Chip Conley

Like every good founder, you surely obsess over ROL Here's a new way to define it.

As a for-profit entrepreneur, I spent the first half of my career focused on return on investment. Now, I'm spending the second half focused on a different ROI: ripples of impact.

When you drop a pebble into a pond, it creates a series of ripples that spread out over the water. In our relationships, our emotions can create positive or negative ripples. The same is true in business. The choices we make around where we purchase supplies, how we build our company culture, and how we affect our community make a profound difference-sending energy into the world that will create either positive or negative ripples. Which it will be is up to us.

Back when I was running Joie de Vivre, my boutique hotel company, I told a new general manager that one metric that would define their performance was how much money they spent on providing discounted or free services to nonprofit groups. I'll never forget the look on their face: They clearly weren't used to our brand of karmic capitalism or our deeply held belief that what goes around comes around.