Conscious Capitalism in the Age of AI with Kevin Surace

**SPEAKER_2** (0:04)
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** (0:18)
Well, come back to the show, everyone, where we explore the connection purpose and how they transform businesses from the inside out. I'm Stephen Sakach with my co-host Mike, as always, and our special guest today. Research shows that companies rooted in conscious capitalism outperform the market by a factor of 10x or so over a 15-year period. This is all documented in the book of Firms of Endearment, if you haven't read that. As AI shapes industries at lightning speed these days, the question sometimes is not just what we can do with AI, but how we can ensure innovation serves humanity. We're going to dive in to some of that with our guest today. Mike, introduce our guest.

**Mike Liwski** (1:05)
Yeah, absolutely. Our guest is the perfect person to be able to talk to us about this subject. Our guest today is Kevin Surace. He is a Silicon Valley innovator, serial entrepreneur, CEO and futurist, and often recognized as the father of the AI virtual assistant, which we're looking forward to hearing more about that. Kevin has been named as well as the INC Magazine's Entrepreneur of the Year, a CNBC top innovator of the decade, a World Economic Forum tech pioneer, and was inducted into the RIT's Innovation Hall of Fame. He holds 95 patents worldwide and has led pioneering work on technologies ranging from the first cellular data smartphone, if you can even think back that far, and the first human-like AI virtual assistant to soundproof drywall, high R-value windows, AI-driven building management, and generative AI for QA automation, which we know is very, very needed. His work has even shaped the retrofits of the Empire State Building and the New York Stock Exchange. In fact, as well, Kevin has an upcoming book that you'll definitely want to check out, The Joy Success Cycle. It explores how shifting the way people think and act daily really leads to deeper fulfillment and sustainable success. So far from sort of your typical AI discussion, Kevin's perspective blends technical expertise with humor, vision, and a deep commitment to human centricity and human-centered progress, which we know our audience loves to think about and talk about. So Kevin, with that, welcome to our show. We are delighted to have you.

**Kevin Surace** (3:02)
Well, thank you for having me. I'm not sure I can live up to all that intro, and plus I've got to be funny now too, so I'll do the best I can.

**Stephen Sakach** (3:10)
So Kevin, you've seen, obviously from the intro, you know, innovation kind of from multiple angles over, you know, some period of time there, and...

**Kevin Surace** (3:21)
You mean decades and decades?

**Stephen Sakach** (3:23)
I don't, I'm not saying anything like that. I try to avoid that, but yeah, I'm feeling that too. I'm like decades ago when I blah, blah, blah. So, but how do you define conscious capitalism in today's business landscape, and why do you think it might be critical in the age of AI?

**Kevin Surace** (3:41)
Well, look, I think capitalism is an important piece, right? Just start there. What is capitalism? It means that we're building companies to build value for our shareholders and our employees, and that's because many of our employees are stockholders as well. They're shareholders, so we're trying to build value, right? That and thank goodness for capitalism, because without it, the countries that don't allow it, actually don't usually progress very far. So we know this works. Then you get to the question of, are you going to be the mean SOB CEO that runs a horrific culture that doesn't care about its customers or its employees? Are you going to be someone that promotes humanity and promotes what's good for your employees as well as what's good for the business? As well as certainly what's good for your customers or your vendors, right? There's no question, we talked about this a little bit earlier, that this sort of capitalism that includes the human element has outperformed those that didn't period full stop, right?
This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. Yet at the same time in Silicon Valley, we struggle with the following because people will always bring it up. Well, I'm going to pick on Larry Ellison. I shouldn't do that. But I'll pick on it because not conscious capitalism, right? Known as a certain kind of manager and you could work for them for three or four years and then you couldn't deal with it anymore. As an employee, customers would get in arguments with them. I mean, this is that's what you have. I'm not saying it's right or wrong. But then you say, yeah, but he made a couple hundred billion dollars, right? So there clearly are examples of people who manage companies in a pretty horrific way. And I think people like to point those out and say, well, look, you know, they manage in a horrific way. Yes, there are examples of there are a lot more examples where people looked at their employees as part of their team. They looked at their customers as part of their team, and that we're all in this together. So I think when you just look at it and say, I have to live 40 hours, 50, 60 hours a week with these people, they should be people I like. They should be people I want to have a coffee with, people I want to have a drink with, people I want to solve problems with, and people I'm going to listen to and appreciate their experience. And the same is true with customers. These are people I want to work with. You choose your customers wisely also. And then when customers see that they want to work with you, I'd say the number one reason people probably buy from any of my companies is, I have great people, I have great salespeople and all of that, but usually they'll meet me and we'll just get in a whole conversation, for example, about what's the industry look like in 10 years, and how does that impact thing, and what's your family, and you start to know each other, and then you build trust and then people want to work with you.