After a meteoric rise in the advertising industry and running one of the top advertising agencies, I shuttered my doors to build a small consultancy with a big purpose. That is for business to save the world.

BrightHouse specializes in articulating and activating company purpose. We understand that business is part of something larger than profits and losses: We are all interconnected. When businesses realize they are part of an interdependency network and not a competitive one, the world will truly be one.

In September 2010, 189 world leaders adopted the U.N. Millennium Declaration, which outlines a new global partnership to reduce and mitigate the ills of the world. I read that document and realized the vastness of business and the impact it can have on society. I wanted BrightHouse to be a place that helped business do good in the world. Business is now using purpose as a force that has the ability to tip the scales away from a business model that is self-serving to one that serves others.

• Created BrightHouse, an international consultancy, who in turn created the “purpose platform” for the business sector.
• Works with 20 companies annually to articulate, apply, and integrate company purpose to inspire meaningful positive impact on society.
• Teaches at Emory University’s Goizueta School of Business, inspiring over 2,000 students during his 15-year tenure to use business as a force for good.
• BrightHouse was acquired in 2015 by Boston Consulting Group.
• Featured speaker on global purpose at the World Economic Forum in Davos, January 2016.

Businesses can instill a sense of purpose within employees, so that employees ask, “What gets me up in the morning?” instead of “What keeps me up at night?” Purpose makes employees feel alive and gives their work greater meaning. This is especially true for the rising millennial generation and for the 76 million baby boomers in the U.S., who I call “kaboomers,” who feel a need for meaning in their lives and are switching careers.

Mission is what you do; vision is where you’re going. Purpose is why you – or your company – exist. Purpose is your company’s reason for being, and the positive impact you seek to make in the world.

For example, BrightHouse worked with American Standard to promote a product, their Champion toilet, and raise awareness of inadequate sanitation, which kills over 800,000 children annually. Their “Flush for Good” program, coordinated with the Gates Foundation, donated a latrine in a developing country for each purchase of a Champion toilet, raising the standard of sanitation and daily living across the globe. Many companies are bigger than some countries. Some can help provide capital and infrastructure for the more than four billion people living in developing markets; others can and should tackle education, gender inequality and childhood mortality.

BrightHouse is now a key advisor to the world’s most influential companies – Procter & Gamble, American Express, General Mills, and many other Fortune 100 companies.

In helping these organizations shift their focus from the life of business to the business of life, while mitigating the ills of the world, I discovered a new way to work and live in what I call “the caring economy” and my encore path.