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Brian Whetten
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Brian serves as a leadership consultant, conscious business coach, author, speaker and facilitator.

By the age of 30, Brian had received a Ph.D. in computer science from UC Berkeley, raised $20 million for two high tech startups, become an internationally known academic and speaker, made and lost millions – and burnt out twice. He had gone from “being the one in high school that the chess team made fun of” to seemingly having it all. Yet he felt miserable. In the midst of an emotional and spiritual crisis, he began reaching out for help, and found his worldview shaken to its core. This led to six years of deep inner work and a M.A. in Spiritual Psychology from the University of Santa Monica.

Today, Brian delights in doing business in a different, more loving, more purpose filled way – and in helping others do the same. He specializes in supporting entrepreneurs and executives as they build companies that create both money and meaning, and in teaching practice builders how to “give their way to a soul-centered, six-figure practice.” Brian is the author of Selling By Giving and the soon to be published book Love Beyond Belief. He’s an advocate for the development and spread of conscious business practices and has appeared on programs as diverse as the NBC show Starting Over and the MIT CIO Symposium.

Blog Entries by Brian Whetten

How Great Entrepreneurs Create Sustainable Success

(19) Comments | Posted March 12, 2013 | 9:11 AM

Very few entrepreneurs intend to sacrifice their family, health and happiness. Yet most do. Divorce, heart attacks, anxiety, burnout -- there are dozens of issues that just seem to come with the territory. In contrast, truly great entrepreneurs also have great lives. Not because they've magically created more success with...

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Social Responsibility: Why Should Companies Care?

(8) Comments | Posted December 18, 2012 | 7:25 AM

In the banking scandal du jour, HSBC managed to prove that our banks are not only too big to fail -- they're also too big to jail. Between the financial crisis, casino gambling, outsized bonuses, rate fixing and now

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Leadership Lessons From Obama and Romney

(16) Comments | Posted November 15, 2012 | 6:27 PM

Great leaders are great students, always seeking to learn from their mistakes and from the mistakes of others. President Obama and Governor Romney, while remarkable, made two fundamental mistakes in this election, which we would each be wise to learn from.

Leadership Lesson From President Obama: Change Creates Fear

While...

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Obama, Romney and the Future of Capitalism

(39) Comments | Posted July 30, 2012 | 6:16 PM

In an election of Olympic importance, both candidates have been playing small ball. In the midst of a global crisis, America is yearning for leadership while trembling in fear. And while the polls tell a tale of splintered self-interests, our country is still capable of much, much more.

As Arianna...

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How to Give Yourself a Raise (Without Your Boss Even Knowing)

(4) Comments | Posted June 18, 2012 | 10:44 AM

Would you like to be able to give yourself a raise, whenever you want, without your boss even knowing? No, we're not talking about fraud. This is completely legal and ethical. In fact, your boss will likely thank you for it.

2012-06-16-Five-Paychecks-FivePaychecksWebSize.jpg
Here's the...
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Obama vs. The Politics of Fear

(252) Comments | Posted February 26, 2012 | 4:43 PM

Unless there's a radical change this month, President Obama's isn't going to be running against either Romney or Santorum. While one of them will win the Republican nomination, neither will actually be competing for the presidency.

That's because as things stand today, Obama's not running against the Republican Party. He's...

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Business Leadership and Murdoch's Fatal Flaw

(2) Comments | Posted July 21, 2011 | 11:05 AM

In reading about the scandal involving Rupert Murdoch, phone hacking, and his media empire, it's hard not to wonder "what the heck were they thinking?" But the real cause of this disaster didn't come from what these executives were thinking. It came from the way they were leading.

As...

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Today, the People of Egypt Are Our Teachers

(0) Comments | Posted February 11, 2011 | 6:44 PM

Today, the Egyptian people proved that as people, what unites us is far greater than what divides us. They reminded us that while change is often difficult, our race will not, does not, and in fact cannot stop evolving.

And hopefully, they inspired each of us to let go...

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The Death of Dilbert: Why Your Children Will Need to Love Their Jobs

(17) Comments | Posted November 4, 2010 | 11:11 AM

Given that she's only 19 days old, perhaps it's too soon for me to be thinking about my daughter's career. Yet two recent articles got me thinking about the deep changes our economy is going through, and what these tectonic shifts are going to mean for her generation.

In Time...

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Goldman, Wall Street and Financial Terrorism

(11) Comments | Posted April 19, 2010 | 12:59 PM

Terrorism isn't caused by bad people being born to do bad deeds. It's caused by two things: a culture of fundamentalism, where extreme beliefs are celebrated as absolute truth; and a pattern of using these beliefs to make the ends justify any means.

By this standard, what we're seeing come...

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Can Business Be A Force For Good?

(0) Comments | Posted March 24, 2010 | 12:32 PM

After decades where we increasingly bought into the idea that "what's good for Wall Street is good for America," the financial crisis is causing many people to question the nature of business. Is greed and corruption merely "business as usual?" Or can business be a force for good?

In the...

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The Core Problem in Business - It's Not What You Think

(11) Comments | Posted July 28, 2009 | 5:41 PM

GM's bankruptcy. Goldman's bonuses. AIG's collapse. It's easy to look at what's going on and say "How Stupid!" And this is true -- but perhaps not in the way you think. This is because study after study shows that the core problem in business is not a...

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The Death of Mass Marketing

(0) Comments | Posted July 7, 2009 | 1:17 PM

Most people -- including most salespeople -- have an inherent distrust of being sold. And the more purpose driven our work is, the more we tend to wish we could just avoid all that "sales and marketing stuff." For example, most non-profits see fundraising as a necessary evil, and most...

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The Financial Industry: Who Can You Trust?

(1) Comments | Posted June 3, 2009 | 7:26 PM

The financial industry is based on trust, and in the last year Wall Street has lost a ton of it. So what are we to do about this? In the face of all that's going on, who can you trust?

The bad news is that large pieces of the industry...

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Conscious Business: Like Water To A Fish ...

(8) Comments | Posted May 18, 2009 | 6:11 PM

If you're a fish living in an aquarium, it doesn't take a whole lot of ingenuity to discover things like food, rocks, bubbles, and other fish.

But it takes a genius to discover water.

In response to a recent article on conscious business, someone asked me "so, what do...

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How to Create Meaningful Ethical Reform in Business

(12) Comments | Posted May 13, 2009 | 2:29 PM

In the wake of the financial crisis, there's been a lot of talk about ethical reform. With the disgrace of so many of the "best and the brightest," there's a lot of soul searching going on in government, industry and business schools. Most of this discussion is...

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How to Survive - And Thrive - in the Face of a Crisis

(2) Comments | Posted May 8, 2009 | 10:43 AM

There's a lot of fear in the air. We're in the middle of what many are calling the biggest financial crisis since the great depression.

So how do we deal with this? How do we survive -- and even thrive -- during this crisis?

Our fastest growth happens when we...

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Why Most Small Businesses Fail and What to Do About It

(5) Comments | Posted April 29, 2009 | 12:48 PM

Small business is big business. In the United States, more than half of all jobs are in companies of 100 people or less and more than 10% of all people are self-employed.

Yet most small businesses fail.

Why is this? And what can you do about it?

The biggest problem...

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What Does it Mean To Practice Conscious Capitalism?

(6) Comments | Posted April 22, 2009 | 10:52 AM

In last week's column, we talked about how capitalism's great strength is its capacity for economic expansion, and its great challenge is its addiction to economic expansion. We looked at the problems that come with unconscious capitalism, and the need for us to develop a new form of capitalism...

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The Real Roots of the Financial Crisis

(32) Comments | Posted April 15, 2009 | 3:33 PM

With the financial crisis, we've seen a lot of talk about why it happened and who's to blame. We've pointed a lot of fingers at a lot of targets, including bankers, regulators, and homeowners. We've identified a number of symptoms, including greed, incompetence, fraud, and inadequate regulation.

But none of...

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