Bliss Investing with Alicia Castillo Holley, PhD

**SPEAKER_2** (0:08)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection, and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

**Stephen Sakach** (0:21)
Hello, and welcome back to the show. We are going to talk about bliss investing, how investors can support and grow companies with empathy, compassion, love, and meaning. That's the topic today, and we are going to dive into that with our guest. I'm Stephen Sakach here again with Tullio Siragusa and Mike Liwski. Mike, introduce our guest today.

**Mike Liwski** (0:46)
Yes. Thank you, Stephen, and muy buenos dias to our listeners. See, we're a multilingual and an international podcast now. But welcome back to our listeners to The Bliss Business Podcast. In today's episode, we are super excited to introduce truly a trailblazer in the world of entrepreneurship and investment, Dr. Alicia Castillo Holley. Alicia's accomplishments are vast. She's an esteemed entrepreneur, an investor, and an academic with a track record of combining financial acumen, solid business practices with empathy and social impact, which we see today is super rare. From her beginnings in Venezuela to becoming a global influencer, Alicia has dedicated her career to developing investment strategies that align both profit with purpose, which really aligns well with what we are about as a show. Which we know too as investors today, you find it a challenge to find those things. Since you're quite interested in this topic, in the episode today, we're going to learn about Alicia's unique approach to angel and venture capital investing, where she blends best practices from capitalism as well as socialism, while introducing authenticity, transparency, and kindness as an investor who does not just invest and pray. What do you expect then by applying her insights, you might ask? Well, you can expect to transform your investment strategies, create stronger connections with stakeholders, and achieve financial returns without having to compromise emotional, social, and spiritual rewards. So with that, we're truly happy and excited to welcome Dr. Alicia Castillo Holley to the show. Welcome, Alicia.

**Alicia Castillo Holley** (2:42)
Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Keep going. I don't like to say anything like, wow.

**Stephen Sakach** (2:49)
You know what? I don't know the listeners don't know, but you could keep going with, I don't know how many degrees you have, Alicia, but there's a resume here. We should talk about time management sometime, like how you do it, because I'm sure you've got some tips there.

**Alicia Castillo Holley** (3:05)
Yeah. My parents were teachers. My mom is a teacher, my dad was a professor, so education was important to us. Then I have a ton of degrees.

**Stephen Sakach** (3:17)
Yeah. I'm going to talk about my mom for a second here.
The word I liked in there, Mike, on that intro was the kindness in there. I grew up with a mother who is very entrepreneurial, hustled, created multiple businesses, challenged with polio, came to California with her husband and a couple of kids and $200, and had a lot of success. But as a woman in business, she had to deal with a lot of misogyny and dismissiveness, and none of that slowed her down. Well, actually, let me change that. It did slow her down, but it did not stop her. She absolutely had to push harder. Yes, but none of that changed her kindness or her views on the types of businesses she would like to work with, whether they were good companies. I do wish she had the resources like this conversation we're going to have today available to her back then. I know people will get a lot out of our discussion. So Alicia, I can see my entrepreneurial roots from my mother, and that's also where I get a lot of my determination from. Tell us a little about your journey. Where did you get your determination and entrepreneurial spirit from?

**Alicia Castillo Holley** (4:31)
Well, this is very interesting because I have never heard the word entrepreneurship until I was 35 I was already an accomplished scientist by then.
I grew up in a little town called El Limon, the lemon. It's not even in the map. It has the population has shrunk. That gave me a lot of benefits. That's where I grew up. My dad passed away, but my parents were socialists. We grew up in a very interesting environment, unusual environment for an investor. My dad thought that money was a source of evil. He lost a farm and he became a professor.
I was a very smart student, so my parents didn't know what to do with me. I'm the second of five.
As you mentioned, I grew up in Venezuela. Then every year, I would pass with A plus all my subjects. That meant that I didn't have to take final exams in high school.