John R. Miles spent two decades in boardrooms and battlefields before deciding his next mission would be teaching children something most adults never learned: that they matter simply because they exist.
The former Navy combat veteran and Fortune 50 executive will launch The Matteringverse in February 2026, a character-driven storytelling universe designed to address what researchers now call a belonging crisis among young people. Its first title, You Matter, Luma, introduces readers to a quiet bunny who discovers that her voice has value, laying the foundation for an emotional education platform spanning books, animation, interactive experiences, and school programs.
Miles is building The Matteringverse the way Pixar built its storytelling universe: a multimedia emotional ecosystem in which every book, character, and realm reveals a different dimension of what it means to matter.
“I am creating a multimedia emotional ecosystem in which every book, character, and realm reveals a different dimension of what it means to matter. Pixar began with Toy Story and evolved into emotionally resonant worlds from Inside Out to Soul.” Explained Miles, “The Matteringverse begins with Luma’s inward journey of self-worth and extends across multiple emotional realms, including the Passion Struck Forest, Echo Canyons, Cloud Steps, and Rising Tide Islands. Each realm is powered by the M.A.T.T.E.R. framework, a unifying emotional engine that teaches mattering as the foundation beneath confidence, courage, kindness, resilience, and belonging.”
Where traditional motivational content focuses on achievement, The Matteringverse teaches children that worth is not earned but inherent. Miles describes it as a world where emotional courage meets imaginative storytelling, where characters grow not by proving themselves but by understanding themselves.
This pivot is the fullest expression of work that has already reached millions. Miles’s Passion Struck podcast has surpassed 80 million downloads and earned a Davey Gold Award for Social Impact. The brand swept Gold in both the International Business Awards and American Business Awards for Best Independent Podcast and Best Business Book. Yet he insists the children’s storytelling world addresses the same crisis of mattering at its earliest roots.
A Crisis Hidden in Plain Sight
Educators and psychologists warn of rising student alienation. According to the Aspen Institute, children who lack a sense of mattering show increased rates of anxiety, depression, academic withdrawal, and chronic absenteeism.
Miles sees this crisis as the childhood origin of something he observed repeatedly in corporate life: adults searching for meaning because no one taught them emotional foundations as children. His solution is to create stories that serve as both entertainment and emotional scaffolding, giving families a shared language for discussing worth without lectures or therapy.
The Matteringverse fuels the Pass the Ripple Challenge, a school-based program that translates stories into behavior. Students receive Ripple Cards prompting simple acts of kindness and track their impact through a digital app. Miles describes it as turning mattering into measurable behavior and creating feedback loops that reinforce a core truth: small actions create large effects.
The initiative is piloting in partner schools as part of the larger Passion Struck ecosystem, which includes the Passion Struck Network, a creator-first podcast network, the Passion Struck Speakers Bureau, and the Start Mattering apparel line designed to reinforce identity and belonging. Together, Miles frames these not as separate businesses but as one unified system addressing disconnection at every level: children, adults, organizations, and communities.
From Executive Suite to Emotional Architect
Miles never expected to build story worlds for children. After serving in the Navy, he rose through Fortune 50 leadership ranks, managing multi-billion dollar portfolios. He describes that period as professionally successful yet emotionally hollow, a life that looked impressive from the outside while feeling empty within.
The realization that success without meaning produces internal collapse became the catalyst for Passion Struck. He launched the podcast in 2021 to explore intentional living and the psychology of significance. Within four years, the show became the number one alternative health podcast globally and featured guests including Seth Godin, Susan Cain, Angela Duckworth, and Jon Kabat-Zinn.
Listener conversations revealed a pattern. Adults sought purpose because they never learned inherent worth. Parents begged for tools to help their children avoid the same emotional gaps. Miles realized the most scalable intervention was not another leadership theory for executives. It was stories for five-year-olds.
The Matteringverse will release a series of ten children’s books already in development, each addressing a different emotional skill and standing fully alone. The structure mirrors the architecture that turned Pixar into a cultural institution. Twenty years from now, Miles wants a child to say they are having a Luma day, the same way kids once said “To infinity and beyond.”
Miles emphasizes that Passion Struck is not a media company pretending to be a movement. It is a media company with a movement’s purpose. It is building the place where people, starting with children, learn they matter, live like they matter, and help others do the same. The Matteringverse is the heart of that vision.
Whether The Matteringverse becomes a cultural force on the scale of Pixar remains to be seen. “I’m determined to give this generation what my generation had to discover the hard way: the unshakable belief that worth cannot be taken, traded, earned, or lost,” he said.
For now, it begins with a quiet bunny in a bustling forest, discovering that significance is not about being the loudest or the fastest. It is about showing up, caring deeply, and trusting that small voices create large ripples.
