YouSaid · the spoken record

Matthew Dicks

lines on the record: 120
first: 2023-12-15
most recent: 2023-12-15
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Added a boring feature to our boring platform, and we need to make people understand what it does. Will you give us the metaphor we need? They don't understand that I'm not really generating metaphors. I am just taking stories from my life, pulling myself out of the story. And if you take yourself out of a story, often what's left is a metaphor assimile, an example. And then I just offer that to them. And I tell them, if you just use some of my storytelling generating techniques, you could do the same thing. But they're a band-aid company. They just want me to fix things. And I understand that. If you're trying to do it, the best way to sort of tell a story about something that you want people to understand is to do what I call speaking with adjacency, which means we're not going to match content to content. Instead, we're going to match theme, meaning, or message, right? So that scientist, for example, he wasn't talking about tubes, right? He was talking about how”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That they sell, right? We create positive connections with items in the world related to our company by telling stories. And that means we've built advertising into people's lives without them even being aware that we've done it. So there's a billion ways to add storytelling into business. It's just another one.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“President of Marketing was not happy about this at all when I met with her because she's a scientist. She's 50 years old for her entire life. She's been sending scientists to conferences and presenting data. And she said to me, so what am I going to do? Send scientists to conferences now and not present data. And I said, well, I mean, maybe because it worked, right? And she said, well, what about the data? I said, now that he has the leads, you don't think they're going to want the data? Like he's going to get on the phone and they're going to say, tell us about the data. But now they've established a connection. And the best thing about that story, the thing she didn't even understand was every single time someone at that conference goes into a grocery store now and they're looking at apples, they're going to think about that company. And it's a positive feeling that they're going to have about that company. If they have forgotten to call, but they meant to call when they're picking out a honey crisp at the grocery store, they're going to make a note, oh, right, I got to call that company and look into the tubes.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Everyone likes a different apple. So he's got to go and he's going to buy 30 crisps for his wife and two Gala for his daughter. And they're baking a pie this week, so they got to get some Macintosh. And he likes red delicious. He said, it's a nightmare, buying these apples. And so he tells that story about the nightmare of buying apples. And then he says, that's what my company does, right? There are companies that say, we offer Macintosh, make do with it. You're going to make your pies. You're going to eat it. All of the things that you want to do with an apple, all you get is Macintosh. Good luck. We believe you should have access to all the apples. We believe that you have particular needs and specific requirements. And we're going to make sure you have it, just like my family gets all the apples they want. That's all he said. A longer version of it, but that's it. No data. He got more leads at the conference than the other scientists combined. The other four scientists combined. Now, the vice.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I've worked with a lot of scientists in biotech and places like that. I worked with a biotech company. Five of their scientists were going to a conference. And essentially it's a company that sells tubes. All of their competitors sell a tube for experiments. And you have to sort of retrofit the tube to fit your needs. The company I was working with, they sell like 12 different versions of the tube, better sized so you don't have to retrofit it. Much more expensive, but the reliability of your experiments are improved by using their properly sized tubes. So I prepare all the scientists and they all do a good job. They all tell stories of some sort and they go off to their conference. One guy, though, doesn't present any data whatsoever. He just tells a story. He tells a story about going to the grocery store. And when he goes to the grocery store, his family is really annoying when it comes to apples because.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have not all 26 of them because some are not like the best business ones in the world. But a large number of them. I think I maybe have the top 12 that work best in business in terms of humor. But you can just take a humor class. I teach humor all the time. I teach all 26 strategies. You know, it's something that can be practiced. The beautiful thing is so often many of the strategies that I offer in business, if it doesn't end up being funny, you're still telling a story. So nobody, it's not sort of like a, you know, bum bum, bum, ching kind of joke. We're not telling those jokes. We're telling humor in the confines of a story so that if this joke doesn't land, we're still telling a story. And oftentimes people don't even realize we were trying to be funny.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's a nameless, faceless machine at the front of the front of the store that you have to swipe your own stuff through and your credit card. There's not actually a human being in the store. And we can make that funny, right? By showing that the third one is unlike the other two. So it's essentially a simple game. Once I've told it to you, you'll see every comic do it all the time. They just say thing that's expected, thing that's expected, unexpected thing, and you make it funny. So it's a simple trick that we use in business all the time.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Other. Essentially, it's three things. Two of them are expected, and one is unexpected. You can say, well, my competitor, they have this, you know, my hardware competitor, the guy down the street, he does sell shovels, just like I do. That's true. And he does offer a wide selection of nails just like I do, right?”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Said, I don't like it. He said, nobody cares about the 1980s, which was the dumbest thing he could have said because Stranger Things was the biggest television show on television at the time, which was nothing but a 1980s. And if he just looked around, he would see that 1980s fashion is coming back, 1980s music is being popularized again. We're remaking 1980s music all the time. Taylor Swift put out an album called 1989. Whether or not the 1980s are relevant or not. It's relevant to talk about the past as a company to demonstrate your expertise in your field, to understand that we know the market backwards and forwards for the last 50 years. We have expertise and we can demonstrate it by telling a story, right? So that's the power of nostalgia. And we can use that all the time in business to make people laugh. The other one I'll give you, again, there's a whole bunch, but a simple one is a game they used to play on Sesame Street, which is one of these things is not like the”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And a 16 year old who was dropping a newspaper off at your porch every day. That's funny. And I didn't even try to be funny with it. I just sort of stated the facts. We could have punched that up and made it really funny. And then we flipped the script, again, the opposites, right in story. In the beginning, employers had all the power. Today, employees have all the power because today you can work in Singapore or Chattanooga, right? While you're living in 10, while you're living in Orlando, right? And today, you don't have to wait for a 16-year-old to deliver the paper with all of your job opportunities. Every single job opportunity on the planet is now accessible to you on the internet. And you can work basically anywhere from anywhere, right? So that's why we need companies like Indeed or the company I was working for, because they have to actually gain some power for the employers. So that was the narrative we were going to tell in the beginning would have been funny. And the CEO of the company.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not listen to my advice, which was a mistake. They're sort of like an indeed company, they're helping find employees for companies that one of these people. And I wanted to start their narrative with the idea of in 1983, the primary source of employment was a 16-year-old kid riding on the back of a schwin, throwing newspapers at doors. And in that newspaper, which was like a paper version of the internet, you would turn to the back page and on that page there was the help wanted ads. And that was essentially all you had to find a job in 1983. Everything was geographically based, meaning you only could look into three or four towns around you to find a job. And it had to be in the paper and you had to own a phone connected to a wall so you could call a company within business hours and hope to get an interview, right? All of the power lived with the employers in 1980.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have currently 26 strategies to be funny. Some are better for business than others. I will give you two that we can use in business all the time. The first one you can use is nostalgia because nostalgia is always funny. The fact that the first VCR I had was 22 pounds and had a remote control attached by a cord that was thick enough that I could trip my brother as he walked through the living room is funny. You know, the fact that I grew up and no one was allergic to anything and we all ate bread packed with gluten and baked in asbestos factories and no one ever wore a helmet while they rode their bike. All of these things can be made to be funny. And it's so easy in business because oftentimes you are rolling out a new product or a new service or you're updating a product or service in a way that allows you to speak nostalgically about the past. I was working with this company and they failed me.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Differentiate yourself from other people, but you have to be willing to try to do it. And it's just a scary thing for people. But I say it stakes, it's surprise, it's suspense, and it's humor. Those are the ways that you're going to hold people and keep them listening. And if you're not engaged in one of those four things while you're speaking, people are not listening to you anymore.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“An executive at a company that you interact with every day. And he was delivering a talk at the Javit Center, and he was going to be funny. We built in a talk, lots of jokes. He was ready to go. He went to the Javit Center. And four hours later, he called me and I said, how'd it go? And he said, I pulled out all the jokes. I said, why did you pull out all the jokes? And he said, the first two speakers weren't funny at all. I felt like if I went on stage and I was funny, I was going to stick out like a sore thumb. I said, no, you were going to like rise from the ashes like a phoenix that everyone has been waiting to hear all day. It's the best thing in the world to follow two terrible people and then go out there and land some jokes. But again, he thought I have to stay within the confines of the herd rather than doing something different. But humor is a brilliant and beautiful and simple way to differentiate yourself.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Perfectly. Some others include suspense. So keeping an audience in suspense and often suspense leads to surprise. So mastering the ability to be suspenseful. And then humor, like daring to be funny, which no one in corporate America can do. Everyone wants to be funny. Every person I've ever met who I've worked with, every business person in some way wanted to be funny. But that's really not actually what they want. They want to have been funny. Because being funny means you must take a risk. You must say something that you believe is funny and you expect an audience to also feel as funny. And if it doesn't happen, that hurts. And so people oftentimes tell me they want to be funny, but when I tell them how they need to be funny, they say, well, I can't say that. Right. They say, and then I say, well, that's the part that's funny. So I was working with a guy, sort of a...”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let's go back to the idea that in business, you have to accept the fact that nobody wants to hear anything you have to say. That is not accepted by most people even after I say it. So once you understand that and once you truly believe it, there's essentially four ways to keep people listening to you in any story, really, but especially in business because really no one wants to listen to you in business. So the first is stakes, which we've really talked about already. You have to have stakes. In every good product story and every good PowerPoint presentation to everything, there are stakes and they're set out in exactly the way I've described. All five of the stakes that I've described to you that I use in that story, charity thief can also be used in every business story, every PowerPoint deck, every entrepreneur pitch, everything. So stakes is one of them. Another one we've talked about is surprise. I should absolutely be surprised in every talk that you give, Steve Jobs was a master of it. We could just look at one of his talks and I could show you how he planned it.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Interest to people while also answering the question. You don't want to walk into a situation and say, Hi, I'm a married elementary school teacher with two kids and two cats. But that's sort of what I want to do because I know that that's going to make people feel connected to me. So I have to find strategic ways to work it in. I teach people to do it all the time. But it starts with understanding what about you might mean something to other people and how can I get it in there without me sounding like I'm only talking about myself.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, no, you don't want to make it all about you. But there's just little tricks. I mean, the easiest trick is Know if someone asks you, how are you doing today? If you say, I'm doing great, you've just really screwed it up. That's the stupidest answer you can offer, right? If you ask me, how am I doing today? I'm immediately going to think to myself, elementary school teacher is probably my best personal interest inventory item. Because if I'm an elementary school teacher, everyone loves me. They think I'm doing God's work, even though they don't want to pay me a dime to do it, right? So if you say, how are you doing today? I will say to you, pretty good. My fifth graders were actually decent human beings today. They didn't try to kill me. So in that way, I'm going to slip in the fact that I'm an elementary school teacher by answering your question. I'm going to demonstrate a bit of amusing content in the process, right? And maybe a little self-deprecation. But whenever I'm asked a question, I am trying to include an item of my personality, my life, something that might be of interest.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, if you've run a marathon and you're in a room and you discover someone else has run a marathon, you have to find a way to bring that out because the possibility of that connection is incredibly intense. So as a person in the corporate world, you should not be seeking to be round white and flavorless. You should be seeking to be like full of color and full of edge and full of flavor. You want to be an individual that people remember as opposed to what most people are trying to be, which is I am just operating this corporate or this business sphere and I'm not trying to stand out, which is just a foolish thing to want to do.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Someone has agreed to spend theoretically their life with me. It's sort of like a validation that I have at least hygiene and some decency, right? So you right. And most people are in a committed relationship. So that means that a total addressable market is large, right? If I say I'm married, you're either married also or you're in a committed relationship. So the connection is going to be large. The total addressable market is large. The possible connection, probably moderate, I say. It's like, it's okay. But weird ones are like runners. I'm not a runner. And there's not a lot of runners in the world. But if you're a marathoner, right, your total addressable market is very small. There's not that many marathoners. But if you happen to find a marathoner, the intensity of that connection is enormous. Marathoners are like almost automatically friends upon meeting what I've discovered. Like if you're just, oh, you ran a marathon. I ran a marathon. They're best friends already.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I have this tool I use with corporate folks called a personal interest inventory. It is a list of all the things that you should be saying about yourself in clever and strategic ways that I teach. And each one of them has sort of an addressable market. So how many people could this potentially hit? And then the intensity of the connection. So for example, if you're married, you should always make it clear to people you're married, especially if you're a man. Because if you're a man and you're married, you're safer in the world because men are inherently just dangerous human beings. We just are, right? If you hear that there was a shooting, right, you never think, oh, I wonder if that was a 23-year-old.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was oh God, I remember I was feeling the same way during the pandemic. People connected to her because instead of being a corporate monolith, sort of like slack spokesperson without personality, which is what we tend to be in business, she was an actual human being who had an inspiration on a Tuesday night and then was bringing it forth in a meaningful way to an audience. And from that point on, she always has been doing those things in storytelling. She's always looking for a way in her narratives to insert herself or if she's working with a client, let's find a way that we can work the client into the story as well. Because people don't want to hear spokespeople present information. They want to hear human beings connect with you and then offer you something that perhaps will have value.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That allows Slack to compete against Microsoft. When it comes time to her present narrative, I say you're going to include the Tuesday night and the two glasses of wine and all that, right? And she's like, no, I'm not. Like that's not what we do in the corporate world. We do not insert ourselves into our narratives. And to her credit, she didn't put it in and it still worked brilliantly. She was fine. But, you know, about a month later, she was presenting that same narrative to a smaller group, lower stakes. I said, let's just put it in. Just try it this time. And to her everlasting credit, she did. She put in a 30-second anecdote about Tuesday night, two glasses of wine, feeling lonely in the middle of a pandemic. She said to me later, I can't believe the difference that that 30 second anecdote meant to the narrative. Because suddenly when I reached the end of the narrative, people wanted to talk to me. People came up to me. And the first thing they said.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To be the director of corporate communications at Slack, and now she's sort of doing work on her own. But when she was with Slack, she and I were working closely together. And she had to create the narrative that was going to compete against Microsoft Teams. Essentially, Microsoft came along and said, hey, we copied your product and it's free. And everybody already has it. So Slack had to find a way to combat that. And Masha was the one in charge of doing it. That's why we connected. She found me and said, I need to tell a good story. Please help me tell a good story. So she crafted a brilliant narrative that worked fantastically. We worked really closely together and it came out great. The way she came up with that narrative was a Tuesday night. She had broken up with her boyfriend. She was alone. She was feeling pretty lonely. It was in the midst of the pandemic. She had two glasses of wine in her sitting alone on a Tuesday night. She suddenly had an inspiration. She wrote three words down on a napkin. And those three words become the story that we develop.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He comes to me and he's not looking to solve problems through story. He's looking to develop stories that he can then deploy into his business, right? So I compare it, I say Band-Aids versus bricks. If you're building bricks, you're a storyteller that's capturing stories and building bricks that you can eventually deploy into business. If you're a bandaid person, which is fine, that happens. I have a problem with and I need a story to solve it. Essentially what I'm doing there is I'm putting a band-aid over a problem, but you're not becoming a better storyteller. You just sort of using me as a consultant to help you generate a story that will solve a problem. That's fine, but you're going to need me the next time too. You're going to keep needing me because you're not really becoming a storyteller. Boris is building bricks. He is building a vault of stories that he can then deploy into his business. And he understands how to tell them and how to connect them to business. That's something that you can do very easily. Another example, the other star of my book is a woman named Masha Ratowski.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He collected himself and he moved on. That's what we need to do. When we fail, we're going to take a moment to collect ourselves, to think about the mistakes we made, to decide what we're going to do differently, and then we're going to move on. And that becomes a really important moment as a company. And it's much better than him standing up in front of his people and saying, listen, every time you guys fail to land the big sale, you wander around this office like you're dead and you're wasting our time. It ends today. Today, from now on, when you fail, you're going to move on, write the story becomes something meaningful to everyone because it reveals something about Boris. He's a father. He's a father who cares about his son. He's the kind of father that most of us are in life, right? He shares of himself with his people and he creates a tangible vision of what the sales team can do. He does that all the time.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Takes that story and he crafts it as a beautiful story that he could tell on a stage and perform and make an audience laugh and cry. Once the story is done, he says to me, so what are we going to do with it? How are we going to apply this to business? And ultimately what happens is this. He's going to sales team. And quite often salespeople do not land the big account they're hoping to land. And Boris knows that when his sales people fail to achieve what they want to achieve, they will often sulk for days. They'll sort of wander around the office and be useless because they're still trying to get past the fact that they just lost the million dollar contract. So he tells the story about his son. And he says, listen, there's nothing wrong with being sad, being upset with failure. But we cannot allow it to slow us down as much as we are right now. We have to think about my son. My son dragged his bat back to the dugout. He sat down. He sighed. His buddies patted him on the back.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“His team. And by the time he makes it onto the other side of the field to catch up with his son, he sees his son running up a hill with his friends and they're already laughing. They're heading to the cars so they can go to ice cream and they can enjoy themselves. And so Boris is falling apart. He is still devastated, but his son has already moved past the failure.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I said, I can't do that. I just tell I'm using stories about myself. And he said, No, no, you can help me. And it turns out he was totally right. So Boris has done it the right way. Boris has decided to become a storyteller who will then translate his stories into his business. So a great example was one of Boris's early stories. He came to me and he said, My son was at bat in the Little League Championship game. The bases were loaded. If my son got a hit, the team was going to win the championship. And if my son struck out, the team would lose the championship. It's a three-and-2 count. It is like the ultimate baseball moment and his son strikes out. And he watches his son drag that bat back to the dugout. And he's devastated. His son's devastated and Boris is devastated. And so he's trying to collect himself so he can figure out the right thing to say to a boy who's just lost the championship for.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let me give you a couple of examples. I have a storytelling book coming out next year on business. So there's a couple of heroes in that story. One of them is named Boris. His name is Boris Levin. He is a factory owner here in Connecticut. He's the one who convinced me I could start working with businesses. I thought it was just a storyteller who spoke about himself on a stage and”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, I actually can't tell you a single thing he said, right? This is a woman who's a teacher and invested in storytelling and communication. Her impression was he was fluent. He was amusing. You know, he said some numbers. He said some things that seemed to mean something, but it was all forgotten because that's what happens if we don't speak in story. Our minds are not designed to remember a pie chart or facts or statistics or platitudes or ideas that are not attached to imagery. So the risk you take if you're not telling stories is that you will be forgotten 100% you will be forgotten.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In terms of being fluent and presenting ideas and speaking well and speaking confidently. And 15 minutes after the conference, I said to my wife, who is a teacher and understands storytelling because we do it together. I said, what'd you think? And she said, well, I'm never going to forget that guy with the lunchbox. And I said, I will not either. And I said, what'd you think about the other guy? And she goes, he was great. And I said, so what did he say? 15 minutes after and she went,”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're in the herd, which means you're forgettable. I mean, how many times have you gone to a conference, listened to someone speak, and by the time you're pulling into the driveway, you really can't remember anything that they said? My wife and I actually attended an educational conference recently. She's a teacher. I'm a teacher. There was a bunch of speakers. The first person came out with his childhood lunchbox, put it on a table, and told a story about how his parents had nothing while he was growing up, and yet they somehow kept him in new shoes and a new backpack every year and sent him to school with a lunch every day. And how much it meant to him and how as an educator today, he thinks about every single kid in his class like he was, a kid who had nothing except for all of his parents' hopes and dreams. And I'll never forget that story because it was a story. It was a story of vulnerability and humor and meaning. It was another person who spoke, a sort of executive, we'll say, and he did a great job.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, if you don't tell stories as part of your business, whether you're looking for investment or speaking to your people or speaking to customers or clients, anything, if you're not telling stories, the good news is you're just like everybody else. The bad news is you're mediocre just like everybody else. You're in a lane that everyone else is in, which means that you're going to be forgettable. I often say most communication in business is round white and flavorless, right? Intentionally so because a lot of people are afraid to stand out. You know, when I try to get people to tell stories, you know, everyone loves the word storytelling in business. It's a huge buzzword. They love to think of themselves as storytellers. But when they come to me, they don't really want to be storytellers because to be a storyteller means you have to separate yourself from the herd. And in their mind, that risks them getting picked off, right? Getting picked off by some predator. But the alternative is.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You just have a story that the stakes are already pre-built because of the ridiculousness of the moment. But most of our stories are not like that. Most of them are far more benign and we have to sort of jack up the stakes by using some tricks to get people to the point we want them to be in.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, the one that I reference in my book, which you can go watch online, is charity thief. And it needs a lot of stakes because Two thirds of the story, nothing really happens. Two-thirds of the story is explaining how I end up on a porch. And so that's not super entertaining unless I build in lots of stakes along the way. I'm not inventing anything. I'm just presenting the actual events in a way that makes you wonder what's going to happen next. And so there's an elephant at the beginning of that story, which is actually not what the story is about because I say the elephant can change colors along the way. But I give you something to wonder about. along the way i know i use a backpack and i use a breadcrumb and an hourglass and a crystal ball i do it all in that story mostly because it's not super entertaining some stories you don't have to worry so much about what i perform as a stripper in the break room of a mcdonald's restaurant when i'm 19 years old for a bachelorette party there are stakes in that story but i don't need to put any of them in because everybody wants to know what's going to happen already sometimes”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, but what you can take from that is So often people load the front end of a story with all of the stakes because they're worried that the audience will not pay attention to them. So they think I'm going to throw everything right in front and that'll hold an audience for the rest of the story. And that's a mistake. What we want is stakes continually to build throughout a story. So dropping a dead body really means drop a new stake. Don't load it all. Don't front load it. Give us something to wonder about and then gauge when we need the next thing to wonder about and spread out those stakes. We need most of the stakes to occur within the first half of a story. It's ideally the second half of the story is now the roller coaster to the end. So we might drop one in there at an appropriate time or just through plot sometimes they just happen to need to be in a place. But so often I hear people front load stakes because they're worried about audience attention.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, well, there's lots of tricks to do that as well, but it takes some time. But essentially, what you end up doing is you're hiding. The information that they need to know in a multitude of ways so that when it lands, they go, oh my gosh, A, B, C, D, they don't connect it until the surprise hits. And then they go, of course, A, B, C, D. So you place A, B, C, Indiana Story, but you don't place it in such a way that they can connect the dots until you want them to connect the dots.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, both of those things. So inevitable means there has to be enough information placed earlier in the story so that when the surprise happens, the audience goes, yes, right? But also you have to be clever enough to plant that information in such a way that the audience doesn't see the surprise coming. You build information into the audience's mind that will allow the surprise to land in an inevitable and yet surprising way. That is the best surprise you can offer someone.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We suddenly realize something for the first time, right? I hate the word suddenly, but what happens is we used to not think something and then we think a new thing, and that's often a surprise for us if we make it a surprise for the audience too. That's a delightful thing. So surprise is so powerful and wonderful and always ruined by storytellers.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Story I get this wrong, Eileen's going to begin to cry. She's going to cry in front of 22 kids, 22 kids who for the rest of the year will continue to stare at this girl and remember the moment she cried. That's a crystal ball. That's me predicting a terrible future. Because I put that terrible future in the audience's mind, now they're worried, right? So that is a stake. I have planted a false stake, a false future, but there are going to be worried about it because it's also a realistic future. So all of those things are used to continue to get the audience to wonder what's going to happen next, which is a little different than surprise. Surprise is just that beautiful, delightful, amazing moment where the audience didn't see something coming and then it was almost like it was inevitable. Surprise happens and they understand why it happened. And I think it's the best thing you can ever offer an audience is a moment of surprise. And every story has a surprise, at least one, because whenever”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sort of like drop a hint. The classic one is sort of the gun. There's a gun in the room and you know there's a gun in the room and it seems like it's not going to be relevant. But if you have a gun in the room, you know it's going to eventually go off. There's something going on there. That's like a breadcrumb. Eventually we're going to get to that gun. Don't worry. It's going to happen. There's hourglasses, which is sort of when you get to the moment where everyone is about to discover what's going to happen. That's the moment to slow time down. You load your story with details because suddenly you know you have the audience on the edge of the seat and you want to leave them on the edge of their seat as long as possible. When I know my audience wants to hear the next sentence, that is when I prolong the arrival of the next sentence by I say turning over an hourglass and letting the sand run for a while and making them wait for it. There's crystal balls where you can predict a future. You don't have to predict an accurate future. You can just predict any future. So, you know, I could have said something in the Eileen's.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, what's going to happen here, right? So that's an elephant. That's like plant some big thing in the beginning of a story. It doesn't actually have to be what the story is about either. Sometimes it takes a little time to get to what the story is about, but you plant something there to at least get the audience to be worried. And then you can use some other tricks. I call something called a backpack, which is you tell the audience what your plan is before you carry out your plan so that they sort of have your hopes and dreams packed up with them as well. Like if you watch an Oceans 11 movie, right? You know what the plan is before they go into the casino. So as the plan goes awry, you can go, oh no, because you know what the plan is. If you didn't know what the plan was, you would not be able to go, oh no, right? So that's sort of like loading your audience with your hopes and dreams so that they can feel those stakes. They can actually be hoping for you as well. There's things like breadcrumbs where you offer a little bit of what's going on, but not the complete idea.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We have to immediately know that something is at stake. We have to be worried about something. In my little Eileen story that I told you, I said I'm teaching math and I've got this student and I'm worried about her because I want to call her to the board, but I know she might lack some confidence. Right away, I have to make it clear what kind of story we're in. In a movie, you get a trailer. You don't often go to a movie and not sort of not have any awareness about what's about to happen. But when you open your mouth to begin telling a story, nobody knows what you're going to say. You need to land something immediately that causes an audience to go, oh.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'll separate them really. So with stakes, there's lots of ways to insert stakes. I always say you should have what I call an elephant at the beginning of the story, which is actually a big spaceship shooting at a little spaceship or a police officer chasing a guy across a roof.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All of those things are stakes. What is at stake for the storyteller, the company, the product, whatever it is, and therefore what the audience is worried about as well. It's why Star Wars opens with a big spaceship shooting at a small spaceship. We don't even know who's on it yet, but we're already on the small spaceship side. We're already worried that a small spaceship is being shot at by a big spaceship, right? why stories start this way. Alfred Hitchcock has a movie where it opens with a police officer, is chasing a man across a roof. We don't know who to root for, but something is at stake here, and now we're wondering what's going to happen next. We have to do the same thing with our ordinary true life everyday stories. We have to put stakes into stories.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So stakes are essentially sort of what your audience should be worried about, what they should be wanting for you, what they should be concerned about, what they should be wondering about. If your audience isn't wondering what you're about to say, they're no longer listening to you. And if you have to internalize that in a deep and fundamental way, when I work with people in business, they are constantly under this misconception that people want to hear what they have to say. You know, some vice president or marketing thinks that because they're a vice president or marketing and everyone is sitting in a chair and looking at them, that they automatically have that audience's attention. I assume all the time 100% of the time that no one wants to hear anything I have to say. And so I am relentless in my attempt to get the audience to be constantly wondering what the next sentence is. And stakes are a big part of that. Stakes are, I wonder what's going to happen next. I'm worried about this guy. Will he get what he wants? Will he get his comeuppance because he seems like kind of a jerk in this story?”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, Kurt Vonnegut said that. Kurt Vonnegut said start as close to the end as possible. He was talking about. It's a true notion in oral storytelling, too. And it is of all the things I help people with their stories, the most frequent suggestion that I make for revision is you've started your story in the wrong place”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, exactly. The shortest version of every story is the best version of every story, starting as close to the end of a story is always the best place to begin. So if I had a moment of realization during dessert in a restaurant in Aruba, I may never tell them I'm in Aruba. I might start my story with the dessert hits the table and my wife says something that causes me to begin thinking, right? And that would be the beginning of the story. The fact that I'm on an island in the Caribbean may never come up in the entire story because it doesn't turn out to be relevant to the story.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Trying to dump that on someone and use up their time so you can relive your vacation and perhaps humble brag about how much fun you had.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source