Expanding The Definition Of Success In Business

For a long time, business success was treated like a simple equation: hit your revenue targets, keep margins healthy, grow year over year. If you checked those boxes, you were considered a good leader and a successful company.

But more and more, that story feels incomplete. People want their work to mean something. Younger generations are asking for purpose and balance out loud, in the middle of their careers, instead of waiting until the end to wonder if it all mattered. At the same time, trust in leadership is fragile, and many employees do not believe their organizations genuinely care about their wellbeing.

Conscious capitalism lives exactly in this tension. It does not reject profit. It expands the definition of success to include people, purpose, and long term impact.

On The Bliss Business Podcast, we sat down with Shane Jackson, President of Jackson Healthcare, to explore what it looks like to build a profitable company that is unapologetically committed to improving lives. His perspective is a grounded, practical look at how purpose can move from the wall into daily leadership.

Shane leads Jackson Healthcare, a family of healthcare staffing, search, and technology companies that connect clinicians with hospitals and care facilities across the United States. Their work touches millions of patients each year through the physicians, nurses, and professionals they place.

He grew up watching his father build the company, seeing both the entrepreneurial grind and the human side of healthcare. Today, he carries that legacy forward with a clear, simple purpose that sits at the center of every decision: improve the lives of patients and improve the lives of everyone the company touches.

That two part purpose is not a slogan. It is the filter. Patients and families are the reason the business exists. Everyone else, from employees and clinicians to partners and community organizations, are part of the impact story.

Rethinking Success Beyond Short Term Profits

Shane is honest about the traditional corporate mindset. He spent years absorbing the idea that a leader’s job is to maximize shareholder value and chase growth above all else.

What shifted for him was realizing that this narrow view of success leaves too much out. Patients, employees, and communities can pay the price when decisions are made purely for short term numbers. At the same time, leaders who have given everything to their careers often reach the later chapters and ask whether it was worth the trade.

Conscious capitalism, in his view, asks leaders to widen the lens. Revenue and profit still matter. They are essential. But they become part of a larger picture that includes:

• The quality of care patients and families actually receive

• The wellbeing and growth of the people who work inside the company

• The impact the organization has on the communities around it

Success is not defined only by financial statements, but by the stories people can tell about how their lives were different because the company existed.

Designing Culture So Care Is Not An Accident

One of Shane’s core insights is that you cannot leave the most important things in life to serendipity.

At home, that means actually putting date night on the calendar so your marriage does not disappear into a blur of work, kids, and obligations. At work, it means designing culture on purpose instead of hoping that good intentions will carry the day.

At Jackson Healthcare, that intentionality shows up in very practical ways:

• Training and onboarding that explicitly talk about values, purpose, and how people are expected to treat one another

• Performance reviews and leadership conversations that include how someone lives the culture, not just how they hit their numbers

• Rituals and rhythms that keep purpose visible, so it does not fade into background noise

Care is not left to a handful of “nice” leaders who happen to be wired that way. It is built into how the organization operates, evaluated, and reinforced. The goal is simple. If you bumped into any leader or team member, you should feel the same commitment to people, not just from the top.

Embedding Purpose Into Everyday Decisions

Purpose at Jackson Healthcare is articulated in two parts. First, to improve the lives of patients by making sure they have access to the care they need. Second, to improve the lives of everyone the company touches.

It sounds lofty, but Shane brings it back to daily choices. In every interaction, whether it is a decision about a clinician assignment, an internal policy, or a vendor relationship, there is a moment of choice. Do we leave people better or worse than we found them.

That question shapes things like:

• How aggressively the company grows and how it avoids compromising quality of care

• How tradeoffs are handled when efficiency could harm the experience for patients or clinicians

• How the organization responds in moments of crisis when communities are under strain

Purpose is not there to make decisions easier. It is there to make sure decisions are honest. It forces leaders to look beyond the next quarter and ask what kind of impact they are creating over time.

Love, Faith, And The Human Side Of Leadership

Shane does not shy away from language that many business leaders avoid. He talks openly about love, faith, and the moral responsibility that comes with leadership.

For him, love in business is not sentimental. It shows up as:

• Seeing employees and clinicians as whole people with families, fears, and hopes

• Designing benefits, policies, and work environments that respect those realities

• Using the company’s resources to support community initiatives that expand access to care and support young people

He believes that every person a leader encounters is an opportunity to choose impact. For Jackson Healthcare, that conviction has turned into structured programs and philanthropy, not just personal generosity.

Faith, in his story, is less about slogans and more about accountability. It is a reminder that there is a deeper standard than quarterly reports, and that leadership is ultimately about stewardship of people’s lives, not just their labor.

Key Takeaways

• Success Needs A Bigger Definition
  Profit matters, but it is not enough. Conscious capitalism expands success to include patients, employees, families, and communities.

• Culture Must Be Designed, Not Assumed
  Caring cultures do not happen by accident. Training, reviews, and daily rituals all need to reinforce how people are treated, not just what they produce.

• Purpose Belongs In Daily Decisions
  A clear purpose only works when it becomes a filter for how leaders handle tradeoffs, growth, and crisis, not just a sentence on the website.

• Every Interaction Is An Impact Choice
  Leaders touch hundreds of lives. Each moment is a chance to leave someone better or worse than before. That awareness changes how decisions feel.

• Love And Business Can Stand Together
  Love, expressed as care, respect, and responsibility, is not soft. It is a source of trust, resilience, and long term performance.

Final Thoughts

Conscious capitalism is not about choosing purpose instead of profit. It is about refusing to believe that profit is the only story worth telling.

Shane Jackson’s leadership at Jackson Healthcare is a reminder that when you center people and purpose, you do not weaken the business. You strengthen the foundation it stands on. Profit becomes the outcome of doing the right things well, over and over, in service of the lives you touch.

Check out our full conversation with Shane Jackson on The Bliss Business Podcast.