Every Monday Matters: Embracing Creativity for Impact
Join Kassi Kincaid for an insightful discussion with Matthew Emerzian, keynote speaker, four-time best-selling author, and CEO of Every Monday Matters. Explore the significance of recognizing your worth and discover innovative ways to create a positive impact in your life and the lives of others.
Transcript:
Kassi Kincaid (00:00):
Welcome to The Edge of Creativity Podcast. I'm your host, Kassi Kincaid, and joined with me today is Matthew Emerzian, keynote speaker, four-time bestselling author and founder and CEO of the nonprofit-- Every Monday Matters. Welcome, Matthew. Thank you so much for being here today.
Matthew Emerzian (00:24):
I love your energy. It's great. Yeah.
Kassi Kincaid (00:27):
I'm so excited to have you on today on my word and here all about the amazing work you're doing in
California and the world.
Matthew Emerzian (00:37):
Yes, nationwide in the world these days. Yes.
Kassi Kincaid (00:41):
So Matthew, can you just kick us off with explaining the nonprofit that you started and kind of the work
that you're doing in that nonprofit?
Matthew Emerzian (00:50):
Absolutely. Yeah. So first of all, thanks for having me. You're just such a fun, bright light, so thank you for having me on your podcast. Every Monday Matters is a nonprofit I started 17 years ago. Our mission is to create a world where everyone knows how much and why they matter. The first big kind of business vertical that we started was education, K through 12 education. So it falls into social and emotional learning, meets character meets service learning curriculum that is free for schools to use and educators. And we service over 3 million students nationwide and in six countries with that program. And then we created a program as a keynote speaker, well, as an author and then keynote speaker. I started speaking a lot of companies and then they were looking to take the message deeper. So we started creating workshops and leadership development programs.
(01:55):
And now we have a program that we come in as an agency to help develop culture and engagement on a year long basis with organizations now to bring mattering into the corporate space. And then most recently we launched a program in the senior living communities. It's wild, but I was asked to keynote the California Assisted Living Association conference and also the Arizona Assisted Living Association conference. And they asked me if I would visit some of these communities before I did my keynote, in which case I met some residents there, some seniors who were there. And the things that they said to me just broke my heart that they don't feel like they matter anymore, that they're just there to die. They don't have any visitors anymore. And they did a great job with entertainment stuff like bingo and ball toss and all this stuff. But I thought, what if we brought Every Monday Matters into these spaces where we can help them reconnect to how much and why they matter. So basically we operationalize mattering into different verticals, if you will. And then with me and my books, I am the individual program, if you will, at Every Monday Matters is you can read the books.
Kassi Kincaid (03:09):
That's amazing. I loved your mission when I heard about what you're doing, the nonprofit space. I mean, because it really does. I mean, it's the core. If we don't feel that we matter in life, it's the core of everything else, the career relationships. And I love how you guys not only focus specifically on kids, my
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work with kids. So I really connect with that. But also having really aged grandparents the past several years and them being in rehabs and nursing homes and all of that things, I really connect with the spot of the senior living as well. So that is so cool that it has just transcended education, senior living and all your work in the corporate space.
Matthew Emerzian (03:55):
Yeah. It's funny because in a lot of ways what happened is in 2007, I wrote my first book. It was called Every Monday Matters 52 Ways to Make a Difference. And that book was inspired from my own personal journey of having worked in the music industry at a very senior level, working on projects for the biggest artists in the world. And on a Monday morning, I woke up and had a massive panic attack, which turned into chronic anxiety disorder and depression. And I questioned why my life mattered. And so I had to relearn because everything that I thought mattered, I learned, didn't basically. And so I had to relearn why my life mattered. And through that process, in working with a therapist who I call my expensive friend, I learned a new meaning, a new purpose for life. And so I wrote this book in 2007 just to write the book.
(04:48):
I don't know why I just wanted to do, but I still worked in the music industry. But then all of a sudden, this book started becoming something much bigger. And honestly, it's been a tail wagging the dog experience for 17 years because just these things come to it where people are needing mattering. And sadly, I don't know that there's really a space where it doesn't apply. Whether you're talking about women fleeing in domestic violence shelters or the military and veterans every day in America, we lose 21 veterans to suicide, and there's so many incarcerated populations. So this message that I matter, you matter, we matter, really applies everywhere. And it's a matter of us partnering with the right groups to bring it in. And it's been an awesome ride though. It's been so fun. And so I think meaningful.
Kassi Kincaid (05:47):
Absolutely. It's all about meaningful work and helping other people to be meaningful in their work. I just can't imagine a world without meaningful work, right? Loving what you do and then inspiring other people to love what they do.
Matthew Emerzian (06:03):
Absolutely. And sometimes I have to remind myself, because running a nonprofit isn't easy work. You could read my bio and people could hear my bio think, wow, what a simple, blessed life. Changing the world isn't easy. And it's funny because people often ask me, Matt, what does ultimate success look like for you? And I say that as a nonprofit organization, no matter what you do or who you serve, the day that you go out of business, because there's no more need to serve is the ultimate success. And so if you bring meals to those who are hungry and one day there's no more people who are hungry, you've won, whether it's weird because that means you're out of business.
Kassi Kincaid (06:57): Well, we all dread, right?
Matthew Emerzian (06:59):
Which typically is not seen as winning in a business environment.
Kassi Kincaid (07:04):
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True. Very true. So Matt, let's pivot a little bit now that our listeners kind of know your work and what
you do. Let's talk about creativity. How has creativity played a role in your work?
Matthew Emerzian (07:22):
Well, a friend of mine I met many, many years ago, he has a quote. And the quote is that we were created
as works of art to go out in the world and be artists at work. (07:40):
And it's a quote that I always, I think about a lot, a lot of people that don't think they're creative and not everyone thinks they're creative. And I would argue that everyone is creative because there's only one of you in the world, and of 8 billion people, there's only one of you. And so the way you tie your shoes, the way you dress, the way you engage with people, it's all uniquely yours. And so that makes you a creator. And for me, I ping pong back and forth between, I have this one side of my brain that has got my MBA from a top 10 business, school, business, business, business. Then I have this other side of my brain that is more in the feels right, and it's all my emotions and my feelings. And so oftentimes I even get kind of crosswired on this whole thing too. But for me, creativity, this idea of with Every Monday matters. It's truly creating something out of nothing.
(08:49):
This didn't exist before. And the idea of, I'm a big believer in whiteboards and I'm a big abuser of Sharpies and post-it notes, sorry, environment, but this creative process of finding or feeling this thing inside of me and getting it out and processing it out and then putting it out there in the world and then kind of looking at it, measuring it, ideating around it, tweaking it, prototyping it. Even the idea of writing books. I'm amazed that this creativity thing, it's in us and when we allow it to come out and express, and in some ways for me, I don't squeeze it too tightly. A big part of creativity for me, even as a keynote speaker, there's a lot of empathy inside of creativity for me. I might design what I think is the greatest keynote ever, but once I'm in the room delivering it, I still have to feel the room. And I still have to nuance it in ways that is not just so it's me saying, oh, look how creative I am, but actually, so it connects as well. And so creativity doesn't exist necessarily in a vacuum for me. To me, I create things for people to engage in. And if I don't bring awareness and empathy and make it super audience centric or reader centric, then really I'm just creating for the sake of myself. And I don't know that that's why I create.
Kassi Kincaid (10:44):
Absolutely that there has to be some kind of purpose behind your creativity.
Matthew Emerzian (10:50):
And for some people that purpose might be just their own need to get this stuff out. Maybe they go to pottery and they make a pottery vase, and no one in the world ever sees that vase, but they still made it, and that's what they needed to do for themselves, I find, which is beautiful. I find myself often creating because I have this mission of wanting to impact people and impact the world to make the world a better place. And so that becomes a lot of the inspiration for my creativity.
Kassi Kincaid (11:25):
So I think one of the ways I see creativity in your work, I mean, is just how you got it literally around the world. People think like, oh my word, people scale all these nonprofits or businesses, and you just almost think that they just snap their fingers and then it's like, oh, wow, the world knows about it. What did creativity look like for you as you expanded the program? Or how did it play a role in that?
Matthew Emerzian (11:52):
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That's a great question. We're big into continuous quality improvement. We're big into voice, student voice, employee voice, senior voice. So we like to look at creativity as though it can't just be us. Like I said in our office, designing what we think is the most perfect thing, that void of any sort of influencer or impact or information, feedback from the world is completely missing the mark for us. And so one of the things that we do, for example, is we ask this question to the world, what is one word that you think we need more of today in the world? And we collect these words all year long. So empathy, compassion, kindness, adventure. We just collect these words and we do that as a starting point for us to get our finger on the pulse of how is humanity feeling? And at the end of the year, we put these words into a word cloud and we see what comes up the most and we end up picking 12 of those words.
(13:03):
And then those 12 words become the monthly themes for our programming for the upcoming year. So even before we start actually writing programming, we are in creating anything. We're asking this question of the world. So again, we're creating something that matters, something that's needed. So in a lot of ways, our creativity is also based on how the world thinks and feels. And so we see it as a very we thing, again, as a collaborative effort, as a, they call it human-centered design. We see ourselves as a human-centered design organization. Now, once we have the input and we have the ideas, we're really good at that experiential design part to then create things that work really well for people to consume and for organizations to put in place. But even in our programming that we create, we still tell anyone leading it, use your own creativity just because we wrote this. It doesn't have to be followed word to word. Make it your own. Choose your own adventure. We empower people at Every Money Matters. We say inspire, empower, make it matter. Those are three words we think about a lot because Every Monday Matters itself, doesn't go into schools. We train teachers on how to use the program, kind of like what you do. And so we want to empower people to then be creative with the thing that we created.
Kassi Kincaid (14:40):
So awesome. So how did you get into every state in America? How did that happen?
Matthew Emerzian (14:47):
Well, that's another interesting question, because we don't have a marketing budget.
Kassi Kincaid (14:53): Wow.
Matthew Emerzian (14:55):
Yeah. We've never had a marketing budget. But in the spirit of creativity, I think we just created something that people really connected to and probably because we listened and asked questions before even creating it. But then it's been honestly word of mouth. And then I get asked to keynote the Kentucky after school, whatever conference, and share the story and share the message. And the next thing in all those surrounding states, people are reaching out, oh, I was at the Kentucky multi-state thing. Would you mind coming to North Carolina? And it's been a heat map that we've watched, spread. We're based in California. So it started here, and then I just watched it slowly just move its way across the country in this very organic heat map spreading way, which to me, I don't know. In a lot of ways I love that because it, we did some major ad buy it. We had some major celebrity attachment. It was truly just on the ground, word of mouth, people using it, loving it, and talking about it.
Kassi Kincaid (16:21):
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I love that. And such a testament to the work that you do, right? That creativity, it makes a huge impact. And I love that you just kind of saw that, how that organically and naturally just kind of sweep the country.
Matthew Emerzian (16:38):
What's funny is you made me think of something. Everyone always says, you just have to make a viral video. Just make a viral video and you'll go everywhere. And that's a heck of a marketing plan, but that is forcing creativity in a way that it's not intended to work. If everyone could create a video, then they would've done it already. True. So creativity is not just necessarily something you can rationalize in your head and think you have it figured out and put it out there in the world, and boom, here we go. There is this dance with how people receive it as well, and with Every Monday Matters, they received it well, and the universe just said, this is going to spread. It's going to grow because it looks like it's supposed to.
Kassi Kincaid (17:34):
Yeah. No, absolutely. And I love that point too, because I feel like you think that one thing is just kind of like your golden ticket. If I just made a viral video, if I just did a TED talk, if I just, then I would go from here to here instantly, and there's really no golden ticket.
Matthew Emerzian (17:53): There is not.
Kassi Kincaid (17:55):
Hard work, the input, the creativity, and kind of just that natural growth process like you guys have seen.
Matthew Emerzian (18:03):
Absolutely. Yeah. And in that sense, I guess creativity, there needs to be a consistency to it too. You have to commit to it. You have to keep showing up. My wife and I, we were talking a few years back, and I said, babe, I think that our life is kind of in a rhythm, not a rut in a bad way, but we definitely became creatures of habit. And I said, I think that we should both start a new hobby. And so I picked tennis and she picked how to play the banjo.
Kassi Kincaid (18:44): I love it.
Matthew Emerzian (18:47):
She's from the south, and so she grew up with a bunch of banjo, Pluckers, you don't learn to play the banjo overnight. And it's a creative journey that in the beginning, it sucks. You don't learn how to hit a tennis ball you see on television overnight. But if you commit to that creative journey, that learning journey, self expression, over time, you will get better. But to your point, it's not like you can create the greatest, the Mona Lisa on your first painting, and in this microwave get rich quick. Everything, instantly world that we live in today, I think now you add an AI where in 30 seconds you can produce this image that is like other otherworldly. Creativity is different than that. It takes a commitment, it takes consistency, it takes failure. It takes really hard times at times. It takes being stuck, being frustrated. All that stuff falls inside of creativity.
Kassi Kincaid (20:02):
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Hundred percent. And I love that you touched on that because it does take a lot of determination to grow creative ideas. Creative ideas are like the seed, and if it's not watered, not cared for, eventually you'll get the big plant or whatever you planted, but there's so much that happens in between the creativity. If it's not tended for, then if the determination, the consistency, like you said, then it's just not going to go anywhere.
Matthew Emerzian (20:34):
I even think about what you do and how that came to being from what you were doing before working in schools to seeing this thing that came to mind that you tried and worked and all of a sudden other people talked about it, loved it. Then all of a sudden you create characters. And just to see how that all came together and really followed the journey of that creative expression that again, started from nothing. And that's the wild thing about creativity. I mean, everything we see in our world, even automobiles, they started from nothing. One day someone said, we're going to land on the moon or we're going to go to outer space, and it was completely outlandish. But without that, starting from nothing moment, which is the start of creativity, and then all the creativity took over time to get it to become a reality. It's really how everything in life exists.
Kassi Kincaid (21:36):
Yes, so true. Wow. Yeah. You think of all the history that we know and love and all the different, the
Wright brothers and everything from the telephone to electricity, and it was an idea, right?
Matthew Emerzian (21:51): Yeah.
Kassi Kincaid (21:52):
How many times did it take Edison to make the light bulb? I forgot so many times.
Matthew Emerzian (21:57):
Exactly. Right. But it started with a creative what if. And from there it became.
Kassi Kincaid (22:07):
And his determination, I mean, we have all our lights on right now talking.
Matthew Emerzian (22:12): Yeah. We're on Zoom,
Kassi Kincaid (22:15): Right?
Matthew Emerzian (22:17): Yeah.
Kassi Kincaid (22:19):
Your program has just impacted so many people, all your speeches, the books. I mean, you have just
made so much impact, and we've kind of touched on that, but what would be some defining moments for
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you for maybe comments people have said or people have reached out? What are a couple of really
impactful moments for you of just digesting that impact?
Matthew Emerzian (22:48):
Yeah. There are these moments that happen that sometimes I honestly, Kassi don't even know how to process them. If you look at humanity on a scale of one side is I don't think I matter at all. No hope, hopeless, helpless, all the way to someone who really is tied into how much they matter and everything in between of what that might, how people might feel. I guess it's those cases where you met somebody that just was not well, and now they're thriving. So it's the homeless high school student that approached me who we helped graduate from high school, and now she's thriving and she's graduating from college with three degrees. She got you matter tattooed on her wrist, and she tells you that the two words you matter changed everything for her life.
(23:56):
It's the audience member that comes to me after I did a keynote for a big bank, and she pulled me out into the hallway and she says, I think God brought you here today. My plan was to kill myself tomorrow and takes me to her car and gives me all the tape and the tubing that she had bought from Home Depot to run the exhaust into the cab of her car the next day. It's those stories ultimately that are just like, I don't even know how to process that. And they always say, Hey, if you just affect one person, and I guess those are the big headline stories, but then it's everything in between too. It's an email from a woman saying they're doing Every Monday Matters at her husband's company. And she sends an email saying, I don't know what you've done to my husband, but he is a better man today than he's ever been since I've known him.
(24:55):
Wow. It's those things that I get snarky a little bit when it comes to, especially on the corporate side of things, is mattering a nice to have or a must have? And my answer is mattering is absolutely. Well, it's a nice to have. You must have. Because if people coming to your work and working for your company, they don't feel like they matter or they're somewhere on that spectrum that is not in a good way, they're not going to perform for you. They just can't. They're just trying to get through their days. And instead, when you actually create a culture at work where people do feel seen, heard, and loved, and they do feel valued and they contribute and they feel community and they feel like everything they do matters, game's over, they will achieve beyond your wildest dreams and they'll never leave. And so it's that human needs meets, meets business needs. And I think the more that we can help each other solve for that.
(26:03):
And so I love it when I go into a company where maybe leadership was a little bit skeptical. How does mattering help my bottom line? It's like, well, just give us a chance. Let's see what happens here. And you completely flip their culture and the company is soaring. So there's so many moments along this journey that I shake my head and I just say, I'm not worthy, which is the last thing I should say. I tell people that they're always worthy, but it's like, how is this happening? And yet, it just keeps happening. And I, I'll say one more thing to that is a lot of people say to me, Matt, why does stuff like this always happen to you in a good way? They say this to me, and my answer is, because I just keep showing up and I just keep showing up. And even when I'm scared, even when I feel exhausted, I just keep showing up. I don't let an imposter syndrome get to me. I just keep expressing into the world and somehow the world receives it when it's supposed to receive it, and we just kind of flow together, which I think is also a testimony just to the freedom of creativity and putting it out there and letting it go where it goes.
Kassi Kincaid (27:30):
Absolutely. Wow, Matt, those stories are so inspiring. Wow.
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I know. It's crazy.
Kassi Kincaid (27:38):
Wow. So just wrapping up to Matt, this our time has been so awesome together and just hearing your whole story and impact you're making, what is one parting thought you would like to leave the listeners today? You shared so much great wisdom and knowledge and just of your journey. What is one thing you'd love to leave them with?
Matthew Emerzian (28:02):
Well, our model, the foundation of our model is this idea of I matter. So understanding myself, all the good, the bad, the ugly of that you matter. Understanding how we impact those around us with our words, our thoughts, our actions, and then we matter that we are a part of something bigger and that we're better together. So my challenge to the listeners is to think about that model of I matter, you matter, we matter. And get creative with how to bring positive impact to themselves, to those around them, and to the world with this model in mind. And it doesn't have to be some massive New Year's resolution. It could just be, you know what? I'm going to give someone a compliment today, and it could be that simple. Or I'm going to look in the mirror at myself and say, you know what? You're awesome. You matter. Go have a great day. Or you're going to go volunteer for an hour at a soup kitchen or do something creative that contributes in a positive way to make a difference in the world and in your own life and lives of others, and express your creativity through that model and watch what ripples.
Kassi Kincaid (29:18):
I love that. So listeners, you have heard it. There's a challenge that Matt gave. So see how you can be creative at least in one aspect in your life, because at the end of the day, it's all about other people and making a positive impact in the world. Matt, thank you so much for being here today. This has been incredible.
Matthew Emerzian (29:40):
Thank you, Kassi. You're amazing.
Kassi Kincaid (29:42):
Thank you so much for being here on The Edge of Creativity Podcast. Be sure to follow so you don't miss
any of our upcoming episodes, and we'll see you soon. Bye.
