I have spent over forty years travelling a circuitous path toward greater consciousness.

It started with a pursuit of psychology, which segued to several lines of philosophical inquiry, and ultimately led to an Indian guru and a modern day mystic. For over thirty of those years, I wandered in the world of business, making a living as a product management, marketing and business development professional in technology as well as an entrepreneur. The following paragraphs tell the story of how those  paths crossed and now have converged.

After earning a BA in Psychology (with highest honors) from UCSC in 1980, I had no clue what I wanted to do, but was positive it did not involve any more college. I was offered a well paying job in Canada (where I grew up) as a roofing apprentice. Returning to California a year later to poor job prospects, I bootstrapped a small, local roofing company serving the San Lorenzo Valley, where I lived near Santa Cruz. After a few years of success built upon referral business, I had a revelation that changed the course of my life. I realized my success was based not only on my sincere desire to “do a good job” and help the contractors and homeowners I served. It was equally reliant upon their appreciation and reciprocity.  We were human beings, members of the community, taking care of each other!

From that simple, but profound experience of a win-win economic exchange I saw that the way business is transacted could change the world. I knew then that I wanted to enter into the mainstream business world and somehow shift its fundamental basis. I subsequently applied to and was accepted into the University of Santa Clara’s night MBA program.

While still in the program, I was hired by the esteemed Silicon Valley market Research company Dataquest as a “stringer” for a series of custom research projects in robotics; I got my foot in the door (see my resume for career work history). My passion for a more evolved way of doing business remained strong. While working in the discipline

of marketing, I investigated the field of organizational development, studied learning organizations and principles of organizational transformation, attended workshops and hung out with incredible OD consultants. I got my first inspiring taste of Conscious Business practices while  working at small computer hardware manufacturer I-Bus, where my friend, mentor and boss (at the time) Dick Eppel implemented the precepts of Fernando Flores’ Ontological Development. The material was delivered  by Dana Carman and Herb Tanzer and provided a language and framework to empower the company to create a “game worth playing” by all. Dick, who I first met while doing a graduate school project, to this day remains a good friend and ally. He was my first experience of what today is characterized as conscious leadership. It was also during this time I read Autobiography of a Yogi and embraced Paramahansa Yogananda as my spiritual teacher.

Then the paths diverged for about two decades (read Dedication to Jeff Klein to learn how the Universe attempted to get my attention and I did not heed the nudge) : I got married, had a daughter, burnt out, became a real-estate developer and builder, divorced, remarried, designed and built our house, co-parented, and re-entered the corporate world after the 2006 housing crash. My pursuit of consciousness (spiritual life) was sporadic and did not intersect with work life.

By 2015 I felt like the end of my rope was nearing. Three transformative experiences, a three month sabbatical in the Great North, a workshop by Dr. Joe Dispenza (based on his book Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself) and a stroke, got me back on track (Mike Bauer’s Backstory provides the narrative of the course correcting journey).

When I committed to completely align inner work with outer work,  synchronicity started to grace my life on a regular basis. I recognized my purpose was to help people overcome their challenges by helping change what was going on in their heads, sharing my own experience and wisdom.  Coaching opportunities started to appear unsolicited. The clients turned out to be from the business world and my intimate understanding of that world made me realize that was where I could be of most use.  I then found there was a need as a consultant to solve business problems from a more conscious perspective,

applying more conscious mindsets and methods to business development for example. This took me right back to the transformational impact of consciousness in business and business on consciousness. I rediscovered and dove deep into the Benefit Corporation and B Corps, which in my mind are the manifestation of evolved consciousness in business that we sought decades ago: the code had been cracked. The very next thing, the owner of a natural food supermarket chain asked my wife “Is becoming a B Corp something your husband can help us with?” and days later I was introduced to Benefit Corporation champion John Montgomery, who happened to live nearby. So, Awareness Into Action was born with a mission to bring consciousness into the business world through individuals and through the adoption of more evolved business practices like the quantifiable triple bottom line of B Corps.