#003 Making a “Gravity Free” Business & Life with Scott Heaps
Release Date: 06/28/2022
#031 Unlocking Communication through Unconditional Welcome with Karen Faith
Making Business Art
Most of us want to be more influential, creative, and able to build key relationships in and out of work. But this isn't always easy to accomplish, and sometimes it seems it’s because someone is standing in our way. But that someone, more often than not, might just be ourselves. For this minisode I’m bringing back business ethnographer and empathy trainer, Karen Faith, to discuss a powerful approach to listening, communicating, and relating she calls the “Unconditional Welcome." In this conversation Karen and I discuss what Unconditional Welcome is, when and how to apply it,...
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#030 Rewriting the Story of Business & HR with Dart Lindsley
Making Business Art
What if instead of thinking of you as an employee, your boss and workplace treated you like a valued customer? My guest and HR transformation expert, Dart Lindsley, knows that industrial-age management practices are not working. He champions a new approach to how we design our work in organizations by treating work as a product that every organization builds and sells to their employees. Dart believes that by treating work as a product and employees as customers, organizations can build and deliver work that makes employees feel alive while delivering better results for all stakeholders. ...
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#029 Making Learning Stick in Organizations with Mark Boccia
Making Business Art
Most of us have sat through a mandatory class, training, or presentation at work that was pretty terrible. Worse yet, we probably felt like a hostage waiting to escape. Going through this type of experience hinders our individual ability to learn and causes teams to struggle to adopt new skills and ways of working. Fortunately, my guest and global learning leader for Amazon, , is dedicated to designing learning experiences that engage people and make learning stick. Mark balances pragmatism and business acumen with a human-centric lens to create educational programs that connect with...
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#028 Choreographing Work: Lessons from Dance with Renatus Hoogenraad
Making Business Art
Ever heard the idiom “It takes two to tango”? For service design facilitator and executive coach, Renatus Hoogenraad, the spirit behind this idiom has a more literal meaning. As a former professional ballet dancer and someone trained in applied improvisation, Renatus pays special attention to how we show up and use our bodies at work. He thinks of work as an ongoing choreography where a form of dance is happening in the interactions among team members. Renatus’ perspective is a refreshing counterbalance to what many of us have been trained to do at school and work: live in...
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#027 Work with Love with Chris Baer
Making Business Art
Life at work can feel dull, transactional, and exhausting. Fortunately, it does not have to be that way. In fact, our work can be turned into a vehicle for transforming how we relate and connect with others, while making other areas of our lives feel bright, inspired and nourishing. For this minisode I’m bringing back innovation and leadership development expert, , to discuss “working with love,” a key foundation of his leadership development work through his . Chris’ work focuses on helping leaders develop more relational skills so their organizations can have better culture,...
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#026 Extraordinary Benefits of Understanding Others with Karen Faith
Making Business Art
Henry Ford once said that “if there is any secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from [their] angle as well as from your own.” What Henry Ford was talking about is practicing “cognitive empathy” also known as “perspective taking.” My guest and founder of Others Unlimited, Karen Faith, teaches people in organizations how to be more successful by learning and practicing “cognitive empathy” to achieve better results in communication, trust, culture, collaboration, and many other benefits. In this conversation Karen...
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#025 Reimagining Experiences in Physical Spaces with Josh Goldblum
Making Business Art
New technologies enable fresh opportunities to connect with visitors in physical spaces. But connecting with people in a way that feels authentic, trustworthy, engaging, and enduring takes a whole lot of passion, collaboration, and a deep love of story and craft. My guest and Emmy-award winning creative executive and entrepreneur, Josh Goldblum, has spent over 20 years honing his craft at the intersection of art, technology, and culture to create amazing technology-enabled experiences for cultural organizations and brands. If you have visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York,...
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#024 The Power of Applied Empathy with Michael Ventura
Making Business Art
If we want to be an effective leader, team member, and problem-solver, we must be skilled at understanding what is really going on with ourselves and others. My guest, entrepreneur and author, Michael Ventura, spent years refining an approach to help leaders and teams develop valuable perspectives that can be applied to solve problems internally and for their customers. Michael calls this approach “Applied Empathy,” and even authored a book with that title. This approach focuses on getting to know others and their challenges by actively engaging with them and applying what we learn to...
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#023 How to Make Business Beautiful with Tim Leberecht
Making Business Art
If you could reinvent your organization and your career, what would you do? After many years of working with executives from prominent organizations, Tim Leberecht recognized and wanted to support people’s desire to feel a sense of belonging, dream bigger, stretch their wings and transform how they lived and worked. After publishing his first book, The Business Romantic, Tim took the leap to reinvent his career and life. He co-founded The House of Beautiful Business, a unique company that helps humanize organizations and build a more beautiful future. Today Tim is sought out by leaders of...
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#022 Applied Improv for Better Leadership, Connection, & Communication with Belina Raffy
Making Business Art
Keeping up with the accelerating pace of change and complexity in our world can feel daunting. Fortunately, there are people like global improv consultant and comedy teacher, Belina Raffy, who can show us how to re-energize how we relate with our teams and bring more joy, creativity, and connection to our organizations. Belina makes the case that practicing improv is the gym to strengthen our ability to deal with complexity. In this conversation Belina and I discuss the benefits we can derive from practicing applied improv at work and other areas of our lives, improv’s triangle model,...
info_outlineHave you ever met someone who inspired you to rethink your approach to work and life? Maybe that person modeled ways of creating more freedom, fun, and meaning at work. If you met someone like that, did it change you in some way?
I met Scott Heaps in 2003. Looking back I can see how he was an early influence on me in thinking more seriously about becoming an entrepreneur and Making Business Art. I loved the name of Scott’s digital company, Gravity Free, and his creative mindset which inspired it. You’ll hear more about that in the episode. I was inspired by the intention and creative spirit with which Scott approached his business and life. He showed me how we can prioritize happiness and run a prosperous business that serves and brings joy to others.
In this episode Scott and I have a wide ranging conversation that spans teaching himself to code and his first experiments with e-commerce in the 1990s, lessons learned while building his company, his approach to fostering a creative, collaborative, fun and joyful work environment, and thoughts on Making Business Art through the lens of his experience making and playing music with a band. We also touch on why Scott has a half-pipe for skateboarding in his garage, and his unique approach to raising his twin boys.
I had a lot of fun learning more about Scott’s story and the lessons he learned along the way. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.
ABOUT OUR GUEST
Scott Heaps is the founder of GravityFree, a boutique digital agency that's been defying gravity for over 25 years by building and marketing out-of-this-world websites for florists. His team helps multi-generational floral businesses dominate their local markets and keep the national order gatherers at bay.
Scott leads a team of diverse and incredibly passionate people who genuinely care about everything they do. They have a wide range of interests, and when they do things, they invest their hearts and souls. The team is made up of musicians, travelers, photographers, cross-trainers, boaters, farmers, a professional comedian, filmmakers, gamers, and more comic book connoisseurs than you can shake a stick at.
They jam together, cook together, try new restaurants together, and they always manage to have a great time doing it. And because of that close connection, they have an incredibly collaborative environment.
https://www.gravityfree.com
https://www.instagram.com/gravityfreestudios
ABOUT MAKING BUSINESS ART
Making Business Art is a podcast for curious people where we draw lessons and inspiration from creative leaders, entrepreneurs, artists, designers, and scientists about making a beautiful business and life. We have conversations about how to create a powerful connection with the people we serve while making our craft an engine for personal growth.
This podcast is the creation of and hosted by me, Ezequiel Williams. I am an entrepreneur, innovation strategist, facilitator, and business designer. I help leaders and teams see their challenges differently and find ways to deliver value that are more desirable and satisfying for the people they serve. I am very curious and love to learn about how things work, what makes people tick, and how to create more joy in the world.