Conscious Capitalism: Business Beyond Profit with Neal Courtney

**SPEAKER_2** (0:03)
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** (0:17)
Well, welcome back to the show, everyone. I'm Stephen Sakach here again with my co-host, Mike Liwski and our special guest today. So according to Harvard Business Review, purpose-driven companies outperform the market by 42% in profitability and retention. Yet too often, leaders focus on just profit as the destination rather than the byproduct of doing meaningful work. So Conscious Capitalism challenges us and challenges that mindset and asks leaders to build businesses where people, purpose and profit thrive together. Today, we explore what it looks like to lead a company where love and purpose are not just values, but operating principles. Mike, introduce our guest today.

**Mike Liwski** (1:01)
Stephen, I'll be absolutely delighted to. Our guest today is Neal Courtney. He is the CEO of Cookie Cutters, which is one of the fastest growing family-friendly franchise brands and it's not a bakery, it's got nothing to do with cupcakes. Although maybe you'll find a cookie or a cupcake there.
But it's one of the premier children's hair salons. Now, Neal with his career spanning consumer products, franchising, as well as purpose-based leadership, he's been able to really build businesses through his career where really people come first and profits follow as we love to discuss here on the show and beat the drum on that. So he's as well known for transforming Cookie Cutters into a brand that brings joy to families while empowering franchisees to build meaningful community-based businesses. So Neal, we are so excited for the show that we have before us today. Welcome to our show.

**Neal Courtney** (2:07)
Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. When I got this invite, I was overly excited because I think the mantra of the show really fits me as an individual and what we try to accomplish as an organization.
I came from the late 90s through business school where it was all about maximizing shareholder value, NBA 101 And I worked for a couple of public companies and it was next quarter, next quarter, with very little conversation about the other stakeholders. And I love this concept of conscious capitalism. I think it correlates extremely well with responsible franchising. And what we do is Cookie Cutters, and Mike, you said it extremely well, we're not just about a haircut. Our purpose is to provide joy, joy to the child, joy to the parent, which comes and is projected through the child. And one of the biggest things is the contribution that we potentially have with that client, with that child, as they progress. When they look in the mirror after a haircut and they feel good about themselves, and they might get a compliment as they walk out, that's something that sticks. And with that, it's a flywheel that then comes back to the franchisee and that positive feedback gives them purpose. So we've got to be well-rooted in the community. And our business is about acquisition, retention and frequency. And that doesn't exist without being conscious and being aware and having purpose. And everything we do, whether it be from a franchisee perspective, a customer perspective, or our client who is a child, everything revolves around that sense of responsibility. And we know that by doing that, the profit will come. And if you do things the right way with the right vision and the right why and the right purpose, then that retention portion will just perpetuate, which will then increase frequency. And then all your stakeholders, including our customers, you know, become your biggest advocate. So I'm super excited to be here. I'm super excited to kind of share my thoughts and and hopefully have some impact outside of just what we do.

**Mike Liwski** (4:52)
Amen to that.

**Stephen Sakach** (4:54)
I've said a lot of those words in some form or another over the past couple of years doing this show, just because, yeah, it's just right on the money. I want to dive in a little to so we talked about these kind of principles of Conscious Capitalism and you kind of mentioned like all the stakeholders versus when you're in business school and you got the one shareholder value that's not very motivating, it's not going to get you up out of bed. But bringing joy to children, how does the kind of principles of Conscious Capitalism and bringing joy to children, how does that like on a day-to-day basis, how do you operationalize that?

**Neal Courtney** (5:37)
Well, I think first and foremost, we're providing a service that is supposed to make the life easier for a parent. What we used to coin as stress-free for parents and fun for kids.