Today, I'm interviewing my good friend Steven Morris. We're talking about art, business, new paradigms, and ways to think differently about business. Steven's new book, The Beautiful Business recently came out and I couldn't wait to share more about Steven's reflective approach to capitalism and the future of work with you. Enjoy!
Steven Morris is the president of Matter Consulting, Inc. He is a brand and culture advisor, author, and speaker. He works with business leaders to mine, articulate, and activate their driving belief system to create organizational integrity, evolved leaders, connected cultures, and unignorable brands.
His upcoming book is entitled The Beautiful Business (which publishes in October of 2021 by Conscious Capitalism Press) that focuses on how businesses of all sizes can build integrity, belonging and magnetism through their brand and cultures. His previous book is The Evolved Brand: Why and How to Build a Brand with Soul and Humanize Your Marketing.
Through his widely read blog (25,000+ subscribers) and as a contributing writer to Retail Observer (monthly column), Business Week, Brand Week, Conscious Company Magazine, Communication Arts, HOW Magazine and MarketingProfs, Steve writes about the intersection of brand, culture, business, innovation, and wholehearted living.
Steve is also an artist who shows his paintings in galleries across the US, a long-time surfer, and a beekeeper.
Steven shares with us his insights:
- "You know, it's interesting. Meaning comes from struggle. Meaning comes from us, confronting the challenges of life. And as we talked about earlier, there is no going through life without some trauma, without some challenges, without some difficulty. It's how we address those things that defines what meaning we make behind those things. So the leaders that come to me typically in the world of business, they've had that version of awakening. It could be, again, any different versions of it. It could even be a spiritual awakening. And now all of a sudden they want to reclaim a larger version of themselves and they want to actually do what I didn't do in my business, which is put more wholeness into their work and not just do it for themselves. But they're called in some way, shape or form to do it in a broader context and affect the people around them."
- "The way that things used to be is that when we asked the kid, what do you want to be when you grow up? The question really was what profession do you want to be? And, you know, it starts with, I want to be a fireman or policeman, you know, if you're a young man or, you know, whatever, a nurse or a doctor or whatever. But now it's what kind of human do you want to be? And how do you want to contribute to the world? How do you want to live your life? And now all of a sudden our work story, our personal story, our… our spiritual story. All these stories are beginning to meld together. And I think what's beginning to happen is that it's not work first. It's life first or integration first. And we're looking to live a fulfilled life, or what I call would call a beautiful life in a business that we feel like we're a belonging member, a contributing member. Where our full self is invited to show up and shine in that environment, not just the mastery that we have in our vocation, but really the human being that we are. And we raise our hand, we join those people and we contribute towards something greater than ourselves, which is all what we all want to do as human beings contribute to something that's greater than simply us."
- "They can ask themselves, what does a beautiful life, what does running, shaping, or working for a beautiful business actually mean to me? I want them to have that first private conversation with themselves that determines what is my value system. What is the greatest expression of my own humanity that can show up in my vocation that is in align with my integrity of the way I am as a human being my personal life. And so what I hope the book does is it really helps individuals and lots of them ideally. Claim their own version of human artistry and think deeply about what matters in my life and how can I utilize my own time on this planet, this precious time in this planet with the greatest acts of imagination that I possibly can to live in to that fullest version of my life."
Learn more about Steven:
Website: MatterCo.co
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenmorris111
Twitter: @StevenMMorris
Instagram: @stevenmorrisart
