In 2011 and 2012, Megan Elizabeth Morris (called MEM) worked with Seth Godin and his team at Squidoo to launch Upmarket Magazine as part of the Squidoo Magazines project.
In Autumn 2012, when she departed Squidoo, Upmarket was moved to its own platform under Megan’s care — and a series of significant events began to occur.
The startling and unexpected ramifications of these events radically changed the trajectory of our work and the future of the magazine.
On the first dedicated website after its server move in 2012, Megan wrote:
We are building Upmarket Magazine into a community-driven platform with a two-fold purpose:
To publish meaningful content about BUSINESS that is PERSONAL, ART and CONNECTION as the primary vehicle and PURPOSE of business, and the fundamentally HUMAN underpinnings of everything related to business that human beings do.
and
To build a COMMUNITY of PEOPLE who RESONATE with our message, and increase Upmarket’s EFFECTIVENESS as a platform to SUPPORT the people in our community. This means our EDITORIAL TEAM, our CONTRIBUTORS, our READERS, and all the others in our monkeyspheres that we all believe are worthy of our support.
Upmarket is all about creating remarkable, creative, meaningful, human-resonant businesses. Our focus tends to be more on small (and micro!) businesses that push the envelope, the people who run them, and where to find the guts and insight to build them.
We have been nourished, strengthened, and gratified to realize how close we’ve kept to these values as our work continued in times of hardship, injury, and epic challenges across our communities.
Our original copy describing features and contributors continues to stand true, too:
What do we feature in Upmarket? Case studies, reviews, tips & tricks, surprising shortcuts, what works (and what doesn’t).
We talk about measurables, but we talk a hell of a lot about immeasurables, too.
Upmarket is about the artistic, important, and authentic aspects of business. We tell stories about the businesses that amaze us, and provide information and resources to readers who are interested in making their business successful in just those delightful ways.
We believe that any individual’s success is something they alone determine, and we believe that the “success” of a business today requires far more than just a simple how-to manual.
Who contributes to Upmarket? This magazine owes most of its content to its passionate columnists. If you’re interested in becoming one of our columnists or contributing any other kind of text, video or artistic content, there’s more information below!
We have been rocked to the core by the realization of where our original intentions brought us. The profoundness of our responsibility in sharing this story with you does not escape us; we know that it will fundamentally change the way you do business.
Our Narrative Editorial at Upmarket Magazine, authored by Megan Elizabeth Morris (now often called Max, or Mack), will begin to guide you through the plot points.
Meanwhile, beginning in 2023, we’re opening up new opportunities for contributors as we gradually rebuild the magazine onto its new platform on Substack.
Interested in contributing?
If you’d like to contribute to Upmarket as an editor or volunteer as part of our team, email upmarketmagazine@substack.com - Megan will give you details about what we’re looking for.
If you’d like to become one of our contributing columnists, check out this page. Our article contributors are passionate volunteers who want to share more about their field of expertise, and we have a wide audience who wants to hear from you!
If you’d like to contribute to Upmarket as an artist, send an email to Megan at upmarketmagazine@substack.com straightaway — she’s very interested in hearing from you.
If you have any questions or would like more information about any of the above listed roles, email MEM here and she’ll help you out.
Meet the Team
Megan Elizabeth Morris — also known as MEM, Mack, or Max — serves as Upmarket Magazine’s Editor-in-Chief. She is also Lead Coordinator of the Intuitive Public Radio Network.
She oversees the trajectory of content streams, plans each special content series, keeps our wondrousness widgets working, and does anything else she deems necessary to make our gifts delicious.
MEM also connects remarkable contributors with Upmarket’s audience when she’s wearing her content recruitment hat, and sometimes she contributes content herself. (If you’re a talented content creator looking to build community around an outside-the-box business message, be sure to drop her a note or learn how to contribute here.)
You can also find out more about MEM by subscribing to Mack’s Memo • Intuitive Public Radio on Substack, checking her out on Facebook, following her on Twitter, or by browsing her personal content stream on Telegram messenger at t.me/MaxMoRadio.
Message her directly at t.me/MaxMorris, or email max@intuitive.pub.
Evan Jacques, our (Intuitive Auxiliary) Co-Editor, has called themself writer, monster-whisperer, and warm-hearted advocate of play and silliness. Their interests have included Shakespeare, Neil Gaiman, P.L. Travers, Tolkien, Star Wars, and theater.
Evan has done work centered around helping people surprise themselves with their own wisdom and brilliance — by talking to the monsters in their heads (we’ve all got them) — and by working with the Intuitive Network to build Care Notation resourcing.
Evan’s writing and editorial work includes adventures in storytelling, copywriting, proofreading, and audio transcription.
You can also follow more of Evan’s writing here.
Intuitive Invisibles, our colleagues who build and coordinate the Intuitive Network, also serve editorial roles at Upmarket Magazine — in a special fashion.
Our experiences since 2012 have impressed upon us more than ever how important it is to include the most severely affected survivors of violence in our ongoing community dialogues. What we learn from them is irreplaceable.
We are lucky to have these colleagues with us at the helm.
The contributions Intuitive Invisibles have made in the Intuitive Network to our development of Upmarket Magazine’s platform have been profound. We’re excited for you to discover more about the work they have done, and continue doing.
To learn more about Intuitive Invisibles, subscribe to the Intuitive Public Radio Network on Substack.
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