You do not need more time, more money, or a different career to make a meaningful impact. You just need a better system for using what you already have.
My guest isScott Curran, a social impact lawyer, adviser, educator, founder and CEO of Beyond Advisers, and former general counsel of the Clinton Foundation. Scott’s own journey, from corporate law to philanthropy to helping organizations scale their impact globally, is proof that every experience you have accumulated matters, and that you can make a difference in ways you never imagined.
When leaders genuinely care about people and purpose, it is not just good for the soul. Companies that embed compassion into their culture grow three times faster than their market peers. We get into his practical framework for identifying your best talents for impact, how organizations can turn collective passion into something real rather than a PR exercise, and the immediate steps you can take right now.
If you have ever told yourself you’ll make an impact someday when you have more resources, a bigger budget, a different role, or when your company finally hits its revenue targets, Scott is about to call your bluff in the best possible way.
To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Listen in for…
- Ways you can create a lasting impact right where you are.
- How your PPP plus your TTT is the core of your social impact footprint.
- Looking deeper into what you uniquely do – your own competitive advantage.
“Ask yourself what it is you are most passionate about, what you will crawl through glass for, either as an individual or as an organization. Start there. Inventory that.” — Scott M. Curran
Episode References:
- Benevity 2026 State of Corporate Purpose report: benevity.com/state-of-corporate-purpose/2026
- The Guardian article on firms who stayed committed to DEI outperforming peers: theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/14/dei-policy-company-performance
- The Empathy Edge: Denise Roberson: Mistakes Leaders and Boards Make When Thinking About Purpose
About Scott M. Curran: Social impact lawyer, educator, author of Better Good: A Simple System for Creating Lasting Impact
Scott M. Curran is a social impact lawyer, adviser, and educator who has spent more than twenty-five years helping leaders and institutions turn good intentions into scalable, lasting impact. He is the founder and CEO of Beyond Advisers and a former general counsel of the Clinton Foundation, where he advised a global nonprofit operating in more than forty countries. He works across the nonprofit, corporate, and legal sectors, advising boards, executives, and organizations on governance, strategy, and systems to do good well at scale. His work spans major foundations, companies, and cross-sector initiatives tackling some of the world’s most complex challenges. He teaches social impact law—recognized by Crain’s Chicago Business as “one of the coolest courses for law students”—and hosts the podcast, Better Good with Scott M. Curran. He lives in Chicago with his wife, Amy, their family, and their rescue dogs. He is the author of Better Good: A Simple System for Creating Lasting Impact.
Connect with Scott:
Beyond Advisers (Get your free Action Plan): scottmcurran.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/scottmcurran
Instagram: instagram.com/scottmcurran
Book: Better Good: bettergoodbook.com
Connect with Maria:
Get Maria’s books: Red-Slice.com/books
Hire Maria to speak: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-Ross
Take the LinkedIn Learning Courses! Leading with Empathy and Balancing Empathy, Accountability, and Results as a Leader
LinkedIn: Maria Ross
Instagram: @redslicemaria
Facebook: Red Slice
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Maria Ross 00:04
Welcome to the Empathy Edge podcast, the show that proves why cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I’m your host Maria Ross. I’m a speaker, author, mom, facilitator, and empathy advocate, and here you’ll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy, from trends and research to the future of work to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn’t just good for society. It’s great for business. You do not need more time, more money, or a different career to make a meaningful impact. You just need a better system for using what you already have. My guest today is Scott Curran, a social impact lawyer, advisor, educator, founder, and CEO of Beyond Advisors, and former general counsel of the Clinton Foundation, where he advised a global nonprofit operating in more than 40 countries. Scott’s own journey from corporate law to philanthropy to helping organizations scale their impact globally is proof that every experience you’ve accumulated matters, and that you can make a difference in ways you never imagined. He teaches what Crane’s Chicago Business called one of the coolest courses for law students, hosts the Better Good podcast, and recently launched his new book, Better Good: A Simple System for Creating Lasting Impact. Today, Scott shares how anyone can create lasting impact from exactly where they sit. When leaders genuinely care about people and purpose, it’s not just good for the soul. Companies that embed compassion into their culture grow three times faster than their market peers. Empathy is not the soft side of business; it’s the competitive advantage. We get into his practical framework for identifying your best talents for impact, how organizations can turn collective passion into something real rather than a PR exercise, and the immediate steps you can take right now. If you’ve ever told yourself you’ll make an impact someday when you have more resources, a bigger budget, a different role, or when your company finally hits its revenue targets, Scott is about to call your bluff in the best possible way. Take a listen. Welcome, Scott Curran, to the Empathy Edge podcast. I am really excited to talk to you today. We’ve been jibber jabbering on our pre-call, and we’re finally pressing record to get going with this interview to talk about your new book, Better Good, and how everyday people can create change and lasting impact, and how they can do it by caring and connecting with each other. So, welcome to the show.
Scott M. Curran 02:57
Thanks for having me, Maria. I’m thrilled to be with you.
Maria Ross 02:58
Awesome, awesome. So let’s start where we always start. We’ve heard about all your your accomplishments and your accolades, but tell us the story behind how you got into this work, and why are you so passionate about this? What why this book now?
Scott M. Curran 03:12
Yeah, it’s it reminds me of the great axiom that you can only connect the dots looking backwards. And so, I’ll tell the story forward, but it’s fun to reflect on it backwards. I got into it because I went straight from undergrad to law school. I went to law school not wanting to be a lawyer. I thought it would be a great education. It was the late ’90s. Everybody got jobs out of law school, even if you weren’t going to be a practicing lawyer. So I thought that would be me.
Maria Ross 03:33
Yeah,
Scott M. Curran 03:33
I found myself 24 years old practicing corporate law at a law firm against what I thought would be the case. So I kind of always knew I’d be looking for something else, but I also absorbed every minute of value I could get out of that early experience. And then, a very long story short, but a true butterfly effect situation was I became aware of a grad school in Arkansas, and they were recruiting for the first class, the inaugural class of a master’s degree in public service at the University of Arkansas at the brand new Clinton School of Public Service. I had no connection to Arkansas. I had no connection to the Clinton world, and I applied. And a very long story short is that that set into effect a series of events, and wound up moving to Arkansas. I went for 18 months for this degree program stayed for five years. Had no plans to stay in the Clinton world, and eventually stayed there for 10 years. So I took this mid-career pivot back to school to get a master’s degree in public service because that was the something else I was looking for, and wound up in this world of philanthropy and started as an intern at the over 30 years old. I was an intern with mostly other 18-year-old undergrad interns.
Maria Ross 04:46
Yeah,
Scott M. Curran 04:47
except for one person whose quote is actually at the top of the book. I happened to be paired for that internship with another guy who was also not an undergrad. He was an Air Force veteran, and he was out of Goldman Sachs, and. He was also making a career pivot. He is now today the chief impact officer at Chobani, the yogurt and dairy company. Amazing! He is there. My former intern compatriot, Nishant Roy, is there on the front cover of the book with me, and he’s he’s also an impact. And so that experience led me on this 10 year journey at the Clinton Foundation, circa 2006 to 2016. Which, if anybody’s doing the math, yes, that 2016, I wound up as I started as an intern and I finished as general counsel of a global nonprofit with 4,000 people in 40 countries and 35 U.S. states working on over a dozen different groundbreaking, fun and exciting initiatives, and then it got turned into a political football during the 2016 election, and I had been planning to leave long before that. I failed miserably, so I stayed with the foundation, and in many regards, still stay close to it today. And I’m very, very proud of the work I did there for a decade. And so that pivot point, which I start with in the book, I talk about how I was trying to figure out where I would go next, and one of the last things I was considering, and probably the last thing on my list was that I would-I knew I would never be a consultant. So for the past 11 years, since 2016, I have been, or 2015, I have been a consultant in the social impact space. This is why you
Maria Ross 06:13
never say never. Never what I’ve learned in my life, right? Yeah, yeah.
Scott M. Curran 06:17
Never say never, or and don’t tempt fate. But for a variety of reasons, I never thought I’d be a consultant. I didn’t have a great opinion of consultants. I’m still sometimes pretty skeptical of consultants. But I started a social impact consulting firm. I knew that I was leaving the Clinton Foundation and that I would never probably leave another platform that big again. But I realized that most of the nation’s approximately 2 million nonprofits didn’t have a general counsel, couldn’t afford one full time, and I thought, well, it would really be a bummer if all this advice, all this guidance, and all these tools we’ve curated over this decade of incredible globe impacting work went to waste. And so I ultimately figured out the best way for me to share that with the world was on a consulting basis. And so I’ve now spent the past almost 11 years, 11 years actually this month, as we recorded in the social impact consulting space. And then, you know, during those 11 years, I thought, how do I scale that? How do I give away these sort of not so secret secrets of how the best in the world do good? How everybody’s using the exact same framework, and because everybody’s motivated ultimately to do good in this world, yeah. And so that’s how I got here. I turned a corporate law career into a little bit of a pivot into a nonprofit general counsel toolkit that I then took into the consulting world. And to me, the only way to truly give it away without creating a juggernaut of a consulting firm was supporting the book, and so that’s how I got to where you and I are today.
Maria Ross 07:46
Amazing, amazing. Well, and you know the pivots just keep coming, but I find, and I don’t. It sounds like this is true for you too. The pivots happen, but they’re actually really connected. It’s not like you’re making complete left turns, and here you are again, kind of using your law background to aid social impact organizations so they can do more and exponentially have more impact. Right? I started as a change management consultant, and then I got back into my love of marketing, and and then I had a long marketing corporate career. Then I started my own brand consultancy. Fast forward, now I’m talking about empathy and human centered leadership in the age of AI, but I’m leaning on all the change management skills I learned back in my early 20s, right, and the marketing skills as well. It’s all kind of interrelated. So when I look at the dots, it’s like, of course, that’s I went from there to there to there. It sounds like you did too,
Scott M. Curran 08:39
and I have a 15 and a 17-year-old, and the 17-year-olds applying to college, and the 15-year-olds going on all the visits and present for all the family conversations around it. And we keep explaining to them that you can’t predict the way it’s going to unfold, but you can absorb what you’re going through and realize that it’s equipping you in ways that are very exciting, even though you can’t yet predict it. And part of that uncertainty is also part of the excitement of it all, and that life’s an adventure. Yeah, and you know you can’t control all the waves of life that come your way, but you can decide whether or not you’re going to get pummeled by them, or whether you’re going to try to ride them. And sometimes you’ll have have better rides than others, and sometimes you will get pummeled, and you won’t be able to predict it all. But it’s just part of it. And I find that to be when I when I do informational interviews, which I also talk a little bit about early on in the book, and I still love doing with people to help them, is to say, “Hey, listen, the best you can do is prepare and just soak up every bit of it. I knew for those five years I was practicing corporate law that was not my destiny; that I would not do that forever, and I had no idea what would come next. But I knew it was my job to do the best I could and to soak up as much as I could learn for it, and I never would have been able to do any of the things that came next had I not had that mentality. So yes, and to any young people listening, or early career folks, or people who are considering a mid-career pivot, know that whatever it is you’re working through, slogging through, wondering about, it’s. Preparing you for the next great thing-it
Maria Ross 10:01
really is. It’s you got to file it all away. I love it. Okay, so I love this book, and personally, what I love about it is that it talks about, in my perception, it talks about how everyday people can have an impact. Anyone who has a desire to make the world a better place, and I think I, you, like many of us in recent years, are wanting to make the world a better place. And partly it’s you know being in my 50s, partly it’s being a mom, partly it’s just you know just what’s going on in the world. But you have simple questions that people can ask themselves about how they can figure out how to identify the best ways they, with their unique talents, can make an impact. So, can you walk us through some of those questions?
Scott M. Curran 10:50
Sure, and I’ll start with basically the premise of the book. And it evolved this way. I originally started off writing a very different, very nerdy book. I wanted to put like sort of the general counsel toolkit in a box or in a book for the nation’s 2 million nonprofits, and it became this bigger book about how we are all wired for good, and we like to do good in groups. And so, I start the book by noting humans are wired for good in a whole bunch of ways. But like, we have these four-I’d call them the happy chemicals in the book. Simon Sinek calls them the happy chemicals: oxytocin, endorphins, serotonin, and dopamine. They’re coursing through us at all times, we feel them when we do good of any kind. Picking up a piece of trash, holding the door, giving someone a compliment, smiling at someone the way Dolly Parton would encourage us to. If you see someone without a smile, give them yours. All that stuff makes us feel good. And then here’s a fascinating part of this biology, and a way you can hack it and curate your scroll for it, which is you don’t even have to be the one doing good to feel those feelings. You can just watch it. You can just see someone else doing it, and you know this if you’ve ever seen one of those tear jerking, heartwarming videos in your Instagram scroll or your social scroll, and you’ve seen somebody doing a random act of kindness. It’s the same things that make you feel good. So humans are wired for this. It doesn’t matter what the headlines are or what the headwinds those headlines create are, even if those are persistent in this quote-unquote moment we find ourselves in. Because I started writing this book a lot, lot longer before I knew what this moment would be like, and and so we’re wired for it. We always have been. We still are betting against that is betting against human nature, and it’s a bad bet. So we humans are wired for it. We take that wiring with us everywhere in our homes, in our neighborhoods, in our communities, in where we go to work, and when we go to the store or make investments. All those things, all the things about doing good that some people want to convince you are too much or not good, etc. etc. Those are things that are part of who we are. So, if you think about that, if you accept that reality, and you should because it’s true, and science backs it up, as does business performance. By the way, for any business leaders who are wondering how this applies, it absolutely applies. That’s
Maria Ross 12:56
what we’re all about here. Yeah,
Scott M. Curran 12:57
100% And and you will be more successful, more profitable, and have have greater talent and customer retention. The more you lean into this, and the data keeps proving it over and over again, including some recent reporting fresh out this past summer that shows that even in this moment we’re in, those who have stuck to it are as profitable and in most cases more profitable than those who retreated from corporate purpose or impact or what we will call you know connecting to the world around us, doing good for others. So if you accept the fact that we’re wired for this, right, and you want to bring that wiring, the best thing you can do is find what I call in the book your Goldilocks zone-not too much, not too little, just right. That or in the I’m a nerdy four-time space camper, so the Goldilocks zone is a habitable zone, the place where life can not only survive but thrive.
Maria Ross 13:41
Right. When you
Scott M. Curran 13:42
find your Goldilocks zone, the things you care about most and are best at doing, that overlap is your Goldilocks zone for impact. It’s where you are passionate, and I talk a lot about passions. There’s a whole chapter on it. We’re passionate about a lot of things, but if you drill down to the things you are most passionate about what I call your crawl through glass passions-the things that never get boring, that stay with you all the time, always, and in always for years and years. Even though your contributions to them and interest in them may wane with the seasons or change with the seasons of life, your if you focus on what you are most passionate about, or if you’re a business leader or an organizational leader, what you as a business and an organization and a community, whether that’s your talent, your customers care most about, you will put down deep roots that withstand the winds of change over time and help you withstand the headlines and the headwinds that can sometimes push you in different directions. So ask yourself what it is you are most passionate about. What you will crawl through glass for, either as an individual or as an organization. Start there. Start there. Inventory that. And if you’re leading an organization, ask what you and your teams can uniquely do in this world that you are most. Passionate about based on this impact footprint, I encourage readers to discover for themselves using this framework. I make crystal clear in the book, which is the same framework everybody uses. Yeah, every great impactful organization and individual is using the same framework all the time, which is why I put it in the book. So find focus there. Start asking what you are most passionate about, what you will crawl through glass for and what you are best at, and you will quickly identify your Goldilocks zone. Start there.
Maria Ross 15:25
Love it. So let’s talk about that framework a little bit because you do have a framework, and for maybe for someone hearing it for the first time,
Scott M. Curran 15:33
sure.
Maria Ross 15:33
What is that framework?
Scott M. Curran 15:35
So it’s super simple. It’s six core components and three advanced tactics, and it’s super easy to remember. It’s PPP: your profile, your platform, and your passions, plus your time, your talent, and your treasure. Your profile, your platform, and your passions are who you are, where you show up, and what you care about. And the 3t’s are what you bring to the equation. You bring some combination of your time, your talent, and treasure. And you don’t have to have your own treasure. There’s this misleading assumption: is that we think we have to have some amount of our own money, or come into more money, or that we have to write big checks making. We have to have open money. Yeah, yes, not at all the case. And in fact, the data proves this to be true. You don’t have to have any money at all to mobilize treasure these days because we have these crazy little devices in our pockets and on our desktops that connect us to the world, and you can mobilize resources that don’t cost you a penny. So your PPP plus your TTT is your core of your social impact footprint. And then what I have found about how the best in the world do good. And when I say the best, I’m not just talking about the big names with which I’ve worked. I’m talking about street corner nonprofits too. I’m talking about hometown heroes and leaders who we respect and admire, who may not be famous, but whose work and impact should be, those people tend to focus on the 3s’s, the last three of this framework, which are scale, sustainability, and storytelling. And while those are advanced tactics, they’re not hard. Scale is just doing more of what works. Sustainability is doing it over time, even when the seasons of life change for individuals and organizations alike, and finding ways to stay true to our core passions throughout time, and doing more of what works over time, even though what it looks like may change. And then storytelling is something we tend to think is reserved for other people, but it’s not. And we’re all telling stories about ourselves, what we care about, what we value, how we engage every day in more dynamic and interesting ways than ever before. So the 3s’s are scale, sustainability, and storytelling. The other magic of storytelling is that not only are you telling people what you stand for, what you care about, you’re providing an invitation for them to join you.
Maria Ross 17:36
Yeah, well, that’s where empathy comes in, right? Empathy is magnified when you’re able to tell the human story behind it, so you can share the facts, you can share the figures, you can share the data, but let’s talk about what happened to Scott, right? Let’s talk about what happened to Judy and their family. Let’s talk about what happened to this nonprofit or this community over here, and that’s why that’s such a part of the journalistic practice. Is how do we take these big things and bring them down to a human level? How do we talk about that individual immigrant or that individual refugee or that individual person who defied the odds? We do that because actually creates it creates empathy. It creates like oh, I can see myself in that story, and I can relate to it, and I can start to emotionally connect to it, and that’s what some of the best impact organizations are able to do. Is yes, be good stewards of the money, manage the operations, manage the systems, manage the processes, and they’re able to share the stories.
Scott M. Curran 18:38
Strong agree. Storytelling, I think, feel like is the whole game right now, and we see it in the platforms we’re on, the social media platforms that we spend time on, or that we consume stories from. And if you think about your own life, your own work, what and or your your own organization, if you lead one, and how you show up in the world, what story you’re telling, again, it takes the abstract and makes it concrete. Either what the issue is that you uniquely serve, how you make a difference, how you create impact, and then it makes it personal, right? Like when we show up, the world is different. When we help in this way,
Maria Ross 19:07
yeah.
Scott M. Curran 19:08
I pick up a piece of trash on every walk I take my dog on, then I know I’m making my community a cleaner and better place. And if I share that example with other people, then it has a force multiplier effect and it creates a ripple, and that makes all of us feel good and it makes things inherently better. And by the way, none of that requires you to start up a new entity or organization or fundraise or write a size large check to anybody. Those are things that literally people do every day. To and I talk about this F word in the book quite a bit. Feel better at a time when feeling better is in high demand and something that we can all play a role in.
Maria Ross 19:41
Yeah, I mean, I talk about this a lot in terms of empathetic and human-centered leadership. Is you actually don’t have to be a leader by title. Everyone has a sphere of influence, and they’re able to impact the people that are most directly around them, or the team that they have, or even just the colleagues that they they. Influence on a daily basis, your family, your friends, your neighbors, your community. So everyone has one, whether it’s five people or you’re a CEO of a company that has 5000. So within your sphere of influence, can you create that bright light where people? I always talk about microcultures within teams, for example, of like you don’t have to wait for your CEO on high to say we’re going to have a culture transformation project, and we’re going to be more human centered, we’re going to care about each other more. No, I’ve been a part of organizations where the leader of my team created a microculture where we all felt empowered. We felt like what we did mattered. They told the stories. They gave us the purpose, and we were our own little bright light. And then, what happens when you do that is others see that and go, “What’s going on over there? What’s in the water in that department or on that team? Why are they? Why are they killing it? Why are they able to smash their results and achieve their goals? Maybe I can do. I can find success that way. Back to your point earlier about you can now start to picture yourself in it and go. Let me look at what they’re doing and just replicate that throughout the organization or throughout the community.
Scott M. Curran 21:10
One of the things I have found most interesting, exciting, and enlightening about this entire process is how enthusiasm is contagious. How positivity and encouragement is something people are so hungry for and want to reciprocate. One of my favorite little quotes is “Momentum begets momentum, and you know people are attracted to energy and enthusiasm and positivity. Yes, it’s true that on social media and in the news, negative. Yeah, it can
Maria Ross 21:32
be used for evil too. Yeah, there’s the
Scott M. Curran 21:35
greatest ray of sunshine produces a dark shadow, and you know our greatest strengths can be our greatest weaknesses. But we as humans, we love good stories. We love being attracted to stories, and and negative stories do sell. They travel quickly, and negative things can be interesting and shiny objects too. But people love optimism. People love energy and enthusiasm, and when and we all have a little bit of FOMO. And when we see an organization rocking it out, or it works in a very large global nonprofit, and people worked all over the country and all over the world. But people knew that our little legal department was super happy. We were positive, enthusiastic. We took pride that our little internal FAQs on our website said, “Are you the Department of No? Because most most legal departments are known or labeled as the Department of No. Yes, our FAQ said, “Are you the Department of No? and the answer said no. See what we did there? Smiley
Maria Ross 22:23
face. Yeah,
Scott M. Curran 22:24
that just kind of projection. People like you guys are so fun. You’re not like usual lawyers. That was a high compliment in a global nonprofit that had pretty high stakes and consequences for its work. But that enthusiasm-it’s
Maria Ross 22:36
the joy. It’s the pillar of the empathetic and effective leadership framework. It’s joy. It’s the magic ingredient, and it’s not about toxic positivity. I want to be really clear. It’s not about being Pollyanna because you can be a truth teller and go, “Yeah, this really sucks right now. It’s tough. Here’s how we’re going to get through
Scott M. Curran 22:57
it, and we’re going
Maria Ross 22:58
to find the joy in the drudgery. We’re going to find the joy in the tedium. We’re going to find the joy when things get tough, because that’s what’s going to carry us through.
Scott M. Curran 23:07
You literally are the first podcast I’ve done where the host has gotten to that line before me, where I’m like, “This is not toxic positivity. This is not a Pollyanna-ish view of the world. Look, I work with clients all over the world that are addressing hard issues,
Maria Ross 23:21
right?
Scott M. Curran 23:22
These and these are foreboding and scary situations and times, and there are real consequences to this. But people still say, you know, how are you so positive? What Kool Aid are you drinking? Whatever your your axiom is for that, I was like, because these are the helpers. These are the people who are trying to do it, and that like attracts like, and it doesn’t change the fact that people are showing up every day, digging deep and doing the hard work, and that leaders of organizations who care about the world in which they operate, which are most, and care about the teams with whom they work every day, which is most good leaders, and the people who are listening to this podcast know this is not our fingers aren’t in our ears. We’re not closing our eyes. We’re not being ignorant to the realities of the world. We’re realizing that we have an opportunity to show up as the helpers. And if we take care of each other first, and the causes we care deeply about, the communities in which we work, or whom we serve, or who our products and services support, and we lead with that. It is contagious in the best ways possible,
Maria Ross 24:25
right? And that’s why you know I love this because we’re saying very similar things coming at it from a different angle, which is that I always talk about empathetic leadership does not mean everything’s going great. It doesn’t mean you’re crying on the floor with your employees every day. It doesn’t mean you’re constantly focused on the personal and not on the work that needs to get done. It’s not either or leadership. It’s what I call both and leadership, and that’s what it sounds like this is all about. And given that, I want to ask this question, which is, how do you help an organization find their collection? Passion. I know the ways that I’ve done it when I’ve done my brand strategy work with clients, helping them figure out what’s the larger purpose. Right? You all could be working anywhere to get a paycheck. Why are you here? What is the actual fundamental reason why we’re here, and what’s getting us excited to be here? So, from your standpoint, because I know you talk about this in book. How do you turn that into something meaningful rather than just a rah rah PR exercise?
Scott M. Curran 25:27
Or in the worst case of that spectrum, is performative PR, formative
Maria Ross 25:31
PR,
Scott M. Curran 25:32
greenwashing, or you know, fake purpose or fake good. Look, those are real things, and those are real things on the nonprofit side too. There’s bad nonprofits, but we shouldn’t let a few bad apples. Spoil it for the bunch. So the the very top of the book says, “Start where you are, use what you have, make the world a better place. That is literally what the best in the world do. Is they say, “Well, they do an inventory. And so the answer to your question is to do an inventory. Anybody can go and grab. I have an action plan in the back of the book for both individuals as well as one for organizations. You can also go to my website and grab it for free. You don’t have to give it, but use the action plan. Start. You don’t even have to have an action plan. You can have what I have here on my desk. You can just start with a post-it note. But if you grab a pen or an Apple note or whatever your note-taking app of personal preference might be, inventory what you do uniquely well in organizational speak. What is your competitive advantage? What is uniquely yours to give, and this works for individuals, each of us as humans, and it works for us as organizations. And that really goes to your profile, your platform, and your passion. Start there. Start with who you are and how you show up in the world. Platform is where you are and where you show up in the world, and and then your passions are clearly your passions. Once you start inventorying these things, it gets bigger and bigger and bigger. And anybody with skepticism or scarcity mindset, just start. Just give it a try. Yeah, literally can’t hurt a thing, and it won’t cost you anything. Try it. Prove me wrong.
Maria Ross 26:53
Prove Scott wrong. Prove him wrong.
Scott M. Curran 26:54
Your profile is bigger, greater, more diverse, interesting, and exciting than you give yourself credit for. Your platform and platforms are bigger and more expansive than you think they are, and they get. And the more you, and my favorite, one of my favorite other little quotes is: “The more it works, the more it works. Just keep saying it over and over and over again. The more you see it, the more you see it. The more you experience it, the more you experience it. It is truly this fantastic. But the answer remains: start where you are. Use what you have. Focus on how you make the world a better place. Whether that’s for you as an individual,
Maria Ross 27:25
yeah,
Scott M. Curran 27:25
or whether it’s for the organizations where you work, lead, serve, support. Maybe it’s outside of the workplace with other organizations with which you’re engaged. Start with that inventory because momentum begets momentum, and it becomes incredibly powerful. And the more you engage with others in that process, the more edges you’ll see, the more your platforms expand, the more the stakeholders you serve get more rich and diverse in all across all dimensions of diversity, which is a beautiful, wonderful word we should use more often, not less often.
Maria Ross 27:55
Yes, Amen. Well, and I think what’s also true about this is when you’re looking at the organization, that’s to exactly your point. This is not an exercise that you do in a black box with just three executives in a room. This is really where you really need to open up to the rest of the organization and all your employees, and get the input from various points of view. This is why empathy is so powerful because other people may see something you’ve missed, other people may industry is
Scott M. Curran 28:25
full of these examples
Maria Ross 28:26
exactly, and so find a way to involve the whole organization and give everyone a voice in that. Yes, you can have a process by which you distill down and you pare down and you make it something that everyone can rally around, but don’t be afraid to go into the nooks and crannies of the organization to get the input because again it might turn into one of my favorite phrases from empathetic leaders is “Huh, I never thought of it that way. Right? That’s where you get the magic. That’s where it’s like I’m not going to have a management team or a leadership team that looks and sounds and thinks exactly like me because then I miss those. Huh? I never thought of it that way. Moments, and I love what you’re saying about making that into. I mean, think about just let’s get practical for a second. How much fun would it be if you went to work tomorrow, and your leadership team said we’re kicking off whatever you want to call it-a collective purpose project, right? We want to hear from you. What are you good at? What your What is your team good at? What do you think this company is good at? Everyone, weigh in. That would be so fun to just do something different within the organization and say, “Oh wow, they’re asking me what I think.
Scott M. Curran 29:37
And if anybody listening is skeptical or is wondering if you really have the time for this, or you don’t want to have to kick off an activity. Fine, cool. Let me meet you where you are. Try this as a starting point. This is for the skeptics. I strongly agree that everybody should go and do that. I offer the action plan. Go ahead and use that.
Maria Ross 29:54
Yeah.
Scott M. Curran 29:54
Start there if it’s helpful. It’s a one-page tool. Right. But just say if you are a leader. If you’re an exec, a board member, an executive leader, a C-suite leader, a program leader, even in a in a team, your microclimate example, right? Of just your own team or my legal department back at the Clinton Foundation with 4000 colleagues in 40 countries, we weren’t all in one place at any one time,
Maria Ross 30:13
right?
Scott M. Curran 30:13
Try this: just say, “I care about what you care about. Will you tell me what that
Maria Ross 30:20
is? One email.
Scott M. Curran 30:21
What do you care about?
Scott M. Curran 30:22
And if somebody’s like, “Well, what do
Scott M. Curran 30:23
you mean by this? Is this work personal or work? Sure. Yes. Either whichever one you’re comfortable with. I want to hear about it. I want to know more about what it is. Okay, let’s start with you individually. What What are the three causes you care about most in your life and in your work? See what comes up. Just tell people you care about what they care about, and watch the conversations open. Watch the lane open. If you’re like, “Hey, that’s way too crazy. That’s too scary. I have 1000 people. I’m a huge org. Okay, great. Try this instead. What do you think is uniquely ours to give? How do we show up in a way that makes the world a better place? I’ve done this with organizations like Starbucks. Starbucks answers the question with a at least they used to. I can’t speak to what they do now, but they used to answer it with their first mile and last mile focus. First mile are their coffee, tea, and cocoa growers. Where are their products origin?
Maria Ross 31:11
Origin
Scott M. Curran 31:13
farmers in countries all over the world who grow coffee, tea, and cocoa. What? How do we work with them? How can we make an impact with them? By the way, that just becomes a rapidly, awesomely expanding conversation.
Maria Ross 31:27
Yes.
Scott M. Curran 31:28
Then last mile. So first mile and last mile. Last mile are the places we all go in communities to purchase that coffee, tea, and cocoa product, among other products from Sala. We care about our communities. We care about our team members, our partners in those communities who open and operate those stores every day, we care about our customers who are in those communities, who consume our products, who go in and interact with our team members. Okay, great. We just took this global juggernaut company that means lots of things to lots of people. Right, people have lots of thoughts and feelings about it. We just said, well, what if they just focused on caring most about the first mile stakeholders and the last mile stakeholders. The stuff in between will take care of itself. That’s what the business does. But how can we make the biggest impact there? If you’re skeptical, if you think your organization is so big, so unwieldy, so hard, hey, Starbucks figured it out. Chobani has figured it out. Yeah, you can too. Yeah,
Maria Ross 32:18
this stuff scales. That’s the thing. Oh, it
Scott M. Curran 32:20
scales
Maria Ross 32:21
well, and you know you’re. I’m watching you, and for folks that are listening and don’t see the video on YouTube behind you, you’ve got the believe sign from Ted Lasso from the show on Apple, and I just wrote an article for my Forbes column about the four leadership lessons of Ted Lasso that are putting all leadership coaches out of business. Right, so great, and especially in this season, so believe was something that Ted Lasso brought to the team. We, if you’ve watched the show, he brought it to the men’s football team, soccer team, right? UK, and he brought that. That wasn’t their idea to make that sign. It was his idea to make that sign. Then he brings it to the women’s team that he’s coaching now, and he puts the same sign up, but they don’t have the same response to it, right? So what he does is he encourages them to make it their own, and they start adding post-it notes to it. Believe and win. Believe and smile. Believe and get it done. Whatever it is in their own. So this is the power of that. You can throw out a straw man to the organization of hey this is just a starting point and then let them mold it let them decide where can we have an impact beyond just making money and that is what we mean by purpose we don’t mean that you have to be philanthropic and give away all your profits as an organization all we’re saying is within the confines of the work that we do, how can we make the world a better place? And you’re reminding me, Scott, of this woman that I met decades ago, who owned a hair salon in Seattle, and she talked about at an event that I went to. She talked about the fact that she was her profession was doing hair, but her purpose was to make the community a better place, and she did that through very specific kind of job training, having her her salon give back, hosting events at her salon that were for the community. So she found the way she was already making a living. She said, “This is how I make a living: is doing hair. But my purpose is to give back to my community, and I do that through the four walls of my salon. And I just was so moved by that. I was like, ‘That’s incredible!
Scott M. Curran 34:34
There is a very short anecdotal story that isn’t very long in the middle of the book. I can’t remember exactly where it was, but there’s a gentleman named Lorenzo who was a barber in Little Rock, Arkansas. His personal story is is just spectacular learning, and he started a company or an organization called the Confess Project. Lorenzo was born in a prison to a mother who was incarcerated, and he he he was a quote unquote just a barber. What he realized was the barber shop was a safe space for men to talk about mental health.
Maria Ross 35:05
Bingo!
Scott M. Curran 35:06
And so he started this program, and it has gone global, and it has gotten incredible attention. And if you just think about the platform as you described it, whether it’s a beauty shop or a barber shop or anything else, it expand. I talk very briefly about a very profound experience I had when my dad was in his final days in hospice care at a hospital, a DoorDash driver dropped off one of many meals we’d gotten, and she just took a second, an extra second of kindness, and said, “And I don’t know why. We, my brother and I, were dressed in like khakis and blue polos. We could have been, you know, administrators or workers at the hospital, but for whatever reason, she got the vibe, and she’s, or maybe she does this with everybody, and and that would be amazing. Yeah, she said, “I don’t know why you’re here, but I hope you have a blessed day. And I said, “Thank you so much. We’re actually here saying a sad goodbye to our dad, but that really hits home. So thank you. And she said, “Then I’ll be praying for you and your family on the road ahead. And that was it. That what a great, amazing, poignant, and touching reminder and use of platform that we don’t know how in any given day how we show up, how we interact and engage. It cost her nothing. Yeah, cost her no extra time, no extra money, or no extra anything. And it had a huge impact on me. And shout out DoorDash, train that because that’s amazing. Is it going to work in every interaction? No. Sometimes I just want my chocolate milkshake from Portillo’s, but you never know the impact you’re going to
Scott M. Curran 36:30
have. A
Scott M. Curran 36:30
barber having a conversation, somebody in a salon somewhere, etc. So just these are the platforms we’re on every day. These are the interactions we have every day. And I want to say something about something else you said earlier. By the way, this action for those who are like, all right, this is a little bit on the rah-rah side for me. Yeah, we are looking to scooch. Okay, scooch, Pollyanna. Maybe a touch talks a positive. Okay, great. I have great news for you. Look at the numbers. Yeah, the numbers across decades and dozens of countries continue to prove over and over that the more you care about people who work with you and for you, and who you serve with your product or service, purpose-driven businesses grow three times faster than their peer competitors that do not have purpose baked into the business. Yeah, customers routinely cite 65 to 75% of the time that they will buy a product or service from a company that aligns with their values than a competitor that does not, and that is across 25 countries over decades. Do not let headlines. Do not let politically expedient taglines about wokeness or anything else distract you from the reality of human goodness.
Maria Ross 37:47
Yes,
Scott M. Curran 37:47
and friends, it will make your business or your organization more profitable or lucrative. It will increase team retention, talent retention, and will increase innovation, performance,
Maria Ross 38:00
customer loyalty, customer retention, all the things. It
Scott M. Curran 38:04
is a business competitive advantage. Period. Always, and but and there is reporting out of the past six months. We’re recording this in October of 2026. Check out the Benevity Impact Report from the summer. Check out Guardians reporting on this. Check out what has happened with shareholder lawsuits that are anti-ESG, DEI, etc. etc. I’m not here to pick political scabs. I’m here to point out that the businesses that have stayed the course, even though they have had to change the way that they speak about it or the volume at which they speak about it publicly, those that have stayed the course have remained as profitable or more profitable than their competitors that retreated on purpose. Yes, it is competitive. Absolutely, always has been, still is, always will be.
Maria Ross 38:50
It will, and that’s you know the whole thing that got me into this work was let me make the business case for empathy and compassion, and it’s there. The data is. I was delighted to find the data and the research that proved that over and over again, and we just have more and more data. Like I started researching this in 2016, we have more and more data that is showing that. And especially on the customer side, there was one study that showed that 97% of customers say that empathy is the most important aspect of their customer experience, or when they contact support, even if their problem is not solved, if they are treated well, and how do how do you get your employees to treat your customers well? You treat your employees well. You treat their community well, and this is why you know when people go, well, we’re just here to to sell and make money. You are part of the ecosystem of the community and of the world. You employ people who go back to their homes, who go back to their schools, who go back to their families. It has an impact, and I’m so, you know, if you’re sensing my frustration, Scott, I’m just so tired of this idea that we are separate beings at work than we are in our personal lives. We are not the TV show. Severance. We do not have a chip that makes us forget what is going on in the world. And so, the more that the place where we work gets involved in the community in which we live and the world in which we live in a positive way, the more loyal we’re going to be to that organization, the more innovative, the higher performing, all of the things. So I love this, and for anyone listening, yes, this has just been a conversation of two people who agreed with each other speaking to each other. But it’s because we want you to check out the book “Better Good: A Simple System for Creating Lasting Impact. So, Scott, thank you so much for your time and your insights today, and thank you for writing this book. And I, I really feel that both individuals and organizational leaders can benefit from this book, and not just nonprofits, but they can.
Scott M. Curran 40:47
It’s designed for everyone.
Maria Ross 40:49
Yeah, I love it. Okay, so we are going to have all your links in the show notes, of course, so people can get the book and get in touch with you. But for anyone that’s on the go right now, where’s the best place they can find out more about this work? Sure,
Scott M. Curran 40:59
if you’re looking for a social platform, I’m most active and present on LinkedIn. I’m at Scott M Curran on LinkedIn, and I you can use the same scottmcurran.com to go to my personal website and find that action plan. You don’t have to get the book. I’d love it if you did. Yeah, the book will take in advanced tactics of it, but you can get that action plan for free on my website as well. Start where you are. Use what you have. You’re already doing more good than you give yourself credit for, and you can do it better starting where you are with what you already have.
Maria Ross 41:24
Better, good, love it. Thank you so much, and thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the Empathy Edge podcast. If you like what you heard, you know what to do. Please rate and review and share it with a friend or a colleague. And until next time, please remember that cash flow, creativity, and compassion are not mutually exclusive. Take care, be kind. For more on how to achieve radical success through empathy, visit theempathyedge.com. There, you can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources, book me for a keynote or workshop, and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news, and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red Slice Maria. Never forget, empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.
