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Erik: What makes your work meaningful?
Michael: I'm a passion junkie. I can't do something unless it's meaningful. You know,
I would say what makes it meaningful is when it's hard. I don't like things that are easy.
I like things that have an edge, that have juice to them. I like riddles. I like puzzles
to solve. So, that's a big part of what's meaningful for me in sort of unraveling really
the puzzle of storytelling and the way in which the stories we tell make the world and
how stories are at the heart of every brand and every business and every cause, even our
own career is a story that we, you know, are telling. If we're at a job interview, you
get hired based on your story, all of those things. So, being able to do that day in and
day out, to be exploring these issues, to be able to share that with others and to be
invited to go and work with really diverse groups and organizations. You know, everybody
from the Rober Wood Johnson Foundation to South by Southwest to AARP. Just always new
opportunities that keep coming up. Doing some work with Zappos still. Just very, very inspiring
sort of contexts for helping people work through their stories and to see that moment when
somebody discovers the liberation, the freedom that comes with stepping into a bigger story,
alright because we all have these places where we feel sort of held back, we feel constrained,
we feel misunderstood and just seeing somebody come into themselves or seeing and organization
come into themselves. You know, it's really kind of at the level of identity where either
an individual or an organization feels like, "Wow, yeah, we're really be who we really
are and who we've always wanted to become," that brings a lot of meaning for me and certainly
seems to be a lot of meaning for people who go through that process.