You've probably been telling not so good stories all your life and you've probably heard people who tell amazing stories all the time.
It turns out that's not actually something that people are born with, it's just strategic.
And if you become a little more strategic, you can be one of those people, right?
Now we want to know, now we're curious, we're not giving anything away, we're not indicating the end, but we're finding something that's going to like appeal to people in a real emotional way.
We're going to identify a need they have.
And if we identify an appropriate need, then we're going to grab our audience and they're going to pay attention.
Welcome to The Knowledge Project, the biweekly podcast exploring the powerful ideas, practical methods, and mental models of others.
In a world where knowledge is power, this podcast is your toolkit for mastering the best of what other people have already figured out.
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My guest today is Matthew Dix, who is perhaps the world's best storyteller.
I'm not kidding. He's won nearly every major storytelling competition.
If anyone has a recipe for telling better stories, it's him, and I wanted to learn from the master.
In this episode, you will discover lessons on finding, crafting, and telling stories that connect you to other people, stories that will make them believe in you and trust you and compel them to want to know more about you and then things that you care about.
Steve Jobs said the most powerful person in the world is the storyteller, but most of us make common mistakes that are easily correctable.
At the end of listening to this episode, I guarantee you'll be more effective, entertaining, and thoughtful about the stories you tell.
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What's 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 the 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.
That's really the difference between someone who is going to be appreciated and remembered and impactful and someone who will 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 listener is 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. You're the first person other than me I've ever heard refer 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 the story or 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 could always tell that.
You can tell it because their talk feels like it's just for you because you can look at someone and you can sort of riff on what is happening in the room.
You know I was recently speaking somewhere and someone picked up their phone and started looking at their phone and in the middle of my speech I stopped and I said I really hope your kid is like on the way to the hospital right now and he was like didn't get to school I'm just making sure that and I
and it was a big laugh you know but I wouldn't have been able to do that if I was a word caller.
You don't want to be overly prepared.
What's the difference between a story and an anecdote then?
So an anecdote doesn't have to have change over time.
It's essentially one of those hey this funny thing happened to me isn't this crazy but it tends not to linger.
You know a story ideally is the kind of thing that when I tell it to you you're thinking about it for days weeks months or maybe for the rest of your life.
Whereas an anecdote is you sit down and you have beers with your buddies and something crazy happened on the golf course you know something happened in the airport and you tell them it and they all laugh but it's not the kind of thing they want to go and repeat to someone.
They're not going to remember it.
I often think of anecdotes as cotton candy.
It's like delicious in the moment and lovely but you don't really remember your cotton candies but you remember the best meals of your life.
Stories are the best meals of your life.
The ones you reflect back and go I remember the restaurant, I remember who I was with, I remember what I ordered.
That's the story. Because you're connecting to an emotion?
Ideally touching their hearts and their minds.
If I tell you an anecdote about my son we're gonna laugh, we're gonna understand his humanity even a little bit.
You might even reflect on my humanity but you're not going to be sort of thinking about it later on because I'm not looking to land something in your heart and mind.
I'm not looking to connect to your life experiences.
When I tell a story I'm not hoping that you are thinking that once happened to me.
What I'm hoping is you're thinking I once felt that way.
I once thought that way or maybe someday I could feel or think that way.
That's the goal. That's sort of that understory that we're always looking to tell.
So before we get into more of a crafting a story maybe it would help to have an example of a story.
Oh sure. Should I tell you a story?
Yeah. Uh 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 is 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 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 100 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 gonna forget it in a minute and I'm gonna 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 like to dare me to get it.
You know, it's just out of my reach.
So I've got one eye on the board, one eye on him in 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.
I'm 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 gonna get lost in his story and that's the moment I'll strike.
And watch it happen.
I just wait. See the little red head 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 gonna 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 hear it from the neck of a 10 year old.
So all week he tortures me with this.
And then Thursday comes.
It's time for our weekly math test.
It's time for McKenzie to lose her mind because someday McKenzie might get a problem wrong and that will be the end of the world for McKenzie.
So every Thursday I have to like build her up.
Mistakes are valuable.
It's okay, McKenzie, 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 McKenzie's neck and it's the best math test McKenzie 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.
They, 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.
You know, we're going to have to say goodbye now.
So Jamie stands up and he walks over to me.
He takes the spoon off and he tries to give it to me.
And I say to Jamie, no.
I say 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 use 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, 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.
And so I like to tell that story to especially business people because essentially what I do is I take something that they have at least eight to 12 of in their kitchen, a simple spoon that they don't see is very valuable.
And suddenly it becomes something incredibly meaningful.
The first time I gave that talk, that story, I did it as a series of stories during the pandemic actually at a college in Western Massachusetts.
And it was still during the pandemic, everyone's masked except for me and everyone's social distanced.
And at the end of the event, you know, I'm a novelist and I write books.
So I often have a table and there's books and there's a bookstore and I signed the books and things like that, but we weren't going to do it because of the pandemic.
So after I finished speaking, that line formed in the aisle and I had to get back on the microphone and say, I'm sorry, we're not going to sign books tonight, go home.
And most of the people in the line, they weren't there to buy a book.
They wanted to touch the spoon.
Grown ass adults who had Doritos and Netflix and pillows.
