Co-founders Dr. Brent Ridge and Josh Kilmer-Purcell have found that caring about employees and the community isn’t just the right thing to do — it’s a ladder to success.

When Dr. Brent Ridge and Josh Kilmer-Purcell co-founded Beekman 1802, their dream was to build their successful business around the principle of kindness.

Brent, a physician in a hospital, and Josh, a corporate advertising professional, started the company in upstate New York, in one of the state’s most impoverished counties, with no funding when both lost their jobs during the 2008 recession. They used goat milk from the Sharon Springs farm they’d bought as a weekend getaway to create skincare products. A neighbor who was losing his own farm gifted them his 80 goats, offering to help them run the farm if they let him live in their cottage.

“We had no plans of starting a business,” says Josh. “We only say that that first act of kindness taking in our neighbor was what eventually started our business, without even knowing we were going to have one.”

Since then, they have grown Beekman 1802 into a nearly $100 million company by focusing on treating every customer as a “neighbor” and infusing kindness into their products, hiring and marketing. Early on, their products sold in retailers such as Anthropologie and Henri Bendel; today, their distribution partners include HSN, QVC and Ulta Beauty. “It really is because we have always treated every customer as a neighbor,” says Brent.

One key part of their approach to building their social capital company is developing a “kindness quotient” to screen and hire social media influencers who embody the brand’s values.

The founders captured it all in a new book G.O.A.T Wisdom: How to Build a Truly Great Business, which shares their philosophy and practical advice for building a successful, values-driven business.

They shared their approach to building kindness and authenticity into their business model and turning it into a powerful competitive advantage recently with Chris Benguhe, founder and president of the Dave Alexander Center for Social Capital and publisher of the Social Capital Insider. Click on the link below to watch their interview.