See a photo of Gregg, his bio, and Part 1 of this Q&A.
Q&A with Gregg Morris, Question 2:
Q: How did you initially become involved with story/storytelling/narrative? What attracted you to this field? What do you love about it?
A: My earliest memories are story-related, so I guess I’ve been involved in it since I was a young boy. My parents got married quite young, and we lived with my maternal grandmother when I was growing up. In effect, since both of my folks were working to provide for us, she wound up raising me. She was a terrific storyteller. I think that in another set of circumstances she would have been a writer of some kind. Anyway, she’s the one who instilled in me a lifelong love and interest in story, storytelling, and narrative.
While I remember “listening to” and “telling” stories from a young age,
my earliest memory of written experience with story came when I was in the second grade. We had to write a story about why we wanted to be a pilot. As luck would have it, my story won the competition and one of the perks was that I got to read it on national radio. If I hadn’t already been hooked on stories and storytelling beforehand, that experience probably did it for sure.
In college, I majored in English and minored in religion and political science so I got to do a lot of story and narrative work there as well. A religion professor, Dr. Ed St. Claire, introduced us to the early work in narrative done by Stephen Crites, who wrote the Narrative Quality of Experience. Working on our “personal stories” in that class gave me a perspective on story, narrative, and emotional connections that I hadn’t been exposed to before.
I wound up working in sports, education, business, and technology. During that time I found that I was constantly using what I had learned about story and narrative techniques in daily business interactions. I left the C-suite just over a year ago, and my plan was to write (tell stories) and do some business consulting in sales, marketing, pr, and social media. What I found when I started doing the consulting part was that what people and businesses really wanted was help with their narrative and their story.
They needed help in those other areas as well, but, with the changes in customer attitudes, interaction and sentiment, it seemed to me that growth in those critical business areas was only going to be achieved with narrative and stories that resonated emotionally with customers. The real ‘niche’ in marketing that would lead to more sales was going to be found by tapping into that part of us that is “story.”