047: Beautiful Business with Steven Morris

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This is your time. How can we earn twice as much in half the time with joy and ease while serving the highest good? That is our guiding question here at the Freetime Cafe, your home for heart based business. I'm your host Jenny Blake. Join me for conversations with authors, friends and fellow business owners as we explore ways to free your mind, time and team to do your best work. Now onto today's show.

Hello friends. I am so excited to be here today with Steven Morris. Steven is a great friend. He's a two time guest of the Pivot podcast. We talked about beautiful questions right when the pandemic hit. I'll link to those in the show notes and he's been running his own business for over 25 years, working with big name brands and business leaders from Samsung, Sony, Habitat for Humanity, Amazon and NFL Major League Baseball. The list goes on. Today we are talking about his brand new book, the Beautiful Business. It is an actionable manifesto to help business leaders and entrepreneurs work and live as human artists. Stephen also loves his artwork as a painter. He's a regular meditator, loves the outdoors, surfing and something I just learned today, beekeeping. Stephen, welcome to the show.

Jenny, thank you. It's just an honor to be here and always, always, always a thrill to talk to you.

Likewise. I love our conversations and I didn't know this about beekeeping. I'm sure this is an area of your life that is ripe with metaphor for business. But give us one nugget we can learn about the beautiful business from your beekeeping activities.

Oh wow. So let's see. Bees have been incredibly instructive to me and I think the biggest if I were to pick what like one little morsel that comes out of it is. So as we know, in the beehive there is one leader and one queen and she sets the tone, the vibe for everything. In fact, if this particular queen is, let's call her a feisty queen, the entire hive will carry that sort of attitude, that sentiment, that feeling that sometimes anger issues. So the one biggest takeaway I would say is as above, above. So below and the leadership sets the tone for how the hive operates and how the hive behaves.

So I never knew that bees could have personalities, let alone the queen bee. How on earth did you discover that they could have personality traits like a queen bee could be feisty or not.

So there's this, There's. When you approach a hive, I have several hives behind the house that we live out here in Southern California and San Diego. And if, when you approach the hive, you're sometimes you can approach it. If it's a very calm hive, you can approach it and not be in sort of your bee outfit, which is, you know, head to toe, covered with a, you know, mesh hat, Mesh hat and all that kind of thing. But if you approach the hive and the bees start attacking you at, let's say, a distance of even 20, 25ft, then all of a sudden the hive is overprotective. Like, they're kind of overdoing their protection of the hive. And, and, you know, they're just following the attitude of the queen. So in the beekeeping world, you have this thing called having to replace the queen. So what you have to do is go then into the hive, find the queen. And so just to give you a little bit of context, when you open up the hive, they're going to be a little upset anyhow because they're protecting their home, and rightly so. And so when you go in to do a hive inspection or a queen replacement, you're in your full bee get up, you know, head to toe covered so that they can't get in, into any parts of your skin and sting you and things like that. And you open up the hive, and in there is some 40,000 bees, depending on the size of the hive. And, you know, smaller ones are like 20,000. Bigger ones are like 40,000 bees. And you have to find this one queen who is slightly larger and slightly different. And then you, you replace that queen. So unfortunately, you have to destroy her. And then you can either create a new queen out of another hive that is a much calmer hive, or you can order queen online from, from some website that is like a beekeeping website. And the. Those queens tend to be much more calm and much more docile. And then if that, then hive, and I'm starting to get a little technical here, accepts the queen, then the. After probably about three weeks to a month, the attitude of that new queen will be then carried through the hive itself. I could talk so detailed about. Bees are so massively wild. I mean.

Right, right. We'll Save it for our official beekeeping podcast. But holy, like, just the idea of locating the queen in the hive, the idea that you could order a queen online. Gosh. Wow. Oh my gosh. Okay, very fascinating. Tell us, Steven, what is a beautiful business?

I love the question. So a beautiful business. I'm going to break down the word beauty and kind of where it comes from. And part of the reason that I wrote the book is to reclaim the truest definitions of beauty. But the definition that I use of beauty comes from the Japanese aesthetic principles of beauty, which have to do with symmetry, harmony, things that are in line with the laws of nature. And it's been my belief that, and this has been through experience, as you've read my bio, working with, you know, businesses for the last 25 plus years, that a business can operate with these core principles and develop this sense of felt beauty. So by beauty and what I mean by the reclamation or reclaiming it is trying to re reclaim the word from the sort of fashion industry and the beauty industry, which has to do with the focus of the exterior, the way something looks and the way, you know, how pretty something is and things like that. Really what I'm talking about here is a more full spectrum beauty. And when a business begins to then incorporate and live into that way of being, they then create this magnetic attraction for everyone involved in the organization. And so again, it has to do with things that really are aligned with the integrity, how the inside of the business matches the outside of the business and how much belonging there is within the organization. And ultimately if those things come into fruition, then the organization creates this sense of magnetism which they attract more the right people, which could be employees or it could be investors, it could be customers or any community, stakeholders. So that's really the key premise for the beautiful business. And it's written for any business business leader of any size. So, you know, a solo practitioner could be, could have a beautiful business or cultivate. One Fortune 100 company can do that. And there's a whole swath of types of organizations that can live it in between.

You bring up a central question which I think is a very fascinating thought exercise that you say you ask to leaders in various forms and you're going to phrase those much better than I will, but essentially why does your business exist beyond creating profit, beyond making money, and that some leaders have an easier time answering that than others. While of course on some level we know that the nature of a business is to survive by being profitable. What I'm just so curious, what You've discovered when you ask people to go to transcend money as the driver for the business or as the mission. And just like, what is the range of responses that you tend to hear from people?

Yeah. It might be worth stepping back just for a moment and then I'll step into that question. So some of the things that I think about and I'm going to get just a little bit woo here, Jenny, and I hope that's okay for this.

You know me, you know why free time exists.

It's so we don't even have to apologize or caveat the woo.

Yes. Yeah. So think about it this way. All of us, we human creatures are kind of living paradoxes. And there's the fundamental truth that each and every one of us are kind of made up of two sides to our, that define our humanity. And the one side is that we are physiological, biological creatures that are connected to the natural world. So we're then, you know, we carry a lot of the same DNA, same biology that many of our brothers and sisters in the animal kingdom carry. And at the same time, the other side to our humanity is that each and every one of us are animated by this mystical, unseen force. And you can put whatever word you want to that, call it, you know, the universe, God, whatever language you want to put to that. And so the fusion of those two things determine frankly the human condition. And so because we're connected to the animal kingdom, we're also connected to this floating blue marble, the planet that we live on. And because we're connected or animated by this unseen force, we then are inextricably connected to all other living things that are animated by the same unseen force. And so then based on that, one could look at their life and say, life is a precious gift. And I then get to journey through life based on my own belief systems, which make up my unique personality. And some of them can come from how we're raised, or some of them can come from just simply how we're wired. And then if one has a sense of agency and we say, I'm going to start a business, or I've been given the opportunity to be a business leader, we then are proposed the question that Mary Oliver asks, which is, what is it that we will do with this one wild and precious life? And I think that's a question that more and more business leaders are beginning to ask themselves. And ask themselves, especially when they, to your point, discover that I figured out how to make a profit in business and how to sustain that. Now, how do I turn this into a business that serves a greater part to our humanity and allows me, as the business leader or the individual, and this could be anyone within the business on the level of the business, to be a whole person and contribute to the betterment of our humanity. And that might just be the betterment of the world, of the people that are involved within the business. And that could be the employees, the customers and stakeholders. So when I'm working with business leaders, a lot of them had some type of awakening. That said, you know what? I love making profit, and profit is great and profit is necessary. But I know that there's more, not just to business, but to life. And the beautiful thing is that because beauty is a subjective term, everyone gets to answer it in their own way. And there's lots of different answers to that question. How I might answer it or how you might answer it or how somebody else might answer it is is unique. But it still is an act of service. And it's an act of service that serves that customer base in a way that that improves their lives and creates value for the world.

That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Thank you for laying that groundwork for us.

We'll be right back just after this.

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It was interesting in the book how you describe some people being confused by the question. So it's like what you're describing. Let's say there's naturally beautiful businesses and business owners and leaders. And then there are some that are more stumped by this question. That's what I found interesting is that is the ones who and you say, you know, there's nothing wrong with it. We're not judging. You're not judging if money is the main driver. But it is interesting to think about shifting. And then also within the scope of a business, sometimes you're in survival mode, then sometimes you're in that transcendent purpose mode.

Yeah, you know, I think it's a look within type of question. And so when folks get stumped about that, they're really partially, they're asking, where do I turn my attention? Where do I turn my energy and my presence to begin to answer that question. And the reality is, or at least what I've seen in experience is that I'm not sure that it can be answered by looking out and looking at the outside world. Because typically what we fall into the trap of is the comparative trap. We begin to compare ourselves to other businesses out there. And sometimes people will look to emulate a company like Zappos or Patagonia, and they can potentially find a nugget of an answer for that question out there. But the reality is they're ultimately going to have to turn inward and answer for themselves. What is it that I think is really important in life and what kind of value can I bring to the world? So that goes beyond just the profit side of things. And so this is not just the business leader who is going within and asking these questions of themselves, but it's also the sort of the collective leadership that's going within the culture of the organization and asking each other, how is it that we can build a beautiful business that creates both exponential profit and exponential value. And so I think, you know, the, the clues to the answer is to more look within to your own personal drivers and what you believe is important in life and how you believe your unique gifts or genius can actually serve the world and make it a better place.

I love how you include in the book to this end, the Brand Essence tool, where you ask what business am I in five times? And it kind of starts out on the surface and that seems like. And you include your example, so what business am I in the business of evolving brands and cultures? By the time you ask it five times, you end up at helping leaders identify the heart and soul of their business and activating it through their culture and brand.

Yeah, yeah. And the trick within that, the five whys process, which that Brand Essence tool, is that you can't repeat any of your answers. And in fact, the really the delving process of that is to, you know, quiet oneself and then go into really your heart and begin to answer the question not from your head, but from your heart or from your heart and soul and then arrive upon something that really, truly enlivens you, that you're like, oh my goodness, for the next 50 years, I could be serving this particular cause and I could be living this life and I could be developing this business and creating a purpose that is never really fully achieved to begin with because there's always more people to serve.

One thing you mentioned the different schools of thought around this that are ancillary to the beautiful business. So things like conscious capitalism and B corps. And I've never thought to ask anyone, but I'm going to ask you now. I love the idea of a B corp, but every time I go to their website and try to find inspiration from it or how does one become a B corp? It seems so lumbering and complicated. Qualify to be a B corp that I wonder how we bridge this gap. You know, I really admire what is it, B Labs or B Lab, the certifying organization that set it up. But I don't know if this has been your experience of that. It's like there's still, this is still somehow a wiggly area for people. And there was recently, when was it? A year or two ago, the business consortium got together and they said, we can't just be for stakeholder or shareholder benefit, we need to be for stakeholder benefit. And then everyone kind of criticizes them, like, please, who are you kidding? So this was not a question, it was just me rambling out a bunch of thoughts. But it just seems that there's still a lot of sort of showboating around people who are pretending to be beneficial businesses. And then there's like the complexity of trying to officially qualify as one. That seems unnecessary too.

It's a great point. And it's some of the criticism that B Lab actually gets because of their, you know, it's a fairly arduous process to go through their application and then be accepted as a certified B corp. And they do that on purpose because they're, they're, they're really driven to have accountability and they look at all kinds of different metrics that have to do with sustainability, environment, how you treat people from a justice and equity, a diversity and inclusion issue, how your manufacturing processes come to fruition, what your leadership skills are like, how you give back to the community, what your, you know, cause marketing or cause oriented elements are. And you know, to your point, I think it's an incredibly arduous process to go through, but those people who are committed to it, they actually want to go through that but then there's a whole other set of metrics that one can hold themselves accountable for, which might not be any less or any different per se than having a, you know, a certified B lab stamp that sits on your website, which actually some people don't even know what that that means. So I'm not sure what the answer is there. There's some potential middle ground that people can discover, but I think it ultimately comes down to self accountability. What are the things that I want to measure within my business that I feel are important? And then how do I hold myself accountable? How do I hold my business accountable for those things?

Where do you fall in the what gets measured gets managed camp? Obviously that's a big saying in the business world and there's a lot of merit to it. Are you someone that says, yes, we can only measure and manage and achieve what we can measure, or do you take a more flowing perspective in your own business?

I actually think I'm of two minds of that particular mindset. I'm a huge fan of data and good data, not necessarily big data, but I also think, and I think you should measure those things. I think when you're talking about things like employee satisfaction, employee engagement, sustainability issues within an organization, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, I think you should measure those things to really understand how well you're living out up to it. But I also think that there's some a series of things that are really difficult, if not impossible to measure within an organization, such as how much trust, how much love exists within the team, how much belonging exists within the organization, how much connection do we have and sense of belonging to our customers and vice versa. I haven't seen really good ways to go out and measure those things, but I also think that they're incredibly important. And it's almost like, you know, you think about the old adage of, you know, soft skills within, within the business are, you know, some of the most important things but also some of the most overlooked things. And that's because for the most part, although this is not a wide swath truth, that the soft skills side of things are both difficult to train and difficult to measure for. And you know, I think businesses and a lot of culture work, and some of the culture work that I do is beginning to catch up to some of these things which. Okay, well, how do we employ things such as belonging within our organization and figure out ways where we can survey people to ensure that there's a sense of belonging? But the reality is that's an ongoing day in, day out Moment to moment type of thing. So I guess the short answer is I'm of two minds of it, but I also think that measurement is really good and that some things are just so much more difficult to measure, but also incredibly important.

Well, and you did start out telling us about paradox, so we could embrace both the metrics and the. I don't know what I've heard people say, like, we should stop calling it soft skills. But metrics and the magic, I don't know.

I love that. Metrics and magic. Yeah. Because you can't measure magic. You can't measure heart and soul. I mean, it's really hard to do. Totally.

That's true. Like, you can't measure someone's joie de vivre. You know, it's like you can't measure those qualities. And even I think about that sometimes in terms of podcasting. There's Ryder in the background.

Yeah. Ryder says hi.

You know, you could try to measure stats of a show or why is this show growing? Or why is my show growing? When does it plateau? But there's so much you can't measure. There's just so much even within a person's voice, how different it is from the next person. That John Capitano, who wrote a book about voice that came out recently, it's like in our voice is our soul. Our soul. He almost makes the case that our soul lives in our voice box because it's so unique.

Oh, that's so good. That's so good. Yeah. So if you were to ask, like, how much do you love your husband? How much do you love your children?

Oh, let me measure it.

Show me the data. Right.

That'S true. True.

Good luck with that.

That's true. Right. And I love that you're bringing in love as a gauge of success, of the love within an organization or with. With customers, to the brand or to the organization or amongst the. The team. And it's just. I love that you're bringing that into the conversation.

Yeah. I feel like I'm taking a bit of a risk with that in certain ways. But, you know, again, you go back to the Mary Oliver question, which is, what. What will you do to what. How. What. What will you do in this one w life? And when you think about it from a. From a human existence standpoint, which, by the way, all businesses are run by and for other human beings, so you really can't take humanity out of it, in my opinion. I think at the end of the day, it's about love and the love that you put into which could be also the care that you put into the work that you do, be it a product or service which shows up in the end result, the love that you put into the care and day in and day out and the sense of presence that you're showing up and really caring for not just the people but the business, the collective of people in the business at hand. I think that actually shows you can feel that. And really part of what I'm talking about in the beautiful business is that felt sense of beauty. Where to your point Jenny? This, your voice and the, and the ways that you express yourself out into the world, including how you go about loving life, it shows up as a sort of a soul attribute. And, and while that might be woo to some people, I actually think at the end of the day when people look back from their deathbed and they think about things like legacy or things like building a business worth being proud of, there's probably going to be love at the center of those things.

Absolutely. And isn't it funny that in some ways we have to qualify, oh, this is woo or this might be out there for some people. When in fact that the hyper rationalist perspective is almost as strange to imagine. Like you, you, you mentioned, you know, someone on their deathbed. It's like wouldn't we just look back with, with shock at how much the business world has separated the humanity from itself in certain ways or the way that we tell the story that woo. And in my book too, in Free Time too, there's a whole chapter on serendipity. There's stuff I brought in that go directly against a lot of business best practices and I really don't care anymore. I just feel that it's actually. The crazy thing is that it's missing from the conversation.

I agree and I think that, I think times are changing. I see this, I see evidence of it not just in conversations like this, but in day to day conversations that the, the, our personal lives and our work lives are beginning to much more meld together. And so, and we actually see it how, you know, sort of as we're coming out of COVID or at, you know, I'm not even sure where we are in Covid, but as people are making decisions about where do I want to contribute my time and energy on this planet and, and do I want to work with an organization that's forcing me, for instance, to be in the office when I don't feel psychologically or physically safe to do so? Or they're, they're thinking about all the Time, free time that they had, private time that they had personal time that they had during COVID because they weren't commuting and they weren't spending nearly as time in the office. And they kind of, they double down on some of the, some of the most important things that were there at the center of their life and they're just recapturing those things. So I don't know, the more I think about it, Jenny, the more I think about, you know, the work that I do and even the world that we're living in is becoming much more about wholeness. And if it's about wholeness, it's about wholeness of humanity. And it's about things like, you know, heart, soul, spirit, as well as pro productivity, creativity and generosity and innovation and things of that nature. And the two things to me don't particularly feel separated as much anymore. But it is true that more and more. So at least it feels more true to me that more and more. So we're heading in that direction maybe slowly.

I agree. I agree. Let's move into rapid fire round. We have just a couple minutes. What is your favorite business book book?

Oh.

You know, or one you've read recently? Yeah. So that, this, this book that, like the first one that came to mind was a book that goes back many, many years ago and it's written by Gordon McKenzie who unfortunately is no longer living. He spent 30 years to the day as a creative director and many other roles at Hallmark. And the book is called Orbiting the Giant Hairball and the. It's a, it's an analogy or metaphor book about the hairball being the, the organ you as an individual can be connected and tethered to that organization but not caught up in it.

I love it. What is a favorite non obvious software tool that you use in your business that helps you get organized or automate things?

I love a tool called Notive. And Notive is my sort of my professional eavesdropping tool and sometimes it's my proxy. And with your group, Jenny, you'll see that sometimes I can't make it there, but my Notive tool shows up and it records.

Oh my God.

I learned about Notive from you, but I thought it was my account and I'm like, why is my notive. Why is Steven's Notive here? Oh my gosh, it can go when you're not there.

Oh, totally. Yeah. I don't even have to show up for the meeting and I'm there listening and what I'll do, just so you know, I will read the transcript of some of those conversations and I'm like, oh, I love that so and so said this. And it's great. Notive is a great tool that I love.

That is so wild. So everyone listening. Notif shows up as a guest in the Zoom Room, and it will say, Stephen Morris notetaker. Like, notif Steven Morris Notetaker. And I, the host, get to approve it. This is in our private BFF community. And that's so cool. And I knew that it transcribed the notes, but I didn't know it did it when you're not there. That is awesome.

It's really awesome. Yeah.

So cool. Oh, my goodness. Are you listening to any podcasts that you love lately?

I. So I'm a big fan of Ted Lasso. And if we know the.

Yeah, so there's. There's one of the actors in there, Roy Kent. Brent Goldstein is the actor's name. He runs this podcast. I think the name of it is called Movies to Die For. And he'll. He hosts it and he's got that great English accent, which is very heavy. I'm not sure if it's called a brogue or what. I think that's maybe Irish thing, but he. He'll host other entertainers, other folks who he is friends with or worked with, and he goes through their life as if they died, but they tell the story of their life through the movies. That has affected them. And I'm just in love with this podcast.

Wow. Fun fact. I had no clue he had a podcast. We're going to throw that in the show Notes. Thank you. See, I'm so glad I asked. I was hesitant maybe you would say, oh, I don't listen. But good to know. Last question, Stephen, which you know from listening to this show. If you could write listeners a permission slip, what would it be for?

The biggest permission, and this is the permission slip that I've had to write to myself, is just be your whole self and.

Grant yourself permission to live your most beautiful life. And if you want, build your most beautiful business, you deserve it. You don't have to prove anything to anyone. Go live it. Go own it. Go be it. Permission to be you.

I love it. Thank you so much. Steven. Where can people find you if they want to keep in touch?

People can find me two different places. My main website is my consultancy website. It's Matterco Co. I'll spell it out. M A T T E R C O Co. Or if you want to find out more about my book, it's the beautiful-business.com amazing.

And listeners, be sure to check out Stephen's new book, the Beautiful an actionable manifesto to create an unignorable business with love at the core. I'll put that in the show notes as well. Thank you so much for listening everybody, and thanks Stephen for another awesome conversation.

Thank you, Jenny.

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