The things I did not seek, but they just happened to me. But then as I became older, as I, you know, became an adult, I think, maybe even to a fault, I was seeking, you know, basically almost like a chaotic life that I wanted to be busy doing a lot of different things. It wasn't enough.

14:04 I almost have this fear that this life is going to come to an end and I've not done enough, and I want to make sure that I get the most out of it. Again, sometimes to a fault, But there is something I think valuable there, at least for me, and that is the idea of living a life of meaning, at least for you. So the concept that you want that life to matter. You know that after I'm dead and I'm gone, I feel like maybe the world was ever so slightly better that I existed on this planet. You know, that will allow me to, like, you know, close my eyes and be done and feel good about the life that I lived. And you know, I think that's important. I think about that. I do think about it all the time.

14:49 Well, I really, of course, echo that's one of the many, many things that I found. I found so inspiring about your book, and Pie, I want to understand that for me, your book has really given me so much hope in so many ways and inspire like in ways I just didn't imagine. I generally read when I go to the gym to work out, and then I do read my guest books cover to cover, and I really needed your message and I really think writing it. M well, I appreciate that, you know that was it took me a few years to come to the decision to write the book. I you know, I started the book a few years ago initially, and I felt like I did not have enough to share and the timing had to naturally be right. And there were a few reasons that I decided to write a book when I did.

15:34 One was, frankly, I was tired to see the situation behinds in Iran is not improving forty five years later, but hy youth still do not have the right to attend universities in Iran, and the world doesn't know it or doesn't care. I mean, it just has gone off for forty five years. And then also looking at the social discourses in the US, both about immigrants and the role that immigrants play, and also you know, so much conversation about becoming an isolationist in this country, and it always worries me when I hear about that that if not the US, who will leave the world. And I know we don't want to be the policeman of the world.

16:15 I get that, but at the same time, the world does need leadership, and I don't know what country would take that vacancy if this country doesn't do it. So I really hope that the US will will take that. Like you said, I say that there is a spiritual destiny and has meaning. And you know, the final thing is entrepreneurs. I'm an entrepreneur. I've always been an entrepreneur and you had to be, well, I had to be. But I know so many entrepreneurs, I know so many professionals and CEOs and so on, that they're not getting enough meaning out of their jobs and out of their companies and businesses. Even if they're successful, they're still not getting it getting enough meaning. And I think there's a way that we can do better and we can really bring about and elevate our work, uh to you know, to something that would bring joy to us. Yes.

17:09 Please, And on that note, let's take our first break. I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortez. We'll be on the air with pay him some money. He's the founder and chairman and CEO of One Planet Group with the people First culture in which he wanted to bring all along for the first The first company he co founded, Auto Web. We've been talking about his early life there in Iran and then his his trek to the United States. After the break, we're going to start talking about how it is he ultimately turned himself into an entrepreneur, fully an entrepreneur. Stay with us, will be right back.

17:54 Doctor release court Has is a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose and inspirational speaker and author. She helps companies visioneer for greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite a lease to speak to your organization, please visit her at elisecortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is working on Purpose with doctor Elise Cortes. To reach our program today or to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to Elise A. L Se at elisecortes dot com. Now back to working on Purpose.

18:46 Thanks for stating with us, and welcome back to working on Purpose. I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortes. As like Pam, I am also dedicated helping create a world where people realize potential at work and they are led by inspirational leaders that help them find in conture with their greatness and do business at Betters the World. I continue to research and write my own books. So my last book came out in March of twenty twenty three. It's called The Great Revitalization. How activating meaning and Purpose can radically in liven your business. And I wrote it to help leaders understand today's change workforce and what is it they really want from work? And then I offer twenty two best practices to help equip those companies to provide the culture to actually meet them where they are. You can learn more about the book at least qoretest dot com or on Amazon if you are just joining us. My guest is Piem Zamani. He's the author of Crossing the Desert The Power of Embracing Life's Difficult Journeys, which we're talking about today along with his life. So what was interesting for me about reading your book? And there were so many pieces to it, I did, I mean, we could have several episodes, I am, but it seemed to me that you're being elected to the president of the international club in high school and then leading the charts using your entrepreneur talents was a real turning point that really ignited really your journey to become an American and an American entrepreneur. Do you think that that's truer than just me?

20:02 No, I think you are probably right, and you're the first person who's brought that up. And it was actually at the Modesto Junior College that that happened. And it was a special club because I felt that they were my tribe. They were people, and I would say, for lack of a better term, we were the misfits from all over the place and we were all together in one club. And it was a broken club with really bad finances and no money. And there's one thing I'm good at in life, and that is to fix a broken financial situation, and I did that. So we were fortunate enough that that club became really wealthy. I mean we had a lot of money. We had so much money that we would take our members on outings without them paying because we had the cash, to Jeland, to Disneyland and so on. Yeah, Whitewater rafting, and we were also we had so much cash flow that you were able to spend our money also on providing grants to other clubs on campus. And that was special to me because here's a group of misfits from all over the world and they are providing grants to other clubs on campus.

21:13 That was a pretty special place to be. The other thing that I want to celebrate about that part of your life is that you say in your book that you inherited it. It was a pretty dark financial situation of this club when you first got it, and you say, you know, we really we need money to be able to have an impact, and we don't want to be associated. We don't want people to associate us our club with having no money and being immigrants that are pulling from anything. And I really want to celebrate that too. Yeah, no, thank you. And also bringing vibrancy to campus, I mean the campus that you were part of, you know, with the events that we had, I feel like we added to the community that you were part of by having these amazing and fun events. Whether it was you know, a food fare or if it was you know, just a barbecue on Earth Day on campus or on the un day it was, it was just it brought us an element of fun and community the campus that I don't think we had that before.

22:12 Something to be definitely proud of, for sure. Yeah, And of course we can't to not have this conversation without talking about how you and your brother Frank came up with the idea to start auto web when he was working in Microsoft and the Internet was just becoming a thing. And of course you know your love of cars. I forget how many cars you said you had bought and sold by the time you were in high school, some crazy numbers. Yeah, And so I just I think there's just I remember, you know, I started I got into the technology space in late nineteen ninety eight in Seattle, selling it staffing services when things were just kind of you know, but you got into it earlier. So can you tell us briefly the story of how it is that you birthed autoweb.

22:52 I mean, this is probably the most unlikely story that that that could have could have turned to a reality. In nineteen ninety four, right out of college, and my brother and I, even though you know we're six years apart, we graduated from university at the same time because we came to the US at the same time, and so he got a job at Microsoft and he called me one day and he said that I want to buy Honda, but Honda does not even have a website. Now this is nineteen ninety four, and I'm like, I have no idea what you're talking about, and so he had to explain the whole thing to me. He signed me up on compu Serve, and probably nobody was listening knows what that is. But about mind is that, you know, these were the early days. And I tell people that those of us who started internet companies back then in the early nineties, we didn't know we can make money off of it. We did it because we have a passion for it, and so we ended up starting a company focused on are made a consumer with more information about cars, the cars that they were interested in potentially owning, than the car sales man had. And we knew that if we do that, consumers will come. After consumers come, the industry at some point has to show up. And that that was an initial idea and we launched it in nineteen ninety four, but it was a struggle to really

24:24 be able to get going. And and you know a few of the people that I acknowledge on the back of my book are some of the people that they did not want anything. They did not know us, but they really played a meaningful role in our story and how we were able to actually build that business into a real, real organization that became worth, you know, something significant a few years later. You know, it's just again, you know, going back to what we were saying before about the idea that you as an immigrant brings such a you know, a strong motivation work ethic that you know, just seems to be hard to encounter elsewhere. Even you said when you were working for the pizza place, you couldn't understand why people weren't just so motivated to come to work. We're making money.

25:11 And you tell the story of how you worked for the house painting organization and you went from making twenty thousand dollars annually by age twenty eight in nineteen ninety nine to when you did sell Auto Web to suddenly have a personal networth more than two hundred million dollars. What in the world was that like? Well, you know, I remember I remember that day as I was twenty eight years old when we took the company public, and back then I remember that United Airlines at a market cap of three hundred and fifty million dollars and my brother and I were on a flight back on United Airlines from New York to San Francisco, and I think that was my second time ever flying business class. The first time was going to New York.

26:00 Second I was coming back from New York to the Bay Area. And him and I thought, that, isn't it crazy that the two of us together can buy United Airlines? How do you even make sense out of that? And then we opened the paper and it said that other web worth more than Rose Royce. And it was unfathomable about how that's even possible. I mean, it was even difficult for me to understand. But again, I talked about this quite a bit, and then I've written about it in my book that I lost almost all of it, and you know, going back to the idea of having that grounding and a faith and having that grounding and the fact that we are really spiritual beings, that the material things are great, but at the end of the day, those material things are not supposed to find us. That.

26:49 I mean, I can stay with the straight face that I lost that money. I did not get depressed for a day. I did not because to me, it was, you know, something that I viewed it still as progress because I was still better off. I was still a millionaire, but you know, I lost most of it, almost all of it, but not all of it. And there was a life to be had. That was only twenty eight. There was a lot more that you know, I could do and I could potentially learn and contribute. So but it was definitely I think one of those experiences in life that I'm glad it happened. If it had not happened, if I had not lost that money, I don't know where I would be today. But the chances are that would have been toxic to me at that point in my life.

27:34 I can certainly imagine that. And I really also appreciate how you say in your book that you just don't dwell on any kind of mistakes or setbacks. It's just not any It's not productive at all to do that. But for our listeners and viewers, how did you lose the money? So the company that was supposed to go public for about three hundred fifty million dollars went public for a bit higher than that. Because we wanted to sell five million shares in the IPO to generate money for the company, we had demand for ninety five million, so as a result, there was a lot of interest that the plus some other things that again I talked about in the book that I don't think we're the kinds of things that I wish our bankers would have done. That caused the stock price to appreciate too quickly, to the point that within a day the company was worth one point two billion.

28:34 And the way I lost the money was that I did not sell the stock when I could have, and maybe I should have, but I didn't. So the stock price that was fifty dollars ultimately went all the way down to eighteen cents before it came back up to I don't even remember to what level. But the company went public in nineteen ninety nine, and I sold all my shares I think by two thousand and maybe two thousand and one, so, and I don't know if you'll get to it or not. But in twenty twenty two, as luck would have it, I bought back that company and took it private. So I owned that business. Now after twenty some odd years, I brought it back in the company had become an orphan of a business. It was badly managed, and that's why it left because of what had happened to it, and how the board had brought on board a CEO, which I did not think that, despite the fact he was a nice guy, I did not think that he was the right guy for that business.

29:36 And the company suffered and suffered for many years because of that bad decision, and ultimately, you know you fast forward to two decades later, the company had accumulated losses of three hundred and fifty million dollars with no light at the end of the tunnel. So I had the opportunity to buy that company and take it private, which I did, and I'm really glad I did that. Another thing to be proud of, and I would be completely remiss. I'm so hopelessly interested in you as a human being who's navigated the planet and done what you've done. But I would be remiss if I didn't ask you about some of the leadership and company culture lessons that you learned as you built autoweb and beyond.

30:18 Yeah, you know, I mean autoweb auto web days were my formative years as an entrepreneur. That was my first real company, and so it was on the job training and there was a lot that frankly I didn't know, and frankly when I think back, I'm embarrassed I did some stuff the way I did, you know, because I didn't know any better, including the fact that again I talked about this that when the company went public and was worth one point two billion, the first thing that went in my mind was how am I going to now do something bigger than this? Because I thought, again, we live in the police society that our value is measured by how much of the world's resources we can consume.

31:07 Think about it, that's how we measure one's value by how much we can consume and how much damage we can cause of this planet that will represent somebody's net worth. So what was I thinking? How can I now do something bigger? And I'm embarrassed that that was my mentality at that point. And so and I also firmly believe that life is full of tests and difficulties, and crisis are followed by victory and victory by crisis, and this cycle will always go on. So that was the crisis in my life. I lost that money and I lost my company the way that that happened, but that allowed me that that I think prepared me for building a different kind of business and kind of like having that internal search for what's the best way. I mean, I had those foundational spiritual beliefs, but how can they present themselves into a business. And the biggest thing that was bugging me for many years was that we raise our kids, we teach them spiritual values, but then when they go to work, they say business is just business, right, and business is just about maximization of share O their value.

32:18 What happened to all those values then? What happened to them? I mean, you were just telling me I need to be truthful, ethical, kind, loving and all that, but then business just business. I'm dealing with other human beings that they have the same aspirations, the same virtues matter to them, their spiritual being having this material existence for a short period of time. Why is it that all of a sudden I should view them as simply a token of economic value for me? And that was bugging me, That was really bothering me. So I really wanted to see how I can intermingle business and spiritual beliefs into one and I didn't know how. I still don't know how. But the whole idea was to experiment, to try and know that that to the north star and we'll try to go there and that the term that always I try to remind myself is to walk in a humble posture of learning, because the moment that you feel like, you know, I got to figure it out, that's a moment that you really completely lost sight of the fact that no, you don't know, and there's so much I don't know. So that was that was the thought process that caused me to want to build a different company.

33:24 So when you look at the values that we have in my organization, the first one is love, and that is love is the magnet that keeps existence together people you know atoms, planets, that that magnet is very and love that we have in a company should be extended to our employees, to our vendors, to our to our clients, to even our competitors. Yes, if my business will thrive only if somebody else's, if only if another company goes away, I should go into a different business. If people want my product because that serves them better, will so be it.

34:07 But I'm not going to wake up every morning thinking that I want another company to go away, because again, at the end of it, we are as a humanity, we are We're in this journey together. And our collective success requires a level of collective unity, and we need to appreciate that. I really think that we should. I completely agree with Iam, and we're going to talk more about that. I am completely echoing every single word that you say from a different perspective and a different set of experiences. But let us let our listeners and viewers just kind of think about what you've just said. There. Let's let rab our our last break, and then we'll come back and converse more over those topics. I'm your host, Doctor Releasee Cortez, who are in the area with Piems and money. He's the founder, chairman and CEO of One Planet Group. We've been talking a bit about his rise in entrepreneurship, and after the break, we're going to talk more about what he's doing at One Planet Group and hear more about his ideas about how we can improve happiness.

35:00 Stay with us, We'll be right back. Doctor Elise Cortes is a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose. An inspirational speaker and author, she helps companies visioneer for greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite a lease to speak to your organization, please visit her at Elisecortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is working on Purpose with doctor Elise Cortes. To reach our program today or to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to a lease a Lise at at Leastcortes dot com. Now back to working on Purpose.

36:09 Interesting with us and welcome back to working on Purpose. I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortes. I mentioned in the last break that my latest book came out in March of twenty twenty three. It's called a Great Revitalization. What I did for you is I created a three page organizational assessment for you to learn the extent to which your company's leadership and culture meet the standards of today's discerning workforce. You can get it from my website at gustodeshnow dot com if you are just joining us. My guest is piems A Money. He's the author of Crossing the Desert The Power of Embracing Life's difficult Journeys, which we've been talking about as well as his life. So, going back what we were talking about before the break of this idea of maybe spiritual capitalism, I mentioned to you in my notes that I also embraced the idea of conscious capitalism, which really has the four pillars of higher purpose, stakeholder orientation, conscious leadership, conscious culture. I also, in my last book that I just mentioned, the last chapter is on spiritual intelligence in the workplace, and that does speak to those higher values like love and compassion and peace and purpose. And I'm seeing more companies start to at least pay attention to those things, if not, you know, somewhat start to put a little toe in the water to embrace them. So I'm very interested in your notion of stewarting. I guess what you're calling spiritual capitalism.

37:25 Can hear a little bit more about it? Yeah, So, to me, its spiritual capitalism simply means a capitalism that considers the true essence of who we are as humans, and it goes beyond viewing us as simply these organisms that care only about greed. So I don't think that Melton Freedman version of capitalism I served us. I just don't think. So I agree, and I think that the funny thing is that that mentality that still majority of companies, majority of the financial market runs based on, has left the people that is supposed to benefit most empty.

38:16 And so I often when I have these conversations, I tell people that do it for your own sake, Forget everybody else, forget humanity, do it for your own sake, because what happens is that people do well a lot of people in that space they do well, but then financially they do well, but then they look in all kinds of wrong places for that sense of meaning. But the sense of meaning can come from your every day occupation, from that every day engagement that you have. All that means is that you have turned You need to turn that every day engagement into something that meaning is a part of it. So, you know, I talk about this quite a bit in the book that you Know. There was epiphany that I had, if there's an epiphany, was one day I was at this conference with my wife and this woman gave a keynote and she was the head of a nonprofit and I remember I turned to my wife and I said that I'm jealous, and she said, what do you mean. I said, look, she doesn't have to go home and say that, Okay, well is the evening or the weekend, I'm going to do some service.

39:24 I feel better about myself and I'm giving back to the work. Her job every day is service. And in the by faith, we have also this concept. It's an important part of our teachings that work offered in the spirit of service is the best form of worship. Yes, and so I'm like, okay, how can I Why can't pe blurred the line between for profit and nonprofit? Why should for profits stand for great nonprofits for the betterment of the world. Now again, keep in mind, I don't necessarily I don't want to build a social impact business. And the reason I say that is because I want a business to either sign up for strong financials or say I'm a nonprofit. When you're in between, it becomes actually very difficult to operate. It's very difficult to raise money, very difficult to raise money as a nonprofit or a for profit. So I feel like you need to pick a direction. But a for profit can have a just cause, A for profit can decide for standing for something good.

40:25 A for profit CEO can say that you know what, at the end of the day, I'm a community builder, and what kind of community do I want to build? Because that will define the organization I have contributed to. So and if you look at my biggest operating business is a company that basically sells leads and clicks. It's an online marketing platform. So it is probably as meaningless as anything can be. But we decided to figure out how can we infuse that with spiritual teachings, How can we infuse that with basically values that could make it that kind of a company had in mind that represents spiritual capitalism at work. And the funny thing is that company today is more profitable, more stable than any of these peers because what changes is that, I think fundamentally, what changes is that you cannot have a ninety day window of measuring your success. You need to have a much longer perspective as you build that kind of a business.

41:30 But once you're into it, you build it, your employees don't want. To leave you. Your customers don't want to leave you, because you're a reliable company or a good company. You care about them, you know as a spiritual being. Your vendors don't want to leave you. I mean, it becomes a great community, and that's what we've been blessed with. We implemented this in twenty beginning of twenty fifteen, and we've been profitable at every single month since then. Our profits have grown eight hundred percent and the company is doing well. We have not had layoffs. We are I mean, and again I'm not saying that you should do it for that, but I will tell you if you run your business based on those principles, the only thing you will be embarrassed about will be the fact that you have very successful business.

42:25 At the end, you're absolutely speaking everything that I preached by and this is how. This is how I also consult with organizations too, the same sort of message, the same sort of desired outcome. I'm completely convinced I'm on board. And the other thing I also wanted to just applaud you with along those lines is I really loved how you shared in your book early on in autaweb, where you went from the subscription model one thousand dollars a month to twenty nine ninety five per lead, and the board was like totally against you, but you were like, but this is the right thing for everybody. Why Because one, it's more palpable for our customers who are willing to spend that for a lead versus maybe an unknown what they might get for the thousand dollars investment. And two, we are more likely to be fully compensated for the value we bring distributors who sign on. And I just really wanted to celebrate that. You kind of put it down as a lead gen sort of thing, but the way that you went about situating value and really disrupting everything was just really Also you had another thing to celebrate about you.

43:27 Well, I appreciate. I mean, I think that the real thought behind that was if you take conflict out of that relationship. So otherwise, if it's a subscription program every month, I would feel like either we delivered a lot didn't get paid enough, or the other side would feel like you didn't deliver enough. You got me the same. Yeau wanted that conflict to go away. So if you look at our business today, our primary business buyer lank, that business has no contractual terms, meaning that when people sign up with us as a client, they are not committing that they're going to stay with us for any specific duration. They can stop at any moment in time. Ninety percent of our revenue comes to accounts that they almost never cancel because that conflict has been removed from the relationship.

44:17 And I think that's really important. I think that's that so. And you know, along those lines, if you talk to my legal team, this is what they hear from me, and they are they're tired of me saying it, but I tell them, always a contract, when you write it doesn't have to sound that cold. At the end of the day, you can protect yourself, but even a contract can be kind and loving. The way we communicate matters. How did we get here that we just talk to each other the way we do, and particularly in business. While a lot of these issues are just simply I want to tell you I appreciate your business. You're about to become my client. I'm so grateful for that. I just want to make sure that we have agreed on the terms of this relationship.

45:04 We don't talk like that, right well, please help us change that time if you could, that would be great. If you could also add that to your list to dos and accomplishments. Please, Now, I can't let you get away before you give us at least a short orientation of what you're all doing. At One Planet Group, I just it sounds amazing. Well, thank you. You know. One Planet Group at the end of the day is it's some sort I don't know what to call it. I call it private equity, but it's not really a private equity because we don't have outside investors, we don't have limited partners. So it's at the end of the day, basically what I get to operate, which really gives me the freedom to do things that if I probably had a board of directors at One Planet, it would have been very difficult for me to do because sometimes I don't know what the outcome is going to be. I really don't, but I want to have the freedom to do so One Planet allows me to live my chaotic life, which is I love to work with entrepreneurs. I think that that brings joy to me to see the younger generation coming up with amazing ideas that can change the world. I love that.

46:14 So we do that. We invest in in entrepreneurs, and we do that with an idea of justice. So two percent of all VC money in the US goes to women founders. Majority of our money goes to women founders or people of color, and they're some of our best performing entrepreneurs. And so that's one aspect of our business. The other aspect is that we operate a few businesses. And these businesses are a few that I just know extremely well, all the Web being one of them. By our length. They're primarily focused in the marketing space, and they're big businesses, north of one hundred million dollars in revenue, profitable businesses that we operate. And I'm an operator because I love the idea of building a community, and an operation allows me to have a few hundred employees and build that community. And ultimately, we also like to do what can beyond those businesses contribute directly to the betterment of the world. So that is done through content. We own a studio that we are actually making a feature film right now.

47:21 Uh. It's it's a love story, but the love story that will hopefully bring people of different backgrounds together by seeing the beauty in their diversity. And uh, and then the nonprofit element of our organization. So at the highest level, those are three things that we do. Uh. I'm a fixer. I love to fix stuff. So when I'm provided with the opportunity to fix a broken something, I like to be there. Very We're very uh grateful and blessed that you are on on this planet walking with this piem. You are a beautiful soul who is really making a difference with your one precious life. We have come to the end of the show already. It goes by so fast. Is listen to white people around the world who are wanting to be part of something more of like what you created.

48:11 What would you like to leave them with? You know, I would love to connect with people, and sometimes I'm slow, but I usually at least send a short message. I cannot meet with everyone, but I do communicate, and you know they can follow me on Instagram, on LinkedIn and easy to find times of money, no space, no highend and I will love to connect with them. Thank you. I am. I am very grateful our paths crossed. You have really many difference in my life already and I'm very very happy to share you with my listeners around the world. Thank you so much. Thank you for your time. Very welcome. You will learn more about piems and money, the company he first co founded, autoweb, the company he currently leads One Planet Group, or his book Crossing the Desert.

48:54 You can start by visiting two sites. One is Crossing the Desert book dot com. There is One Planetgroup dot com. See you next week for another inspiring and educational conversation on working on purpose and remember work is one of the best adventures and means of realizing our potential and making the impact we crave. So let's work on purpose. We hope you've enjoyed this week's program. Be sure to tune into Working on Purpose featuring your host, doctor Elise Cortes, each week on W four CY. Together we'll create a world where business operates conscientiously. Leadership inspires and passion performance and employees are fulfilled in work that provides the meaning and purpose they crave. See you there, Let's work on Purpose.