#202 Matthew Dicks: The Storytelling Expert  ## Metadata - Author: [[The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish]] - Full Title: #202 Matthew Dicks: The Storytelling Expert - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/d292a65f-48eb-432b-a629-1e6e58e26269 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Good Story vs. Bad Story** - Stories are about change over time, not just chronological reporting of events. - Focus on conveying a realization or transformation, giving the audience a reason to listen. Transcript: Matthew Dicks The difference between a good story and a bad story? I think we can start by thinking about what is a story and what isn't a story because most people don't tell stories. Most people think of a story as some stuff happened over the course of time and now I'm going to tell you about that usually chronologically and that will amount to a story and that really Is just reporting on your life and no one actually wants you to report on your life, you know, other than maybe your mother and your spouse might be required to listen. It's just a simple accounting of your day or your week or your month. And that's not interesting. And it's not a story. So a story is about change over time. Usually it's sort of a realization. Like I used to think one thing and now I think another thing. That's most stories. Sometimes they're transformational, meaning I once was one kind of person and then some stuff happened and now I'm actually an authentically different kind of person. But if you're just doing that, you're better than most people. That sort of is the difference between a bad story and a good story is what is a story and what is not a story. Once we get to the difference between sort of a well-told story or well-crafted story and a one that is not as well-crafted, we get into things like the acknowledgement that no one wants To hear anything you ever have to say unless you give them a reason to listen. And there are people who tell stories that don't sort of have that fundamental belief as part of their bone marrow. And the more you believe that, the more you believe that I must entertain while speaking, delivering content, showing data, delivering a keynote. The more you believe that no one wants to hear anything I have to say unless I'm relentlessly giving them a reason to listen. ([Time 0:04:21](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5ed79bd3-d258-4e24-a9f6-3a95db83e0b9)) - **The Game of Storytelling** - Remember the story beats, but don't memorize sentences verbatim. - This allows for audience adaptation and in-the-moment adjustments for better engagement. Transcript: Shane Parrish Sort of get lost in the crowd. How much of the difference boils down to thinking about the story you're going to tell beforehand? And then there's like this game where you're pretending to sort of like ad lib it on the spot. And the listeners like pretending that you're ad libbing it on the spot because they want that too. They want to believe that. Right. Versus I haven't thought about this before and I'm just going to spew the first thing out of my mouth. Right. Matthew Dicks You're the first person other than me I've ever heard referred to it as a game. I say we play a game with our audience. They pretend that we're making it up and we pretend that we're making it up. When the truth, I think for the best storytellers, lies somewhere in the middle, which is to say, you probably should never memorize anything that you say. I've never memorized a story or a speech that I'm going to deliver. But what I say is we remember them, meaning we understand the beats. We understand what's going to happen. But if I was to tell you a story now and then tell you a story five minutes later, the sentences are absolutely going to be different, even though the events, the dialogue, the descriptions Will all be there in some way. But I think that's sort of the game we play. The best game players stand in the middle and say, I know what I'm going to say, but I don't know exactly how I'm going to say it. And that allows you to read the audience and figure out, is this landing? Do I need to pivot right now? Do I need to pull an anecdote out of my pocket? You know, I always walk around with what I say is five anecdotes that if I feel like I'm losing the audience, I can throw that out and grab them back and hold them for a while. If you're overly prepared, you're sort of trapped in your content and you're just going to be delivering it. I often call them word callers. If you've memorized a story, really, you're just a word caller. You've just memorized a series of words and hopefully they'll come out properly. And maybe you can artfully do it in a pretend acting way. But the best performers sort of know what they're going to say, but not exactly how. And that's, you can always tell that. You can tell it because their talk feels like it's just for you. ([Time 0:06:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/de9afce7-2f6c-43f6-ac1c-f5b0f72307a7)) - **The Spoon of Power** - Matthew Dicks tells the story of the Spoon of Power, a simple object transformed into a symbol of comfort and support. - It highlights how storytelling can imbue everyday objects with meaning. Transcript: Matthew Dicks So tell you a story? Yeah. Well, the one I like to tell, I mean, for business people, I'm standing behind my school where I teach. I'm a fifth grade teacher. I'm standing in front of this enormous pile of fall leaves and they're quivering. There's a little boy inside the leaves and his hand emerges and he's got a metal object in his hand. And he looks at me, his head pops out. His name Jamie. He says, look what I found. And he's shaking this metal object. And I say, wow, look at it. And he says, yeah, it's a spoon. And it is. It's just a, it's a kitchen spoon. It fell out of a lunchbox yesterday or 10 years ago. It's migrated to the bottom of this pile. And now Jamie, this little redheaded boy has it in his hand. But I tell Jamie, I say, that's not just a spoon, Jamie. That's the spoon of power. And the moment that I declare it to be the spoon of power, Jamie knows I must have it. And I know Jamie knows this because he just starts running. He doesn't say a word. He just sprints because he knows his crazy teacher will now chase him down for the spoon. And he's not wrong. I'm responsible for like a hundred kids. I have to keep them safe, keep them secure. I don't care about any of them anymore. It's a redheaded boy and a spoon that I must now have. And for 18 minutes over the course of this recess, I hunt this boy down. I chase him across a field, up a slide, you know, down the other slide, through the woods. 18 minutes later, he still has the spoon in his hand. I can't believe it. I legitimately tried to catch a 10 year old and I could not. But he's in my class, so it's fine. I'll get him eventually. He's a 10 year old boy. He's focused now on the spoon, but he has the attention span of like a mulberry bush. He's going to forget it in a minute, and I'm going to grab it. So I'm teaching math. I'm writing equations on the board. This kid, he's put the spoon on the corner of his desk to dare me to get it. It's just out of my reach. So I've got one eye on the board, one eye on him and the spoon. He's got one eye on his journal, one eye on the spoon. We're in this like standoff. And then I'm reading, sitting on a stool, I'm reading a book. He's still got the spoon right there. I've got one eye on the book, one eye on the spoon. He's got one on me, one eye on the spoon. If he'd ever been this focused in his life, he'd like cure cancer. I've never seen him so focused, but he's like me. He's a writer. He loves to write. So at the end of the day, when we write, his head always falls onto his arm. You know, the strokes of his pen get long. He's going to get lost in this story. And that's the moment I'll strike. I watch it happen. I just wait. See the little redhead go down, lands on his arm. I sneak up the front aisle. I reach over to grab the spoon and it's not there. And he turns to me and he says, did you really think I was just going to leave it there for you? And I lose my mind. Like I start threatening the class. I turn to the right. Like, where's the spoon? The girl says, leave us alone. We're trying to get our work done. Turn to the left. Where's the spoon? The boy says, why are you bothering me? I'm trying to be a good student. They all know where it is. They're all conspiring against me. Then the bell rings. Jamie's out of his seat. He runs to get his coat and he swings by and he pulls the box of books out in the library marked S. He reaches inside and he says, I filed it under S for spoon and he's out the door. I can't believe it. I legitimately tried to get a spoon from a 10 year old kid and I could not do it. So the next day he comes in, he has the spoon on a chain around his neck and he's swinging it around and I say, how did you? And he said, my dad drilled the hole. My mom gave me the chain and he's walking around going, oh, it's a spoon of power, Mr. Dix, the spoon of power. And as bad as I am, like I'm a terrible person sometimes, even I can't tear it from the neck of a 10-year So all week he tortures me with this. And then Thursday comes. It's time for our weekly math test. It's time for Mackenzie to lose her mind because someday Mackenzie might get a problem wrong and that will be the end of the world for Mackenzie. So every Thursday I have to like build her up. Mistakes are valuable. It's okay, Mackenzie. You might get one wrong. And she's sort of falling apart as she does. And then Jamie's there and he takes the spoon off and he says, maybe this will help. And he puts it around Mackenzie's neck and it's the best math tests Mackenzie has ever taken in her life. Somehow this spoon on her neck calms her down. Three days later, David's grandfather passes away. When David comes back to school, Jamie's by the door waiting for David. When he walks in, puts the spoon on David's neck and says, I think you need this today. And he did. For the rest of the year, every single time a kid is in trouble in any way whatsoever, that spoon finds their way on their neck. They forget their homework. They have to walk over to me. Face the music, we call it. They walk over with that damn spoon on their neck. They get in trouble with the principal. They got to make the long walk down the linoleum hallway. They make the long walk with the spoon. They get bullied on the bus on the way to school. When they go home that day, they go home with the spoon. Every single time it makes the kids' days better. So the last day of school, I gather all my kids on the floor in front of me. It's the last time we're going to be together as a family. And they really are a family. We get to know each other in really meaningful ways. And so I tell them, say whatever you want. Tell us what you're feeling. We're going to have to say goodbye now. To Jamie, no. I said, there was a day back in October when I wanted that spoon badly. And had I caught you, I would have fried it from your little fingers, but you managed to keep it and do this amazing thing with it. I just can't believe what you've done. It's your spoon. And Jamie says, no. Jamie says the magic of the spoon only works in my classroom. He tells me I need to take it so that next year when kids are in trouble, I can give them the spoon like he has this year. And then he pulls this little orange chair up alongside me so he can get up to eye level and he takes the spoon off. And for the first time I get to wear the spoon of power. The 2020, 2021 school year was the hardest I've ever taught in my 26 years of teaching. The pandemic, we went right back to school in September and masks and social distancing, and everyone was afraid. And lots and lots of people got sick. Kids got sick. Parents got sick. We lost grandparents. My wife, who's a kindergarten teacher, got very sick. My own children got sick. And I used that spoon more often that year than I've ever used it in my life. Every day, people were wearing that spoon. And for the first time in my life, my colleagues were wearing a spoon of power to get through the day. And as hard as it was, and there's the best year of teaching I've ever had, the most important year I will ever teach, but I've always felt like I was the luckiest teacher in America because I have that spoon. I've had it for 16 years. It's literally in that bag right there. I carry with it. I carry it with me everywhere I go. It's weirdly the most powerful teaching tool I have had and will ever have. It is this thing that I put on a kid's neck or an adult's neck and suddenly they feel better. It's magic. It really is the spoon of power. ([Time 0:09:42](https://share.snipd.com/snip/01057c4e-9822-496e-908d-1b66ab9b4c4a)) - **The Power of Imagination** - Effective stories focus on feelings, words, and actions, not excessive description. - Leverage the audience's imagination by using words and images that resonate with their experiences. Transcript: Shane Parrish With whatever we want them to be infused with. That's a great story. And I feel the emotional, like rollercoaster as you're telling it. And I remember reading it in your book too. And I feel sort of like the ups and downs and I'm like running there with you. And one of the words that you used earlier was beat. So I'm wondering, like, walk me through the architecture of that story and what makes it so effective? Sure. Matthew Dicks I mean, the first thing before I sort of talk about the structure is the idea that it doesn't contain very many adjectives. People often think of stories as an attempt to describe something when actually nobody ever wants to know what anything looked like unless it's relevant to a story. What people really want is to know what you felt, what you said, and what you did. And so if you're going to describe something, you better make sure that there's a reason for it to be described. What I believe is leveraging the imagination of audiences. So I said to you, I'm standing behind my school, the school where I teach, but that's all I said. I know that you know what that looks like. You don't know what my version of it looks like, but that doesn't matter to me. Weirdly, some people get interested in that, but you should not. You know, nobody cares about what anything looks like. Verisimilitude is not relevant in storytelling. When I say we go into my classroom to teach, right, I say classroom and I know you have a classroom in your mind. Now, my classroom definitely doesn't look like yours because my classroom has a stage with lighting and sets because I built a theater into my classroom because I've been there for 23 years. It doesn't look like any classroom you've ever seen, but I don't want you to see that classroom. I want you to see the one that you can already see in your mind. So when people say to me, how do you make the stories seem so real to me? I tell them I don't describe anything. Instead, I choose words that I know already exist in your mind. I choose those images and I just extract them and make use of them. So that's important always because I think people over-describe. And the tricky thing is we don't have a lot of bandwidth to work with. If you say in the beginning of a story, this beautiful woman walks in the room and her eyes are a piercing blue, those blue eyes had better be relevant in the story at some point because You've just stolen some of my bandwidth so that I have to track those blue eyes and remember them throughout the story. And I've never heard of a story where eye color is relevant except for Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. And yet we describe eye color all the damn time, which really is just sort of degrading the audience's ability to hear the rest of the story because we're giving them a job to do. Remember this, remember this, remember this. I'm leveraging imagination throughout that entire story. But in terms of what I'm thinking about for the architecture, I'm always thinking about the scenes that I'm going to tell. ([Time 0:17:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/7bf23a05-562b-42ef-b4e3-3a143cd7b156)) - **Story Architecture** - Structure stories around distinct scenes based on location. - Incorporate stakes, suspense, surprise, and humor to maintain audience engagement throughout. Transcript: Matthew Dicks So scenes are predicated on location. So if I think about that story, if I'm going to remember it rather than memorize it, I'm going to know I'm going to be on the playground and I'm going to chase Jamie and I'm going to rock and Down the playscape and through the woods, but he's going to keep the spoon. That's the first scene. And that's what I have to get out. And it might come out better one time than the other, but that's essentially the goal. And then my second scene is I'm in the classroom and I know I'm going to teach math and then I'm going to teach reading and then I'm going to teach writing because that's what I do. And I know each time he's going to be daring me to grab the spoon, but I'm not going to get it. So that's sort of scene two. Scene three is the next day. He comes in with the spoon of power on his neck. Makes me crazy. Right? Scene four is Thursday, Mackenzie, the math test. Scene five is David, his grandfather passed away. Scene six is a montage of three things. I know I'm going to say kids who forget their homework, kids who go to the principal, and kids who ride the bus. That's specifically structured to give you three different locations and three different kinds of problems that kids have. All were real, but I could have chosen from a thousand different times that Jamie gave that spoon out. I strategically chose for that reason. The next scene is the last day of school. Jamie tries to give me the spoon. Actually, what I tell you, because I'm preserving surprise. Jamie tries to give me the spoon. I use the word tries really specifically because I don't want you to think I'm going to get the spoon. I don't think I'm going to get the spoon either. I'm rejecting the spoon thinking there's no way I'm taking this spoon from your kid. And then he forces it upon me because I want you to be as surprised as I am. And then the last scene is sort of that pandemic, you know, that pandemic explanation about what that year was like. But that's what I'm thinking about in terms of remembering the story. And then to maintain entertainment throughout it, I'm always thinking stakes, suspense, surprise, and humor. Those are sort of the four Mount Rushmore ways to maintain interest, regardless of what you're doing. Whether you're telling a story like what I've just done, or I'm working with a marketing team on a deck that they're building, and it is completely absent of stakes, suspense, surprise, And humor, which is why nobody ever pays attention to anything anyone ever does. Instead of being entertaining, we're trying to be informative. When informative is important, but only if people are actually listening. And that first part, how are we going to get people to listen, is the one nobody ever pays any attention to. They somehow think that their information is going to be interesting to people. The world is filled with information. The internet exists. You're competing against every bit of information that has ever existed on the planet. So you'd better give me a reason to listen. So I'm always thinking of that throughout that story, constantly asking myself, do I have stakes? Is there a suspense? Am I preparing for a surprise? ([Time 0:20:03](https://share.snipd.com/snip/7887d0c7-c37c-46e2-8943-3887ca492ba7)) - **Stakes and Suspense** - Use "elephants" to establish clear stakes, and "backpacks" to share plans and build suspense. - Make the audience wonder about something. Transcript: Shane Parrish You mentioned keeping a storyteller compelling is sort of like there's elephants, backpacks, breadcrumbs, hourglasses, crystal balls, and humor. You're well-versed. Yeah, that's pretty good. Let's go through each of those individually and sort of like, what are they and why are they important for the architecture of a story in terms of keeping people listening, like almost On the edge of their seat? Matthew Dicks What you've identified is sort of what I call the different versions of stakes in a story. The elephant is sort of the most important one. It's essentially what has grabbed the audience's attention initially. It doesn't actually have to be what the story's about, but oftentimes people begin a story without anything interesting that's going to grab the audience. A stake is essentially what are we worried about? What are we wondering about? Why are we rooting for the protagonist? Why are we not rooting for the protagonist? It's the thing that makes us want to hear the next sentence. An elephant is the idea of here's a thing that you should care about. In the story I just told you, the here's a thing is, there's a boy with a spoon and Matt wants it. The stake is, will he get the spoon? We know that's not what the story is actually about, but it gives the audience an initial thing to be thinking about. In movies, we often get a trailer. So if you see the movie trailer, the stakes are already laid out. And oftentimes they're laid out anyway. If I say, let's go to a romantic comedy, we know what the stake is. Two people are not in love and eventually they will be in love. So we know what those stakes are. But when I open my mouth and I start telling a story, in any context, nobody really knows what I'm there for. No one knows what's about to be said. No one knows why I'm speaking. So we have to give them a reason, something interesting that grabs them. And it doesn't have to be much. You know, when Jobs introduces the iPhone in 2007, his first sentence on stage is, I've been waiting two and a half years to share this with you today. That's a stake. That's the CEO of Apple has been sitting on something for two and a half years. And today's the day we get to see it. That makes you wonder what he's going to say next. So the elephant is that constant need that there has to be something big. I call it an elephant because we should all know what it is. It shouldn't be a mystery. It should be large and present and it can change over time. So eventually I don't get the spoon, but the new elephant becomes, what's Jamie going to do with this spoon? It seems to be changing the lives of kids. And then the elephant becomes, is Matt really going to get this spoon? Or is Jamie going to keep the spoon? And then the steak becomes the pandemic, which is just a, you know, that enormous elephant of the pandemic is enough. So that's an elephant. Backpacks are the idea that oftentimes we're telling an audience what our plan is, and then we're going to tell them the results of the plan. But we want them to sort of be loaded up with our hopes and dreams along the way. So when I tell you in that story, and when I say, it's okay, because eventually we're going to be writing, and Jamie always gets lost in his writing. He's like me. His little head falls on his arm, starts writing away, and that's the moment I'm going to strike. I just put a backpack on you. I told you what my plan is. I told you what my hope is. My goal is when I reach for that spoon and it's not there, you're surprised because I've loaded you with my hopes and dreams. And then I've shown you that they failed. When I tell that story to a live audience, they often gasp or laugh when I tell you the spoon's not there because in their mind, I have mentally placed the spoon on the corner. I've really reinforced it too specifically so that when I say I reach for it, they see it there. And when I say it's not there, it's like I pop it away like magic. And they gasp. They go, because it really is in their mind's eye, like it suddenly disappeared. So a backpack works especially well when a plan is not going to go well. You know, the Ocean's Eleven movies, they tell you how they're going to rob the casino before they start robbing the casino, things are going to go wrong and you have to know what's going Wrong in order to feel the pressure and the tension of the moment. And that goes for whether we're doing business or telling personal stories. There's oftentimes, I was working with a scientist. He put a backpack on his audience. He was trying to cure a disease. The backpack he gave to the audience was, we're going to cure the disease. Here was my plan. We went forward. You know, I did the experiment. I looked at the results and the results weren't there. And your heart drops because it's a great story about a man trying to do something great. And the result of it is when they look back on the results, they discover they've actually found something even more interesting. It didn't cure the disease they were hoping to cure, but it created some molecule that changed the nature of the company and ended up curing like 12 diseases instead. But it's so much better for that scientist to say, here's what I wanted to do. Here was my plan. I invested all of my life in it. I didn't spend time with my children on the weekends, really built up our emotion in the same way that spoon is. It's exactly the same as the spoon not there. The cure wasn't there, right? But something else instead happened that was fantastic. Oftentimes when something isn't going to work or it might work in a surprising way, we want to put backpacks on people. ([Time 0:22:37](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2bb766b6-fe5c-4667-97d5-6bd8b14f7504)) - **The Power of Humor** - Use humor strategically to change brain chemistry, put the audience at ease, and manipulate emotions. - It makes you seem intelligent and builds connections with people. Transcript: Matthew Dicks Crystal balls. And crystal balls are something we use in life all the time. It's essentially just a prediction. It's an out loud prediction about something that's going to happen because human beings are prediction machines. That's why gambling is so difficult for people. It's not really the money as much as it is, I think the Cowboys are going to win this week and I'm going to put money down on it to prove that I'm right. Those people don't like wait till Monday and open the newspaper to see if they won, right? They're watching it at the moment the game's playing because we're prediction machines. So when I say to you, it's okay, because I'm going to get that spoon in a little while, right? I'm making a prediction about the future. And now you're going to want to hear as an audience, whether that prediction is going to come true. Earnings calls are just like that. When they give guidance, right? Their attempt to give guidance is both to make sure shareholders sort of know the direction of the company. But when they give guidance, you know those people are going to come back at the next earnings call to see if that guidance played out. Or they're going to pay attention over the course of the quarter to see what the results are. So guidance is nothing but a crystal ball saying, here's what we think is going to happen. And then you wait three months to find out if it actually happened. The more we can do that, the more we get our audience to want us to continue to talk. I always say, I want my audience happy that I'm talking. If you just think back on how many times you've heard people speak, how often have you thought, I'm so happy they're still speaking. If I can get that, now that's the platonic ideal. That's the sort of really difficult to achieve. But when the audience is happy that I'm talking because they can't wait to hear the next thing that I'm saying, then I'm waiting every time. ([Time 0:29:56](https://share.snipd.com/snip/fae09bbc-7493-49ad-91b8-dfd68b306417)) - **The Spoon's Impact** - The Spoon of Power story resonated with adults who lined up to touch it. - Matthew Dicks emphasizes the unexpected emotional impact of well-told stories. Transcript: Shane Parrish And it's almost like my brain starts doing the work for you. You don't have to describe sort of like what the floor is like or what the lighting is like or where the windows are. You know, you just instantly go there. Yeah. And the other thing I really that stuck out to me about Jamie was we basically time traveled 15 years in that story. So we started like at recess and then we went to a day and then we went to a week and then all of a sudden we're in COVID and it's, you know, 10 years later and you're still talking about how Powerful this spoon is and how it's helped people. Matthew Dicks And it's funny because I wouldn't normally advance a story so far ahead. I often tell people that that's sort of a mistake, try to keep a story in the moment. And had COVID not happened, the story probably would have ended with Jamie giving me the spoon and me feeling the power of it for the first time and understanding that it's going to be Something I use forever. It's only because of the weirdness and extraordinary nature of a pandemic that allows that story to jump ahead. But the other thing is you don't know in that story that Jamie was my student 16 years ago now. You don't know that until the very end. And that works well for me because that story could be happening last year or two years ago. It's sort of a surprise to you that I've had the spoon for 16 years. And I know it's a surprise because when I've told it to audiences and I say, I've had that spoon for 16 years, I see the look on their faces because they suddenly understand that happened So long ago and you still have that spoon. And I'm often wearing the spoon. I have it under my shirt and I take it out at the end of the story to surprise people. I've had people say, is that really the spoon? And I say, do you really think I'm such a monster that I would lose Jamie Calvert's spoon? That I couldn't keep track of a single spoon over the course of time? But yeah, that time game I play with the audience allows that story to play out well. I would say that most of the time, maintaining stories within the moment is probably the better way to go. ([Time 0:35:49](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0c67e601-98ca-4f62-aba6-9f8a96ee7c5d)) - **Starting and Ending Strong** - Start a story at the end to establish a clear point or change over time. - Beginnings and endings should be contrasting to effectively portray transformation. Transcript: Shane Parrish How do we find those five second moments? How do we determine the beginning of the story? And those seem to be the two most critical points, right? Where am I taking you? What's the destination that we're getting on? And like, how do we get on that plane together? Right. Matthew Dicks So we start at the end because we want to know what we're going to say. And I do this regardless of what speaking engagement you might be doing. If I'm helping someone with a keynote, I say, what's the thing you're trying to say? And oftentimes they say, well, we're trying to say a bunch of things. And I say, well, if you say a bunch of things, you're not saying anything. You have to have something that you're aiming at at the end. Even with a marketing deck, I always say, what are the last three slides? And they say, well, we don't know. We haven't gotten to those. And I said, that's where we start though. We want to land somewhere. Otherwise we're just collecting slides and changing the order three days before the event and then two days before the event and then two hours before the event. We're going to say something or we're not going to say something. So in storytelling, regardless of what the story is, it's always, what am I trying to say at the end? Meaning, how did I change transformation or realization? How did my perception of the world, my perception of myself, my perception of a spoon, or how I live as a human being, how has that changed over time? And if it's not a genuine change, it's just a thing that happened. It might be an amusing anecdote. I had an amusing moment in the airport yesterday. I got diverted by the customs agent. I sort of did a bad job with the first customs agent, and he put a red X on my form. And I thought, I've never seen that before. And so he said, move on. And I went to that place where they sort of release you. And I went right with everybody else. And the guy said, no, you go left. And I went into customs agent layer two, which I'd never been in before. And there was a harder questioning. They were essentially trying to figure out why I was here. Are you doing business here? And I'm like, no, I'm not getting paid. I'm just going to talk to a guy. I said it in a way that made them very suspicious of me. And in the end, the way they stopped being suspicious of me is they found my Wikipedia page. And they said, oh, look, you're an American novelist and storyteller. And suddenly they all relaxed and everyone was like, okay, we understand why you're here. That was an amusing anecdote. It's not a story because when I left customs, I was not thinking, oh, I see the world in a different way. I see myself in a different way. I see customs in a different way. None of those things happened. It was the kind of thing I'll tell my wife and she'll go, huh, that's funny. And three months from now, neither one of us will remember it because it's cotton candy. That's what so many people do though. They think, oh, I have a story. Let me tell you about customs. I would never say I have a story. I said something strange happened to me in customs the other day, but it's not a story. I might probe it and say, is there a story there? Is there something about me having a Wikipedia page? That's kind of weird, right? But I don't think there is, because I didn't feel, you know, that feeling you get. It's a feeling of something just happened, you know, and sometimes you don't know what it is. I have taken 25 years to figure out some of the things that have happened to me in my life. But I knew 25 years ago that it was something. And I knew it was something because I kept coming back to it in my life. You're like, that moment really sticks with me. You know, sometimes it sticks with you because it was crazy. Sometimes it sticks with you because like in the heart, in the mind, it really hung with you. So you have to have something to say. You have to have a point. And we start at the end because we want to land in a place where people go, oh, my time was well spent. He's presented me with a new way to look at the world. He's made me reflect upon my position on this planet, that kind of a thing. That's what we're looking for. And that can be as simple as I want you to see my product in a new and interesting way. So when you leave, you go, wow, that really is kind of an interesting broom. I've got a broom in my house, but I actually think they've upgraded the broom. Like I'm feeling I got to go get that broom now because I don't have the right broom. That's actually a feeling and that would be the end of a story too. We got to ask ourselves, what actually generates change over time? That's the end of the story. And then how does the end inform the beginning? Well, they're almost always in perfect contrast to each other. They have to be opposite of some way. If you want change over time, for the end of my story, you know, I've learned a thing. At the beginning of the story, I must not have that thing learned. If at the end of the story, I say this is a spoon of power and it's really going to become the most powerful teaching tool I'll ever have. The beginning of the story is it's just a spoon. And those are words I actually use in that story, just an ordinary kitchen spoon. I tell you in the beginning, this is a meaningless kitchen spoon that because Lord of the Rings was popular, I declared it the spoon of power for reasons that make no sense, except that's Who I am, right? But essentially it was a nothing and I made it a something. So we ask ourselves at the end, what's the change? What's the meaning? And then the beginning is always going to be the opposite of that. And now we have change over time. ([Time 0:41:55](https://share.snipd.com/snip/63fd2b02-5c41-448d-ab2e-8f27c4e98b35)) - **But and Therefore** - Avoid "and" stories, which are just chronological lists of events. - Connect scenes using "but" and "therefore" to create engaging cause-and-effect relationships. Transcript: Shane Parrish A lot of people tell and stories. This happened and then this and then this and then this. Right. And it's not super engaging. Right. And I remember listening to a clip, the South Park guys, they use the terms but and therefore. And then I remember reading this in your book. So talk to me about this and like how we take an and story and make it a but therefore story. Matthew Dicks It was devastating for me when I saw that clip too, because I thought I had stumbled upon something that was mine. Like, hey, look what I found. And then someone said, that's great. Did you know the South Park guys believe that too? And I was like, oh, really? I thought it was going to be like Matthew Dix only, but they're right. And I'm right too. And Anne's story is essentially a story that is a series of events one after the other, that are not connected in any meaningful way. First graders tell those stories all the time. I got up and then I got my cereal and then I went to school, right? But adults still tell those stories too. Actually, most decks that I'm working on with marketing and salespeople are and stories. You know it's an and story because if you can just throw a slide into a deck, you don't have a story. Because I couldn't just throw a random scene into the spoon of power and still have that story work, right? But people feel they can do that. I'm like, well, it's fine, but you're not telling a story. Now you're just a slide monkey. You're just throwing in slides. So an and story is the kind of story that if we take something out, the story still plays. Nothing really changes in the story. We still can get to the end, which means it's probably not a story. You're probably just reporting on your day. But or therefore stories rely on connection. Scenes are connected to other scenes, connected to other scenes. So I'm doing this, but that happened. Therefore this happened, but then that happened. And when we connect it in that way, we can't actually remove anything from the story because the story will fall apart. I also think it creates motion in a story, sort of an angular, exciting nature to the story. The spoon of power appears, but it's not the spoon of power. It's not just a spoon. It's the spoon of power. Therefore, I must have it. So, which is because, which is therefore, so I chase Jamie, but I don't get it. But that's okay, because he's my student, and I'm still going to have time to teach him. So I'm in math, right? But he's put the spoon right here. So we're in this standoff. Then I'm doing reading, but the spoon is still here. But that's okay, because eventually I'm going to teach writing. I walk up the aisle, but the spoon isn't here. The bell rings. Therefore, Jamie gets out of the seat, runs over to his coat, but also goes to the library and pulls out the spoon. So if you're butting and thereforeing all the way through, you know that every scene is required. You know you don't have any fluff along the way. There's no extra scene sort of hanging out. And people are going to be so invested in the story. I always tell people the but is the most powerful word in all of storytelling. If I say to you, I got in the Uber today to come over here, but that just makes you want to hear the next part of that sentence. If I said, I got in the Uber to come over here today and like the power could go out and you'd be like, whatever. But if I say, but you know, something happened, it's an indication that the world did not continue on in the way you wanted it to. It's the same thing when we, oftentimes the not is more powerful in storytelling. What something is not is more powerful than what it is. If I say Shane is smart, that's fine. But if I say Shane is not stupid, can you feel that that is a better way to say that? And what it does is when I say Shane is not stupid, it presents the dichotomy. It says there's a stupid and there's a smart, and I'm going to tell you which one he is. If I say Shane is smart, it's flat. I've only given you one option. That one option exists, and it's the one I've chosen. So I'm often describing things by what they are not rather than what they are, because that creates that binary dichotomy in language that causes people to feel energy in our sentences As opposed to sort of that flatness. ([Time 1:06:21](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9298fa9a-7fec-4a36-a458-f674367fa375)) - **Homework for Life** - Practice "Homework for Life" by recording daily moments for potential stories. - This cultivates an awareness of narrative opportunities in everyday life. Transcript: Shane Parrish Going to level you up quickly. So you advocate homework for life, which is sort of keeping track of the little moments every day that happened to you that might be stories, might be anecdotes and an Excel spreadsheet. That's what you use. Walk me through like one you haven't made a story recently that you think is a story. And like, how do you think about structuring it? Like, just walk me through your internal monologue about ([Time 1:17:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d1ff97d3-377e-499a-bf9e-354825c2f3c2)) - **Metaphors in Business** - Find metaphors by connecting business lessons to personal experiences. - Personal stories resonate more deeply than purely business examples. Transcript: Shane Parrish That's amazing. Thank you for going into detail on that. Talk to me about metaphors and finding metaphors and how they can be used for business people specifically telling stories or even individuals telling stories about greater meaning. I remember the story that stood out, and I forget the guy's name, in the book that you just wrote about the Little League, and how he turned that into a story for his company. And I thought that was really interesting. But how do we find those metaphors? Matthew Dicks So what we want to ask ourselves, when we're trying to do business, when we're trying to send a message, right? We're trying to look for theme, meaning, or message. People content match, that's the problem, rather than thinking about what they're really trying to say. This is a good example. I'm working with a guy who's getting ready to do some speaking. He's going to be speaking to entrepreneurs about getting through bottlenecks so they can accelerate their companies. Sort of the lesson he wants to teach them is sometimes you just have to find the one right thing that's holding your company back. And he has a great example of it. He says to me that at Facebook early on, when they were failing to gain traction, they looked at their data and they realized that if a user accumulated seven friends, made seven friends Or seven connections on Facebook in 10 days, they were likely to stay on the platform. And if they didn't do that, they were likely to leave the platform. And so Facebook, recognizing that data point, focused all of their energies on how can we get a user to find seven friends in 10 days. And that's when they added features like load your email contacts into Facebook so that we can show you who they are. We'll recommend friends to you, things like that. We'll start telling you who your friends are that you have in common. All of those features were designed. So Facebook figures out that's the one bottleneck we have. That's what he wants to tell the audience. But he doesn't want to just use that story. He wants other things, right? So when I'm talking to him, I say, well, what are other examples of sort of singular solutions that you can think of? He gives me a business solution, which is just content matching. You already have your business example, the Facebook one, and it works really well. I think it's great. Like, right away, I went, uh-huh, yeah, okay, great. I said, what about in your personal life? Do you have a personal life, you know, simple solution that really changed things for you? He says, well, there was a point years ago when I was struggling with my marriage, you know, my wife and I were just not getting along and we had gone to couples therapy and it wasn't seeming To work. And one day he sat down with his buddy and his buddy said, are you kissing your wife every morning? And he said, no. And his buddy said, kiss your wife every morning, you know, and he said, what's that going to do? He said, just do it. And it changed everything for him. Somehow there was a lack of physical closeness and intimacy that was missing in the relationship. And a kiss in the morning started to change everything for them. I said, that's the story you should use. And he goes, I'm not using that story. He said, that's not like what the purpose of this business is. And I said, no one's going to remember your other business story. In fact, a lot of people aren't even going to remember the Facebook story. But if you want to land the idea that sometimes a singular solution can solve a big problem, you tell the story about kissing your wife in the morning and they'll never forget it. And they'll start kissing their wives in the morning and they will start telling other people to do so as well. You will have an echo through their lives. Now that's a metaphor, right? That's a metaphor for his Facebook example, which is what I said to him was, the Facebook example matching theme, meaning, or message essentially is what's the theme, meaning, or message Of the Facebook story? A singular solution can sometimes solve a really complex problem. So let's find that in our personal life. Now, I'm always fighting with business people on this because they never want to bring their personal life into the business world, which is why they are round, white, and flavorless, Why they're all forgettable, why everything they say is ultimately forgotten, because we don't remember business stories. We don't remember most of them. And there's so many of them. But a guy who gets on stage and is vulnerable enough to say, a few years ago, I was having a problem with my wife and she was having a problem with me and we were not getting along and things Were looking bad. And then I told my buddy and I ended up kissing her. And somehow today we're the happiest couple. That's unforgettable. Now, I think he's going to do it. But part of me thinks he just told me he's going to do it and he's not going to do it because that happens all the damn time. I don't understand why people don't see it because I know you see it. Like you made a sound, right? I listened to audiences. When I said, do you kiss your wife every morning? You made a sound. You went, which said to me, that's all I need to know. The story is perfect, right? When you hear that sound from an audience, you know you have found the perfect story for this example. And if he was you and I was telling him the story, he would make that sound. He'd go, hmm. But for some reason, because he has to tell it now, he can't do it because I can't tell a personal story. I'm there to teach them about solving business problems and bottlenecks, right? And I'm like, you are, but we don't teach lessons, like, always by sticking to the content, right? We have to expand beyond it to get people to understand it, particularly when things get complex, when your business is different than mine, you know, you have a platform and I have a Broom company. How are we going to talk to someone who's working for Slack and someone who's working for a broom company, right? If both of those people are in front of us and we're trying to improve their businesses, how are we going to do that? We're going to use metaphors. We're going to find ways to send lessons and messages to people in ways that resonate in their lives. Now, the beauty of that story too, and all the stories I teach, like the story of Boris, you know, the one you mentioned about the baseball game. When we do that, when we're daring enough, courageous enough to do it, we create these markers in people's lives as well. The next time one spouse kisses another spouse in the morning, they're thinking about him and they're thinking about simple solutions to solve bottlenecks. It's going to continue to reverberate. Whenever we can take the content from our business world and bring it into the personal world and allow people to feel it in a way that is really human and not profit-driven, then suddenly We have stories that people want to hear. And we become unforgettable because everyone is forgettable unless they're doing something that is touching the heart and the mind, slightly different than everybody else, changing Brain chemistry, being entertaining, all of those things. ([Time 1:25:08](https://share.snipd.com/snip/931e90f5-16cc-48f7-a194-cf05497e804d)) - **Personal vs. Other's Stories** - Telling personal stories is more effective than relaying others' experiences. - Personal vulnerability builds trust and strengthens audience connection. Transcript: Matthew Dicks Is there a difference between telling our own stories and telling other people's stories? Yeah, there is. Unfortunately, when you tell other people's stories, they're never nearly as good. If I had told you that my brother went through customs and got the X on his form and had to get through that second layer, that story doesn't mean very much to you. My brother, in your mind, is a fictional character. You don't even know. Maybe I don't actually have a brother. It doesn't mean they can't be told. There is a way to tell them it's tricky and it's not as effective. People want to hear the story of the person sitting across from them. They want to know that you're the one speaking because that requires vulnerability. If I tell you a story and it's not about me, the only vulnerability required is public speaking. And I've overcome that. And presumably anyone who's standing in front of other people can at least publicly speak in an effective, somewhat unnervous way. So me telling you stories about other people is just me reporting on events for people that you may or may not know. The vulnerability comes from, I'm having difficulties with my wife and we can't figure out how to solve it. And then one day I decide to start kissing my wife in the morning and everything changes. That vulnerability is so powerful. Other people's stories, you just don't have that. ([Time 1:31:19](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ab0d5152-9dcf-481a-ad3b-a56202a286c1)) - **Teaching Kids to Write** - Encourage a love of writing by focusing on content, not mechanics. - Offer positive feedback and let kids explore different writing styles and genres. Transcript: Matthew Dicks As a fifth grade teacher, how do you advocate that parents teach kids how to write? I tell them a bunch of things. One of the things is, if you're talking about spelling, grammar, or handwriting, you're making a terrible mistake. You're making writing unfun. When kids are little, they're writing with pen and paper. And then when they get older, they're typing. I say, never look at the writing that your child is doing. Always have them read it aloud. Because what comes out of your child's mouth is always more beautiful than what they're putting on the page. That sort of nonsense on the page, that'll get cleared up eventually. We don't have to worry about that. What we want is to make kids love to write. That is the only goal every teacher should have. Because once you love to write, you'll start writing and you'll just get good at it. So we want to do things like let kids write as many things as they want to. You know, there's mistakes where teachers say, well, I need you to finish this before you start that. But as a writer, I can tell you, I've never met an author who's only working on one thing. There's the thing that's a do. And then there's the thing you're cheating on, right? And then there's the thing you're not telling anyone about that you think is actually the greatest of all the things you're writing. You know, and then there's the writing in the new genre that you want to explain. There's all of that. And yet when we get to school, we tell kids they have to write one thing and finish the one thing and then move on. We don't let them abandon writing. My daughter is a writer. She's a real serious writer. I think she was like 130 pages into a novel. I know. At like the age of 12, she's an unusual human being. At the age of 12, she got that far into a novel and she said, dad, I don't think it's that good. I don't think I'm going to finish it. And I think a lot of parents would have said, you got to finish that. Look at all the work you put in. As an author, I said, yeah, if it sucks, you should abandon it. I said, the lesson is figure that out a little earlier next time. I've abandoned a lot of things. I've never actually gotten that far into something and needing to abandon it. So let's like try to figure out how to do that a little sooner. But we often tell kids they can't abandon their work. They got to finish it. Let me look at it. Parents want to see spelling and grammar and punctuation because that's the things they understand how to fix. Right. So they're like, oh, show me that because I can actually be helpful. When a kid reads out loud, you don't know what to say. Right. And I always say, say kind things, say what you liked about it, right? Say the things that you thought were extraordinary. And the thing that you know has to be fixed or the thing you really want, make it like the last thing you say after you say eight things. You know, in teaching, we try to achieve a six to one ratio, six positive comments for every corrective comment that we're going to offer, and try to make that your home too. So just say good things so they keep writing. Because if you say things that are not kind, or you're overly critical, the thing about writing or even public speaking and storytelling is it's not like math. You know, two plus two exists for everyone. If you don't get two plus two right, you got it wrong, but it doesn't mean that you're like bad in a heart and mind sense. But when someone stands on the stage and shares a story, they're essentially saying, here's my humanity. What do you think of it? When a kid writes something on a page, whether it's an essay or a story, they're saying, here's everything I have that represents me. What do you think? And if you go, well, I didn't really understand, right there, you're just like, you're stabbing the person they are. You need a capital letter. Yeah. It makes them want to never go back to it again. ([Time 1:53:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6b87e966-0bbb-4c7d-bf6f-e736507c1c56)) - **Defining Success** - Success is defined by continuous evolution and embracing new challenges. - Stasis is considered detrimental to personal and professional growth. Transcript: Shane Parrish Relevant, but not important. This has been a fascinating conversation. Thank you for your time. We always end on the same question, which is a personal question. What is success for you? Matthew Dicks Yeah, I just had this conversation with someone. For me, success is always that at some very future tomorrow, I'll be doing something different than I'm doing today. I think stasis is death. I have a company, you know, I have a company that produces storytelling content, and I've got a business partner. He always wants to plan out six months or a year. And I know why he wants to do it. Actually, my production manager wants the same thing. And I resist it all the time. Because I feel like if you've planned out six months, we don't have the opportunity for me to stumble upon the new thing that I want to stumble upon. So for me, success is in six months, will I be doing something I never could have imagined doing today that I'm now trying and maybe loving or maybe hating, but at least finding a thing That I want to start doing that is different. Long as my life is constantly evolving and I am being presented with new challenges and new opportunities, or I'm cracking doors open that I had never cracked open before, I feel like I'm successful. ([Time 1:56:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ceb5a4b3-070c-45a5-a574-c564e94efe25))