YOUR SHOES AND YOUR SOUL

Duda Owner IONOS • September 14, 2015

Life is filled with decisions about the tangible and the intangible. We choose daily what our priorities are. Some decisions are more involved with the physical and the visible. Some decisions are more involved with the nonphysical and the invisible. Kenneth Cole (chief creative officer and chairman of Kenneth Cole Productions) shares a life lesson about this dichotomy (“How Did I Get Here?: Kenneth Cole” Bloomberg Businessweek , 8/31/15–9/6/15, p. 68):

“ It’s great to be known for your shoes, but better to be known for your soul. ”

In the very tangible, fiscally driven, number-crunching business world, we cannot afford to ignore the physical and the visible. That is how businesses operate. Yet as important as all that is, its greatest service derives from the soul behind it. That is what makes one company distinct from another and one person distinct from another.

Personally and professionally, are we known for our shoes or our souls? That question should challenge us daily. It does me.

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