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

“Most vacation stories are just simply a recounting of your vacation at the expense of another person. Unless something happened on that vacation where you experienced one of these five second fundamental moments of change, nobody cares about your vacation. And if something did happen, only be talking about the moment when it happened. So if I had a moment of change that took place on a Thursday night at dinner, right, that story is now going to take place on the Thursday night at dinner. And it's irrelevant that I'm in Aruba, right? The fact that I am on vacation is almost completely irrelevant to the story other than I may want to offer my location, but I'm not going to talk about the beach the day before or the scuba diving or the plane. All of that goes away. We're telling moments in our lives and it doesn't matter where they happen. If your location is paramount to your story because you want people to know you are an Aruba, then you have to understand no one actually cares that you are an Aruba and you're just a terrible person.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is relevant to the storyteller. So it's no longer history. It's now something changed in me because something terrible happened to my parent or grandparent”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's making you nervous, that doesn't mean much to an audience. What we really want is someone to open up their hearts and minds. So stories have to be about you in some way. There's tricks where you can tell stories about other people by sort of taking that story and centering on yourself. You know, one of the examples I work with the children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors. In the past, what they would do is they would just tell the story of the Holocaust survivor, who has often at this point passed away. And it really does feel like fiction. You know, a long time ago in a place that wasn't this, a terrible thing happened. And there's a certain level of empathy and sympathy that you might feel. But what I teach them to do is to tell stories about themselves. And then at some point in the story about themselves, they're going to talk about how the experience of their parent or grandparent during the Holocaust has informed or changed their own life too. So they get to dip into some history, but that history.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. So if you're telling a story about someone else, essentially, you might as well be telling fiction because that person's not in the room. And to the audience, they don't really exist unless they're, you know, if they can't see them, that person is just another human being who supposedly lives somewhere in the world or once lived in the world. And because of that, you are almost unable to express any vulnerability in your story. You can't reveal anything about yourself. And storytelling is one of the key parts of storytelling is to be vulnerable with your audience, meaning I'm going to say stuff in a meaningful way. I might say stuff that most people are unwilling to share in a public way, but I'm at least going to offer up a little bit of my heart and mind. If I offer up the heart and mind of someone else that doesn't really require any vulnerability, the only vulnerability is I have to stand in front of people and talk, which I know is challenging for some people. But that doesn't mean anything to the audience. We kind of don't care if you're having a hard time presenting.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A good idea, or you start with a sound, which is very popular in first grade, you teach kids to start with sound, mostly because teachers are not writers, so they don't understand what writing actually is. And so they open with stories with things like, bang, the door opened. But if you and I were having dinner and you said, hey, how was your day, Matt? And I said, well, let me tell you, Lenny, bang, the door opened. You would not have dinner with me again. So you have to be thinking that this is a slightly elevated version of the dinner story, meaning you're probably not going to be interrupted in the middle of your story. And you want to have a little more shape to it and you want to avoid some of the verbal detritus that tends to fill our lives. You don't want to be saying, you know. And like I said, you know, all of that nonsense sort of should get pushed to the side. But essentially, people should feel like you're kind of speaking in a very natural way. So the dinner test is pretty important in that regard.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So the dinner test is the idea that. You're telling a story in a formal way, if you're performing on a stage or delivering a keynote or even delivering sort of a pitch to entrepreneurs or a sales pitch, essentially the story that you're telling should be very closely related to the story you would tell someone if you were having dinner, right? So there should be no sort of performance art included within your story or within your talk. Weird things that people do should not be done like opening a story with unattributed dialogue. So you're standing on stage and you open your story with Jim, it's time to come in for dinner, my wife said, like that's just weird. We don't talk like that as regular people, so you should not speak like that ever. In the history of the world, you should never speak like that. But people do it all the time. It's this weird sort of appendage from childhood when bad writing teachers thought that this was.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then found confidence in the way I leaned it. Or you might be a parent or the boss of someone who is trying to bring confidence to your child or your employee, your salesperson, whatever it is. When we do change, when we're focused in on that change, we increase exponentially the universal appeal to the story and our ability to connect to an audience, even though the content we're speaking about has nothing to do with them, the actual emotional appeal will cause people to connect to us.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think the actual moment of transformation lends importance to the story and allows the audience to connect to it. If I reported on my day to you, my day at teaching in a classroom, I am unlikely to connect with you unless you are also a teacher and you experienced things similar to me. My wife is a kindergarten teacher. I'm a fifth grade teacher. If both of us report on our day, oddly we will not really connect very often. She is teaching them how to write the letter C. And I am teaching them how to use the standard algorithm in multiplication. They could not be further apart. So reporting on the moments that you have experienced in the day is not a way to connect to people. But when we talk about change, change has a great universal appeal. So you might not be a teacher who's trying to teach someone to find confidence in their life, but you might be a person who once lacked confidence.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, that's the power of story. I tell people this all the time why are we telling stories? You've never asked to see a PowerPoint presentation a second time. You've never gone to bed and dreamt about a PowerPoint presentation. You've never heard someone give a keynote and thought, I hope I get to watch that keynote again tomorrow. But movies, you'll watch a movie a hundred times because it's a story and our minds are wired to enjoy story over and over and over again. You have a small child, right? Eventually, you're going to be reading to that child. When your baby's old enough and you're going to discover kids want to read the same book 50 times, they're really no different than adults except kid books are so small you can read them, you know, endlessly. A movie takes two hours so you don't get to read it as often as you might want or watch it as often as you might want. But Harry Sally comes on and you're halfway through, you're probably in, even though you know every scene, you can probably do the dialogue.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, you know, it ruins a little bit of storytelling for people who sort of think like me and go, oh, well, I know where this is going, but you have to do it in an entertaining way filled with all the other things we talk about in storytelling. But yeah, every story should be essentially a beginning and an end in opposition to each other. And you should start at the end. That guarantees that you have something important to say rather than what most people do, which is they simply report on their lives. They just tell you stuff that happened over the course of time in some chronological way that ultimately doesn't lead to anything. You want to always be saying something of import. So we start at the end with that moment of import.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Operating in opposition to each other, sometimes more so than others, sometimes exactly in opposition. But you're right, if you watch a movie and you pay attention to the first 10 to 15 minutes of a movie, you will ultimately know how that movie is going to end. You'll see a character. You'll discover what that character needs or their flaw or their desire. And you know that that's what's going to be at the end. You know, the easiest one is a romantic comedy. Two people are not in love at the beginning of the movie. You know they're going to be in love at the end of the movie, right? Even knowing it doesn't mean the story is ruined. We can get there in a very entertaining way. When Harry met Sally, that movie, when it begins, Harry and Sally actually say they hate each other at the very beginning of the movie. I hate you, Harry, right? I hate that man so much. We know they're going to end up together and their journey is well worth the fact that we know what's going to happen at the end.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. So we started storytellers at the end. Well, we start at the end if we are telling true stories about ourselves or our companies or our products, things that we know. I'm also a fiction writer. So when I start my novels, that's much more self-discovery. I really don't know the end of it. But in the storytelling that we're talking about, you have to know the end because you've lived the moment. And the end informs everything. So you know what you're going to say. You found a moment worth speaking to, that five second moment. And then whatever that moment is, in my case, I discover that Eileen has more confidence than I realized and is ready to take a big step forward. What's the opposite of me realizing Eileen has confidence and is ready to step forward? It is Eileen does not have confidence and I need to help her find that confidence. So that's the opposites that will work in a story. Essentially, a story is about these two moments in time, a beginning and an end.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Weapon to defeat the enemy. And that is a story about a boy who once had no religion, and then some stuff happened and he had religion in the end. And that's why a story like that resonates with us in a way that another story might not, because we all understand what it's like to not believe in something and then find belief in something. Whether that is religious belief or I used to think cheeseburgers didn't taste good and now I believe that they taste good. Either way, we understand that process and we can connect with Luke Skywalker in a meaningful way. So every story essentially has those moments, including, I don't like that cheeky smile.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A better teacher, and then I'd bring it to the moment where she says, first of all, I don't like that cheeky smile. And that's all I need to hear. So that is essentially a five second moment for me. That is the same, though, as any other five second moment. If you think about a movie like Star Wars, the first Star Wars that came out, right? That is a movie essentially about religion, which people sort of don't always see, but it is true. There's a boy on a planet and he wants to go to space someday and fly a spaceship and use blasters to defeat the empire. And along the way he meets a religious figure, so Obi-Wan Kenobi, and he introduces him to a religion called the Force. And when the final moment comes for Luke Skywalker to defeat the empire, his vision of using technology, a spaceship, and a blaster to destroy the empire, all of that goes away. And he turns off his technology in his spaceship. Instead, he uses the force to guide his”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What do you think? And she said to me, first of all, I don't like that cheeky smile of yours. And that is all I needed to hear. That was my five second moment. That was the moment of realization where I understood that Eileen trusted me, felt confident enough in my classroom that she could be herself, that she could fire off a quip at a teacher, sort of like, you know, take a shot at me. I knew at that point that now I can call her to the board, that she's going to be okay. So, you know, essentially it is a very brief story that I could actually expand into something much more meaningful. I could make that into a five or six minute story about my journey with this student, which would include in the longer version of it the steps that I took to discover who she was, the steps I took to help her reach the point she's at now. I would probably pull in some backstory about students who I was not so successful with some of my failures before I learned how to be.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure. Well, I'll tell you one that happened actually today. How about that? So, I'm teaching math today. I'm an elementary school teacher, and I'm teaching math, and I have a student in my class. Her name is Eileen. And she's one of those kids that I worry about a little bit because she's got some anxiety. So she's not the most confident person in the world. And in September, I was aware of this. So I've been working really hard at building confidence with her. And so today we're doing some math and I'm calling kids to the board. And I'm sort of looking at Eileen and wondering, is today the day? Am I going to call Eileen to the board? Because doing so, there's a risk. There's inherent risk that she could, you know, be upset. She could embarrass herself in front of the class in a way that means something to her. And I just wasn't sure. So I didn't call her to the board. And so at the end of the math lesson, I wandered over to her desk and I said, so Eileen, I was thinking about.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Possible to the audience so that the audience can sort of, in a way, experience that flip, that transformation or realization along with the storyteller. So 98% of the story is the context to bring that singular moment into fruition. And that is true for stories that we tell out loud, stories we tell on the page, novels that I write, movies that I watch, television shows that I watch, all of the stories of the world that are worth hearing. truly just about every story told that qualifies as a story has one of those moments.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure. Well, that is true. What you just said, which is essentially every story is about a singular moment. I call it five seconds. It can be one second, honestly. It's a moment of either transformation, meaning sort of I'm telling you a story about how I once used to be one kind of person and now I'm a new kind of person, or more common is realization, which is I used to think something and then some stuff happened and now I think a new thing. And those changes, they take place sort of over time. Or really what happens is it's an accumulation of events and feelings and thoughts that ultimately result in a singular moment where that flip actually happens. And I think that's true for almost everyone. It feels like it took a long time, but there really was one second when you thought one thing. And then the next second when you thought the new thing. And the purpose of a story is essentially to bring that moment to the greatest claim.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm thrilled to be here and I appreciate what you had to say. I tried to make my book as sort of actionable as possible. You know, I think the only reason I'm sort of successful in what I do is that I've been a teacher for 25 years and I'm a storyteller. So the two of those things come together pretty well for me.”
2023-12-15 · Lenny's Podcast · How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 you're in the herd, which means you're forgettable. I mean, how many times have you gone to a conference listen to someone speak? And by the time you're pulling into the driveway, you really can't remember anything that they said because that's what happens if we don't speak in story. Our minds are not designed to remember a pie chart or fax 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