Business is All About Love

 

AN INTERVIEW WITH KARYN BARSA, PRESIDENT, INVESTOR'S CIRCLE AND FORMER CEO, SMITH & HAWKEN

It’s clear from your work history that you believe business can be a force for good.
When I started in business, I was doing leveraged buyouts. It was all about competition, all about making the deal, making the money. I was just out of college, and everything was new and exciting to me. Oh, I was so impressed with myself!

Then, after I’d begun working at Patagonia, everything changed. One day the CEO slammed me back in my chair, literally pushed me back in my chair, and he said, “You will not behave in this way anymore.”

You will not behave in this way anymore.

It was shocking. Oh, I was so angry with him. I didn’t talk to him for three days. Finally, I went into his office and said, “Well, how do you want me to behave?” And he said, “I want you to become human.”

This is what it’s about, really. We use the word “professional” to mean “not human”—divorced from feeling, emotion, the desire to help others. And we call this a good thing! But when you start asking yourself questions—Who do you love? What do you love?—then you can’t stop; you can’t go back.

And you believe businesses can actually be more successful under this model.
The great thing is, you learn that this is actually a wonderful way to do business: a better way. For instance, I’m a retailer. I look at the world as one big group of consumers. What we discover, once we let ourselves be human, is that consumers respond to meaningful dialogue. Immediately, when you operate your business on a more human scale, aligned with human concerns, the consumer’s image of the quality of your product changes; their idea of what you stand for changes. As a result, they become much more loyal to your brand. The consumers get more of what they want. Your business becomes more profitable. It works so much better for everyone.

This is the model at inRESONANCE. Historically, a company like inRESONANCE, which isn’t a nonprofit but which hopes to demonstrate an overt social benefit, has almost had to hide what they wanted to do from bankers. There’s really a different perspective operating now. Whereas before, if you wanted to operate with a socially responsible orientation, every dollar had to go toward staying alive, now there are angel investors ready to fund your project from the start. Funds are beginning to offer capital in a business’s expansion phase, ready to help businesses learn how to give back in a different way.

How many companies are doing this now? Do you see the culture changing?
There’s been a sea change in only a few short years. Investors are excited about the opportunities. The society’s changing. The level of discussion, of Q&A, is so rich—it shows a mark of personal and intellectual engagement. When I was at Patagonia, which was from 1995–1999, almost ten years ago now, my friends derided me. “Oh, that woo-woo Birkenstock place.” Today, everybody wants to find and buy these products.

This makes it an interesting time for nonprofits. As business becomes more human and more effective, it’s possible that some nonprofits may actually be co-opted by business unless they get their act together. In some ways, better business is forcing nonprofits to become more efficient. And inRESONANCE has the tools and the platform to help this happen—to allow nonprofits to share and coordinate their efforts.

What gets you most excited about the work that inRESONANCE is doing? Why have you chosen to be involved?
iR has always been adding value in a way that most companies wouldn’t bother to do. They really go the extra mile in their thinking, their planning, to help nonprofits empower themselves on a local and a global level. Rather than infighting, nonprofits can now start to leverage their communication to make things better for all of them. The software that iR delivers is really just a vehicle to get to greater interaction between people who are trying to help other people.

We’re right on the cusp of a new level of awareness, a tipping point. Right now, what Kevin is doing is pushing the edge of what business can do, what it can hope to do. Five years from now, though, we’re going to ask, “What were we struggling against?” The doors will be open. They’re opening now.