No. 1 Storyteller: How to become unforgettable & get rich (easily)

What's the difference between a good story and a bad story no one wants to hear anything you ever have to say unless you give them a reason to listen when someone stands on the stage and shares a story they're essentially saying here's my Humanity what do you think of it the speech does not live on the page it lives in life it lives in the air it lives in your voice 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 suddenly we have stories that people want to hear and we become Unforgettable how do you teach people not to care about what other people think most of it happened for me when I was around the age of 21 I was in an armed robbery and I knew I was in a lot of trouble they had already killed two people so when I heard the glass break I Knew what was going [Music] on 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 cuz 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 that's most stories sometimes they're transformational meaning I once Was one kind of person 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 a well-crafted story and a one that is not as well-crafted we get into things like the ackowledgement 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 spoils 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 add liit on the spot and the listeners like pretending that you're ad living it on the spot cuz 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 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 a story

or speech that I'm going to deliver but I 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 5 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' memorized your 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 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 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 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 cuz you're connecting to an emotion ideally touching their hearts and their minds if I tell

you an anecdote about my son we're going to laugh we're going to 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 underst story that we're always looking to tell so Before we get into more about crafting a story maybe it would helped have an example of a story oh sure so 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 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 it's a kitchen spoon it fell out of a lunch box 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 spin 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 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 sitting on a stool and 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 Ey 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 his 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 turned to the right like where's the spoon the girl says leave us alone we're trying to get our work done turned to the left where's the spoon the boy says why are you bothering me I'm trying to be a good they all know where it is they're all

conspiring against me then the Bell Rings Jam's out of his seat he runs to get his coat then 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 here has the spoon 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 dicks 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-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 3 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 his neck and says I think he 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 his 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 make the long Walk down the lenium 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 said there was a day back in October when I wanted that spoon badly and had I caught you I would have pried 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 back to school in September and masks and social distancing and

everyone was afraid and lots and lots of people got sick uh 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 the spoon of power to get through the day and as hard as it was there was 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 8 to 12 of in their kitchen a simple spoon that they don't see as very valuable and suddenly it becomes something incredibly meaningful you know I 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 I 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 sign 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 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 at home in the middle of a pandemic wearing a mask chose to line up and touch a spoon that they definitely have 8 to 12 of in their kitchen and that's what we have to do When we tell a story about something like a spoon something as simple as that it suddenly becomes not a spoon anymore and the better we are at telling stories about ourselves the people we love the products we make the services we offer you know all of those things the more we are able to tell excellent stories about those things

the more we're able to infuse those things with with whatever we want them to be infused with that's a great story and I feel the emotional Like roller coaster 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 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 we feely some people get interested in that but you should not you know nobody cares about what anything looks like ver similitude is not relevant in storytelling when I say we go into our 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 cuz my classroom has a stage

with with lighting and sets cuz 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 like 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 Tony 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 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 roing 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 cuz 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 McKenzie 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 cuz 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 you Kid and then he forces it upon me cuz I want you to be as surprised as I am and then the last scene is sort of that pandemic you know 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 Stak suspense surprise and humor which is why nobody ever pays attention to any anything anyone ever does because and 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 and is there a place where I can drop in some humor so you mentioned keeping a Storyteller compellent 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 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 what you've identified is sort of what I call the different versions of stakes in a story 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 is about but often times people begin a story without anything interesting

that's going to grab the audience a stake is essentially what 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 that here's a thing is this a boy with a spoon and Matt wants it the Stak 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 often times 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 you know

no one knows what 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 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 often times we're telling 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 I 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 as 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 Oceans 11 movies they tell you how they're going to rob The casino before they start robbing the casino because 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 as often times 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 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 it 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 it's exactly the same as the spoon not there The Cure wasn't there right but something else instead happened that was fantastic often times when something isn't going to work or it might work in A surprising way we want to put backpacks on people the next one is breadcrumbs so breadcrumbs are just sort of a Clues along the way a little hint to something the reason why we might wonder about something I don't know if I use a breadcrumb in the spoon story it's almost

like foreshadowing right yeah it is it's sort of like you say some of the thing but not all of the thing it's a little bit like suspense actually it it's sort of suspense in the same way if I tell you that McKenzie is falling apart during her math test right a certain portion of the audience will see that as a breadcrumb thinking well this has to do with the spoon doesn't it a lot of the audience actually doesn't even think that they sort of forget about the spoon for a minute because they get so invested

in McKenzie you can tell people who are empathetic in an audience just by how much they forget about the spoon and they start caring About a little girl who's struggling with math but that idea that there's a girl here and she's falling apart but this is a story about a spoon right that is sort of a bread CHR hoping the audience will be thinking how are these two things going to connect like what is going on here but often times in a story we just say we mention an object we mention a thought we mention

something that someone says to us but we don't allow the audience to understand why it Was said and that's a Crum meaning it leads them to be wondering about something later on the next one is hourglasses so in hourglasses uh the idea that once you know you have the audience's attention and they're dying for the next sentence you make them wait as long as possible you flip The Hourglass over and let the sand run like a great example of that is the Matrix bullet time in The Matrix is an hourglass meaning we're going to change

The way a gunfight happens in this movie meaning we're going to watch the bullet move through space and time so that you will wonder more if someone is going to be hit by the bullet because before bullet time gunfights were a lot less enter entertaining because it was just a matter of whether the person got hit or not now we get to wonder where what the course of this bullet is any moment where I know the audience wants to hear the next thing I will slow things down And that's the one time I will start

describing stuff for no reason whatsoever right so that orange chair I simply use the word orange as a means of making you wait one more second to find out what's going to happen happen if you pay attention to the way I tell that story I start speaking slower the closer we get to the moment where Jamie's going to hand me the spoon I just know that if I say these words with a reduced Pace your anticipation increases and Therefore when I get the spoon it's more likely that you will have an emotional reaction to it

and that's just a matter of judging now I have them let's make them wait as long as possible to hear it 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 cuz human beings are prediction machines that's why gambling is so difficult for people I 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 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 3 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 that I'm winning every time and humor the tricky thing about humor is I do standup comedy and there are certain people that can just

make lots of things funny and in that spoon of power story I could have had you laughing the whole way through that's not useful to me in Terms of a Storyteller now if I do stand up it's very useful for me but humor is a really powerful tool that gets underused completely in business all the time humor changes brain chemistry in really meaningful ways you know causes you to uh feel closer to me causes you to perceive me as intelligent even if I'm not intelligent makes you feel better about the world actually improves your cognition

all of those chemicals get released due to humor which primes Your brain and gets you ready to hear me better but it also does things like if I make you laugh in the first 30 to 60 seconds of a story you now feel at ease because an audience always has that concern this concern that this is going to get awkward for us because you're not going to do a good job many many times I have sat in an audience and thought buckle up this guy's going to fall apart and I don't want anyone to think

that so if you make someone laugh in the first 30 seconds of a story or a talk or a keynote whatever you're doing they relax they go oh okay she knows what she's doing she made me laugh like continue it's also useful in the boring parts of stories or actually in the boring parts of data you know if you're if you have to speak for 12 minutes about your data you better be funny you know I'm always helping tech companies when they're doing the demo of their newly added feature to their platform and they're Just

going to run through it like and show you what it is and I'm always saying like why would you do it that way that's awful like let's create two characters why don't you pretend to be somebody let's make the data amusing let's make a fake company and let's make the fake company that's going to access your new platform let's let that be amusing so that people are smiling while you're showing them what your new product does so it takes the boring Parts and makes them a lot less boring you can also manipulate emotions with humor

right before I'm going to tell you something terrible in a story I like to make you laugh so that the terrible thing hurts more it increases the contrast if you're dating someone for for 3 months and you discover you're dating a monster and you need to dump that person and you really want to like make them hurt because they've hurt you the best thing you can do is to take Them on the best date of their life and at the very end of that date that's the moment you dump them and that's what I try

to do in storytelling I try to take my audience on the best date possible and then I hit them with the thing that stabs them in the heart you know my wife says her favorite stories are mine and the laugh laugh laugh cry which is to say you think we're having a good time but actually the under story is I'm providing writing you a story that's Going to devastate you in about 3 minutes you just don't see it coming yet if you have to tell a part of a story that's really difficult for people to

hear a laugh after that can afford a breath it can allow people to go okay I just heard that bad thing but he made me laugh he must be okay now we can move on so it's very very powerful it can be overused you know by certain people and it's underused by most people two things about that the Jamie story that I Thought were really fascinating one was the way you describe the scene so like I feel like I'm there with you and it was vague enough that you get pulled into it and I don't

think a lot of storytellers do a really good job of that in terms of you use location a lot to pull us in it's almost like you're watching a movie in your head like you're watching it play exactly what I'm looking for Well locations are great because almost all of them are imbued with a thousand Adjectives I don't have to say anything if I tell you I dropped a bowl of blueberries on the kitchen floor you see that perfectly you know and you in your mind's eye you can tell me if the floor is wood

lenium or tile you know you can tell me if the bowl was plastic wooden or glass you can tell me if the blueberries are happy summer blueberries or sad winter blueberries and if I asked you to look around the kitchen you could identify exactly what that kitchen looks Like cuz I'm probably in your kitchen or your parents kitchen or a kitchen you've seen on television a million times but either way I don't want you to see my kitchen cuz that would mean I'd have to describe it and the power of your imagination is always more

powerful than any collection of words that I can assemble I'm always leaning into location especially if you think about films there's always a location in every scene you never are wondering where Someone is unless they're sort of locked in a trunk of a car you know and that creates lots of Wonder and you want to know what's going on we open with location because you're right it activates imagination it forces the movie to continue to play in the minds of the audience and it's almost like my brain start 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 L go there 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 Co 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 and it's funny cuz I wouldn't normally Advance a story so far ahead I often Tell people that that's sort of a mistake tried to keep a story in the moment and had Co 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 jimie was my student 16 years ago now you don't know that until the very end and that works well for me cuz 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 cuz 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 cuz they suddenly understand that happened so long ago and you still have that spoon You know

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 you know I've had people say is that really the spoon and I I say like 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 but that one is that one operates a little differently so what are the most common mistakes that people make when they're telling stories well they describe too much for sure actually there's some really interesting research on comic books they found that when you compare comic book characters the comic book characters that have less visual detail are are the ones people feel more Connected to so if I draw a circle with two dots for eyes and a you know a little mouth you're going to be a feel more

emotionally connected to that than if I created a photo realistic version of a comic book character because if I give you the circle with the two dots and the smile you fill in the rest with what you want it to be and now you're connected to it if I say here's what Joe looks like and it's photorealistic there's nothing you can do with that Other than to accept it in your mind as Joe whereas you have a version of Joe in your had the platonic version of Joe and if I allow you to place all

of your background and need and understanding of the concept of Joe into my unrealized picture you're more attached to it so people make the mistake of overly describing either because they think an audience wants it they've been taught to do it in school by people who don't write but teach people how to write or There are just people that get obsessed I've met lots of people who say like I want them to see my mother the way I saw her and I say I hear what you're saying but there's a difference between what you want

and what the audience wants and the Storyteller that's doing what they want to do is making a mistake it's the Storyteller who says what does the audience actually want from me that's the one who's going to succeed you can share the like what your mother looks Like with your spouse with you know your closest friend who's willing to put up with you but the audience doesn't want to see your mother they want to know what was said what was felt and what was done everything else let us fill in with our brains so that's a

mistake they make the other problem people have is I just believe the beginnings of stories are essential to grabbing people's attention and people waste the beginnings of stories explaining and teaching us Things rather than launching stories in the proper place in the hands of a lesser story tell teller let's say the the spoon of power Story begins with I'm a fifth grade teacher I'm working at a school in Connecticut it's called walk at school I teach about 23 kids per year we have recess in the middle of the school day and so I'm teaching social

studies one day when the bell rings and I tell all my kids it's time to go out to recess one of my students is named Jamie Jamie Calbert he's this little redheaded boy he's very precocious that's how most people start the story which is I need to teach you a whole bunch of stuff so that the story will make sense that's the worst way to begin a story cuz no one has ever sat down and said boy I hope he teaches me a lot of stuff before he says something good so that story starts in

the right place which is the actual moment the spoon makes an appearance I'm going to teach You all the rest of the stuff along the way but I'm not going to open my story by boring you I'm going to open it with location action a little bit of Wonder right there's a reason why I say it's a metal object right you never think spoon most people think knife some people think gun and if you're not thinking those two things you're wondering what the hell is in his hand and either way I'm winning CU if you

made a prediction that it's a knife or a gun now you want To know if your prediction is going to come true right that's the crystal wall or you're just wondering like what is in his hand what is in his hand right and I want you to be thinking that cuz that means you want me to keep speaking you're happy that I'm talking cuz you want me to solve that little mystery that I've created for you the beginnings are where people follow everything up cuz a story is like a plane ride to a beautiful place

you can land in a Beautiful place but no one's on your plane then you failed right so the beginning of the story is the attempt to get everyone on your plane to make the journey with you and I think that's where most stories fail cuz people disengage immediately I just think there's too many opportunities for people to listen to 30 seconds and go she has nothing to say and they look at their phone they think of their grocery list They start looking around the room and saying you know who's that bust of you know they

start doing that kind of a thing and you're never going to get him back so I would say most of the mistakes are made in the beginnings of stories where they fail to engage the audience and at the ends of stories where they fail to actually say anything so the end being sort of the 5-second moment of change or things that are different for you um and that the audience can relate To yeah let's go deeper on that how do we find those 5-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 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 often times 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 and they said 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 3 days before the event and then 2 days before the event and then 2 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 right or My 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 a 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 2 which I'd never been in before and there it was a harder questioning they were essentially trying to figure out why I was here are you doing business here and I'm like uh 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 at a different way I see myself in a different

way I see customs in a different way none of those things happen was the kind of thing I'll tell My wife and she'll go ha that's funny and 3 months from now neither one of us will remember it cuz 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 right 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 cuz 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 it really hung with you so you have to have something to say you have to have a 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 cuz 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 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 on the you know 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 the Meaning and then the beginning is always going to be the opposite of that and now we have

change over time now we create what I call an arc right it's going to go from one place to another the Customs agent story you can feel it's flat like there's no opening where Matt is nervous about going through customs I've done it a million times even when I saw the Red X I'm I'm in Canada what what are they going to do you know I guess I if I was in another country if I had just entered North Korea and I got a red X maybe I have a story now right but in Canada

I was thinking the worst they're going to do is like make me wait a little bit longer before I enter Canada right so that's not a story cuz I didn't feel that thing and therefore I can't have the opposite of that thing it it's hilarious to me that story because I mean everybody can get into Canada and yet we stop you right well again it was probably because I was communicating Poorly like what's the purpose of your visit I'm here to see a guy what does that mean I'm going to talk to him what are

you going to talk to him about well it's on a podcast and what do you mean on a podcast you know I was like I'm just not doing a good job here and that's I got myself into trouble cuz I didn't tell a good story so so if the ending is the opposite and the beginning is the opposite so like you have these two Transformations walk me through some Common movies and how you see them and this might wreck movies for everybody listening going forward but talk to me about how the opening scene of a

movie often predicts the end and maybe use some examples all of the openings of movies or almost all of them will predict the end of the movie for sure romantic comedies are the easiest to play with in the beginning if you see a movie like When Harry Met Sally they actually say they hate each other at the Beginning I hate you Harry they do not get along they they travel across country and they can't stand each other the whole road trip we know at the end they're going to end up together right there's no way

you can't know that doesn't mean you're not going to enjoy the film it just tells you this is how this movie is going to end right if we think about the first Star Wars you know A New Hope We Meet a boy on a planet who's dreaming with his friends about Flying in space someday and using blasters and spaceships to defeat an Empire that's the beginning of it right so we have to know that that's not what's going to happen over the course of this movie what happens is he meets Jesus in the form of

obiwan kovi because it's really a religion story it's about a boy who thinks he's going to fly in a spaceship and defeat the Empire and instead he finds religion something called the force and at the end of the Movie when he's ready to use that spaceship to defeat the Empire he turns off his targeting computer and he says I don't need technology I have religion and religion will save the day that's why when you leave that movie you feel good there's lots of space movies and some of them you leave and you go o that

was a something and then there are other movies you leave and go that was great and you forget all about it because there's something about watching a Character find a religion and then use that belief in the thing to defeat evil that means something to us my favorite example is like not a great movie but Independence Day uh the Alien Invasion movie I love that movie because that is so perfectly constructed that is a movie about people there's multiple protagonists in that movie people who are all failing to get the respect of the people they

value most so like Will Smith's character at the beginning of The movie is rejected by NASA you don't get to be an astronaut if you don't think Will Smith isn't going to space at some point in that movie you're crazy the president is being accused of being weak he's soft on crime he's a weakling you know he's not the strong man he wants was if you don't think at the end of that movie he's going to somehow be fighting an alien actually in his plane right you're crazy it tells you exactly what's going to happen

Jeff goldblum's Character at the beginning of the movie you're doing something with Like Satellites and television right his father doesn't thinks he's wasting his time his wife who's sort of estranged from him is doing big work and he's doing nothing he's like just sending cable television up to space that's what you're doing all of those characters are essentially characters who are being disrespected by the people they value the most and at The end of the movie all of them will gain the respect of the people they value the most now if Roland Emer who made

that film said hey Shane want to come to my movie it's about a bunch of people who are not really feeling the respect they deserve and over the course of time they're going to find that respect and it's actually going to come from the sources that they value the most you're probably not very excited about it but if you place those actual Stories Amin an alien invasion suddenly we have something that people want to go to and when they leave they go it's kind of not a great movie and yet for some reason it's sort

of stays with us in a way that other movies don't and I really believe that's why even if we don't know it on the surface level I believe that somewhere inside we recognize we watched people do a thing that we hope to do someday which is to say get the people who don't notice us to notice us that's What that movie is about oh that's interesting interesting I mean when I hear that and I'm like why is it memorable I haven't watched the movie so I'm going to watch it tonight maybe I think oh we've

all been in a situation where we're feeling underappreciated undervalued uh and we all want to be the person the hero in the end right yeah and that's exactly what that's about what makes the difference between a a memorable movie and one you walk out of And you're like oh that was entertaining but you forget like 2 Days Later often times the problem with those films is that whatever is sort of being expressed hopefully that 5-second moment at the end cuz most movies actually have that regardless of what you're watching most screenwriters and filmmakers are taking

us on an arc in a certain way the more relatable that ending moment is the more deep um the more resonant it is through the movie as opposed to what happens in A lot of movies which is it just sort of lands at the end because they know they have to wrap it up at the end some movies carry it all the way through if you think of Die Hard Die Hard is a movie about man who's trying to get back his wife and his wife has decided that her career is going to take precedent

at this moment right and he's decided his career is going to take precedent and so they're apart and essentially he's just trying to get back to his wife the whole Movie is he's just trying to get back to his wife and they have placed terrorists in front of him rather than what we Face typically which is like a bad phone call the job isn't working out our kids are making us crazy that's not entertaining but terrorists are John mlan the character in that movie throughout the entire movie we're always thinking about his wife we're always

going back to his wife his wife is always imp Peril and he's just trying to get back to his wife In a lesser version of that movie that idea is introduced at the beginning of the movie but we don't really see the wife again until the end and so we will feel like oh yeah he did go on a journey but it didn't sort of have the time to sink into us in the way that it sinks into us and die hard you know we understand it's also really important that in that movie he's not

sort of a jacked up Arnold Schwarzenegger we're like I'm kind of like that guy it hurts To run through glass like I understand that I might be able to do it to save my life but the fact that in the next scene he's sort of screaming and pulling glass out of his foot in a way I would as opposed to the way Arnold schwarzeneger in a movie would which you'd just pull it out and crack a joke you know and toss it away that's why that movie stays with us cuz we're like that's us and

I understand what it's like to try to get back to a loved one and I understand how Things are placed in front of us not those things but things how do we make a good trailer then for a podcast or for a movie like what goes into that in your mind that pulls people in and like I have to watch this I have to listen to this we want to make sure that people understand sort of what the problem the character is facing what that problem is and make sure that it's something that we all

can go yeah I get that but not solve the problem or even let us know if The problem will be solved John mlan desperately wants to get back to his wife and unfortunately terrorists now stand between between him and his wife what do you do when there a terrorist standing between you and your wife multiple terrorists and you have nothing except your wits what do you do and we go I wanted to get back to the love of my life you know how how is he going to do that and suddenly you want it to

happen if they present it as something We want then absolutely we're going to watch it because we want to see how to do it you know I think there is a part of our brain that says I need to see how John mlan gets back to his wife because I want to get back to maybe it's the of my life or maybe it's like I used to love playing poker and I haven't been playing it for a long time and I want to get back to that love of my life but we want to present

sort of the stakes in the story without revealing too much of The story so we want to see the yearning the want the desire if it's a podcast it's essentially you're going to present a question at the top you know something like 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 I love that that's really cool how do we learn to tell better stories then like walk me through sort of you teach a class on This like what's that that process for if you had to give a high

level overview of that like how do you how do you learn to do that start by becoming what I call Strategic listeners there's listening which everyone thinks they're good at and many people are not and then there's active listening which is as far as I can tell you look at the person and Nod while they speak but I'm not sure if that actually yields anything so what I say is strategic listening which is what I'm relentlessly doing all the time which is to say if I'm watching a movie and it makes me laugh I say

to myself what did they just do to make me laugh like what combination of words or situations did they assemble or how were the words spoken in a way that produced the laugh if you hear someone tell a great story and you think wow that was a great story or a great movie strategically you should be thinking what was it about that story about that Movie about the book I just read that made it great I think a lot of times what happens is people allow that content to wash through them which is great if

you want to be a consumer of other people's greatness but if you want to be a reproducer of that greatness then we have to be strategic my wife when we leave movies I don't know somehow she knows when I know a movie is terrible even if she thinks it's good like we left the first Wonder Woman Movie and she was feeling great cuz it was feminist superhero icon and as we left the movie theater she goes I know something's wrong with that movie I can tell by the the way you're walking and I said that

movie is a disaster and she said can you not tell me for 15 minutes so I can keep enjoying it what she was saying is there's something fundamentally flawed with that movie and you as a strategic listener have pinpointed it I have not pinpointed it Right now I'm just a consumer of this content eventually you're going to tell me and it's going to ruin the movie for me but just let me enjoy it for a little bit I told her I said I never have to tell you and she said no you'll eventually tell me

so you know 15 minutes down the road I told her what was wrong with Wonder Woman as soon as I told her she said oh what a terrible movie and I said yeah I know but most people won't notice cuz they're going to Be consumers of the content and not the Strategic pulling apart at the threads kind of person I'm the pulling apart at the threads kind of person and if you can become that then you're going to be a much more effective Storyteller because you're going to pick up on the things that people are

doing if I don't ask I'm going to get eviscerator for this so what was wrong with Wonder Woman so at the end of Wonder Woman did you see the movie I did like a long time ago I forget it at the end of the movie galado Wonder Woman She's battling the bad guy he's some sort of God or something and Hades Hades and they're fighting and while that's going on Wonder Woman's boyfriend for lack of a better word is in a plane and he's flying some poisonous bomb into the sky and she's losing to Hades

she's about to be killed by Hades and then off in the sky she sees her boyfriend and he dies the plane blows up he's risked his life To save her and all the people in the in the area right and it's at that moment that she finds the strength to rise up and defeat Hades which means it's a story about a woman who is incapable of winning her own battles unless a man sacrifices his life and therefore inspires her to defeat the bad guy oh that's interesting I never thought of it that way but that's

exactly what happens right but how often in movies does that happen when Luke Skywalker defeats the Empire it's not because he's thinking about Princess Leia he doesn't need princess Le to inspire him to take the shot right in movies quite often many times almost always the man manages to defeat the bad guy without any inspiration right when Iron Man defeats Thanos he's literally looking at Doctor Strange he's not looking at his wife who is on the battlefield with him he's looking at Doctor Strange and Doctor Strange says like this is the one one in A

million circumstances where we might win right he's not relying on a woman and and the support of his wife to do it he's doing it on his own with a little information from a guy and that's how most male Heroes win the day female heroes in so many movies can only win the day if a man does something first actually the Mary Poppins movie the new update of Mary Poppins is even more egregious cuz Mary Poppins is this woman who's trying to save this family there's A father who could be the hero of the day

and he's not and there's two kids they could be the hero of the day they could save the home but they don't Mary Poppins could be the hero of the day she doesn't instead quite literally the door opens and a man walks in the guy who played Bert in the original movie he's the he's an old actor that we're all happy suddenly made a last appearance the door opens and he basically says I have all the money you need here you go Everyone fails to save the day and then the door opens and a white

guy with a bunch of money walks in and says here you go here's what you need and we're all happy cuz we see an old actor that we didn't know was going to be in the movie and he suddenly appears and we're happy and hooray the day's been saved and I sit there and go really none of the people in the movie are going to save the day we're going to have the random White guy we haven't seen for all Except the last two minutes of the movie pop in but that's the difference between being

a strategic listener and saying what's happening in the story and someone who just is enjoying it and there's nothing wrong with enjoying it although I do think in both of those movies I think that what is being said which is women can't win the day I think that does sort of work its way into our unconscious I actually think both of those films are pretty bad if you're a Little girl and you're watching that movie cuz you don't get to see kids win in Mary Poppins you don't get to see Mary Poppins win you don't

get to watch Wonder Woman win on her own Merit I do think that they're sort of Insidious in that way not intentionally I I don't I can't even comprehend why these filmmakers did not see these problems as they were putting their films together or they decided they were problems but who cares cuz cuz we have to kill him Somehow and why would we kill him for no reason so we'll we'll do it for that reason but I do think they're pretty detrimental to girls in general so so if you're a parent you have a young

daughter what's it's a good movie to watch with her that is not like that that'll see the unconscious properly about the woman sort of not needing anybody else and saving the day felma and Louise what happens in that movie they both die well actually they don't Die that's an interesting I use this one in storytelling all the time thet and Louise is a uh it's from the 1980s two women sort of get mistaken for having committed a crime that they did not commit and they essentially get chased by the police and it's looking really bad

for them and it's a story about two women coming together female friendship and at the end they have a choice of looking back and ending up in prison or driving off a cliff together holding Hands and they drive off the cliff holding hands now the interesting thing about that movie is it ends with the car mid-flight we don't actually see it hit the ground which allows the audience to think maybe they survived it's improbable and it's not meant to be thought that way but there's a reason why we don't see the car disappear off screen

and it's because we're going to hang it right here we're going to stop the movie right here and you get to of Determine what you feel about it Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is the same thing Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid they run out of the rocks to go face you know a 100 federales and we know they're going to die but we don't see them die so in our hearts and our minds they're still alive maybe Butch and Sundance got out of it and that's the idea that our story should always sort of

have a little bit of um a tale on them when a story is not complete when there's still Unanswered questions at the end of a story when the audience can sort of play it out a little bit on their own those stories tend to hang with an audience much more so we want our stories to not be wrapped up in a bow cuz when we wrap it up in a bow we get to shove it away and stop thinking about it you know I think of it as a rope I don't want a KN at

the end of the Rope I want a afraid ending that allows people to sort of wonder what the Hell happened the next day that's great when they're wondering the next day I'm thrilled is it okay to lie when we tell stories I don't think so I'm a novelist you know I've published six novels now I believe in making stuff up all the time the phrase never let the facts stand in the way of a good story I hate that it's the stupidest thing I've ever heard anyone say when we l in our stories we can

no longer be trusted you know when I'm telling stories to people there's a Reason why people share more secrets with me than you could ever imagine everyone from an audience member all the way up to the CEOs of tech companies that you interact with on a daily basis they end up sharing like really private things with me my wife will sometimes like you know she'll be in the other room and she'll hear me talking to someone about storytelling in a coaching session and when I come out she goes that didn't sound like storytelling like The

whole hour wasn't spent on storytelling it's because I've spent so much time with this person and shared stories and expressed empathy and done all the things that I do that people are willing to trust me connect with me you know there's a reason why I tell you the spoon of power story and you know an entrepreneur once told me you should sell spoons you should drill holes in spoons and sell them on chains he's not wrong I could totally make a bundle I'm Not going to do it it's a really cynical and awful way to

be but it's because they know the story is true if you think it's fiction suddenly you don't want to touch the spoon of power it's just a thing he made up and somehow he got a spoon on a chain and that's all that's going on so no I I think the extent of lying in a story amounts to I'm allowed to take things out of stories that are inconvenient for the story not inconvenient for me but because they Make the story not run as well I tell a story about a bunch of guys in a

car you know we're going to a place and I don't mention one of my friends and here's the story he says I was in the car that night too said I know but you didn't do anything you know you're just cluttering the field like you're just stealing bandwidth from the audience mentioning that Martin was also in the car like if you don't do anything you're out of the car you're irrelevant to me at that Point CU you're irrelevant to the audience so I'll take Martin out of the car I'll condense time so a story that

takes place over the course of two days I'll push it into one day because an audience doesn't want to have to hear that I went to bed woke up ate a bowl of cereal and then the story continued right I don't want to have that clunkiness of a story I'll shorten locations push things little physically closer together and I'll eliminate Things all of that is done in the service of the story though if I did something stupid over the course of the story I'm not going to remove the stupid thing I did in an effort

to make myself look better in fact I will enhance the stupid thing I did because I know that's what audiences really want you know that vulnerability is what they crave so whenever I do something stupid I am thrilled because it often means I'm going to have a story to tell a lot of People tell end stories this happened and then this and then this and then this it'sing remember list a park they 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 end story and make it a but therefore story it was devastating for me when I saw that clip too cuz 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 H really that was going to be like Matthew dicks only but they're right and and I'm right too an an 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 off 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 cuz 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 you're just a slide monkey you're just throwing in Slides so an an story is the kind of story that if we take something out the story still plays nothing really changes in 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 are therefore for 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 it's not just a spoon it's a 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 cuz he's my student and I'm still going to have time to teach him so

On in math right but he's put the spoon right here so we're in this standoff then we're 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 in there foring all the way through you know that every Scene is required you know you don't have any fluff along Ong

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 butt is the most powerful word in all of Storytelling if I say to you I gotten 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 gotten 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 often times 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 off and 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 flatten does that only work When it's complete opposites like Shane is not lazy or does it only work when there's like a really corresponding strong opposite to that no CU I could say

something like and sometimes I do this it's really weird I actually teach people to practice this in a way that's weird like when I play golf my coach will say do this and he goes we're over exaggerating it right now eventually we'll get it back to normal I have people OV exaggerate it so if I Wanted to say the Apple was red you know if I want to overe exaggerate that and get really good at this I'd say the Apple wasn't yellow and it wasn't green it was red right so red yellow and green are

not opposites of each other they're just different colors but you can still do it that way I might not do it in that instance that would start to make me sound weird but I actually my people I coach I have them do that for a week I say I want you to never say what it is I Want you to say what it isn't just in an effort to get used to it so that the when you speak there's people who just speak dynamically and there's people who speak flatly and I think the dynamic speakers

are the ones who are always trying to energize their sentences by doing things like that what else goes into teaching people how to tell effective stories knowing what a story is is really important so understanding As you move through your life that There's moments happening to you and those are the things that are worth sharing I just spoke to a guy 2 days ago he's going to be leading a conference a whole bunch of people he's a guy who does this all the time and he met with me because he said I'm out of stories

he said I used all my stories in the last conference so I need new stories and I said how long was the last conference and he said two days said you ran out of all the stories of your life in two days He did right that's the problem often is we just don't have enough stories to tell if we start to recognize that our lives are filled with stories that they're everywhere that we don't need enormous moments in order to carry the day and in stead small moments are actually some of the most powerful moments

we can ever share I would much rather share with you a tiny seemingly insignificant moment that's filled with meaning rather than one of my crazy Stories about the times I've died and been brought back to life those are fine stories but they're not actually my go-to stories cuz they're a lot harder to relate to I'd much rather tell you some tiny seemingly insignificant moment that meant the world to me cuz that is more likely to relate to you so paying attention to that is going to be really important and then just establishing that mindset of

what can I say next in order to keep the person listening to me You know when it's those Stakes we've described it's the idea of suspense which is really powerful and once you understand it it's simple to use it's simply the Strategic exclusion of information alongside the Strategic inclusion of information that's what suspense is it's I'm going to tell you some of it but not all of it it's a metal object rather than saying spoon right crossword puzzles are just suspense devices they just say there's a Felet word for the color blue what is it

and now you have to know and if you don't know what it is it's suspenseful and almost frustrating that you don't know and the beauty of suspense is the more information you provide the greater the suspense increases so if you don't know the felter word for blue and I say oh we figured out the first letter it's an a your suspense increases you've either solved it and now you feel good because the solving of suspense makes an Audience feel good but also the perpetuation of suspense makes an audience feel good because they want you to

keep talking right So eventually we discover the word is azure but some people people figured it out and feel good about themselves and some people heard the word Azure and suddenly felt relief but either way I'm winning so when we're speaking we just have to ask ourselves all the time if the power goes out now will people care twice in my Life I've been in a movie where the power's gone out has ever happened to you no maybe because I live in New England and we have a lot of weather it's like thunder and lightning

so I'm like super worried the power's going to go out right now but yeah well twice in my life it's happened with a movie the first time I was alone watching a movie power goes out manager comes in and says you can come back tomor tomorrow or later today see the movie I never went Back because I didn't care about the characters the power went out and I literally was happy that the story was over the second time I was with my daughter the power went out we lost our minds I was like maybe we

should go to another movie theater let's just go find another movie theater that has power so we can find out the end of this movie that filmmaker had me on the edge of my seat that filmmaker made me want them to Continue talking if we place that as our mindset if the power goes out will anyone care I'm thinking that all the time if the power goes out I want every want to stay right where they are and be waiting for me to get the microphone back on so I can finish my story that's fascinating

when they test movies with focus groups they should almost test halfway through right sort of like a fake power outage and like do people want to come back tomorrow and see the Resolution of the conflict that well they do the they do these registers where like how much you liking the movie and how much you not liking the movie and depending on what kind of movie you're in if they're not liking the movie If I was paying attention I would say well listen you're you're missing one of the four things there's either no Stakes at

this moment we're not worried about anything there's no suspense right we're not feeling a surprise coming or We're not laughing and it's one of those four things I tell stories where sometimes I know there's a boring part I hate it but I'll get to a point in a story and I'll say for 45 seconds I have to explain this thing to them and I don't want to explain this thing thing to them but I have to so I'm either going to make it suspenseful or I'm going to make it funny those are probably the two

go-to strategies that I use one of the two is going to work and Get me through the boring part I still register it as a Storyteller as the boring part because I know that suspense and humor are not really storytelling they're sort of like I'm painting over the problem so I can get back into the story the way I want to but it's when we don't paint over the problem it's when we're speaking and we suddenly know we have to say something that's not going to be terribly engaging those demos right now I'm going to

demo my platform For you and we're all going to see how it works right that's boring it's always boring unless we paint over that problem with humor suspense even things like novelty just do it in a different way do it in a way no one's done before that works too there's a reason why you know Andy Kaufman took the stage with a record player opened it up and played Mighty Mouse and just stood there and people were captivated eventually they got irritated but that was supremely Entertaining for people for quite a while because they had

never seen it before so sometimes it's just I'll find a way to do it that's never been done before and that'll be interesting to but as storytellers we have to be thinking that structure is everything it's as long as you've structured your story properly meaning you've started at the right spot in the beginning and landed in a place of meaning and you haven't filled it with unnecessary nonsense it Almost doesn't matter what the sentences are that you're choosing there's a woman in New York a Storyteller named Dena English is her third language it was Polish

Russian and then English and her English isn't great it's fine but her nouns and verbs don't always agree her vocabulary is limited compared to mine she still kicks my ass sometimes because she's making good decisions once we have a good structure in place and we can perform at an adequate level the senten As we apply to that structure mean a lot less because we're actually saying something of meaning and we're starting in a place of Engagement and we're not filling our stories with unnecessary content you do those three things there's still a million things I

could teach you about storytelling but those things are really 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 happen To you that might be stories might be anecdotes in 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 one of those moments I knew this was a moment I felt

it my son is getting ready to go to Scout camp and part of scout camp which I went to all my life saved my life the Boy Scouts were more Instrumental to me than anything I knew that he was going to have to take a swim test on the first day you got to swim 100 yards he's not the strongest swimmer he actually had a little swimming cruffle a couple weeks ago he swam out to the dock for the first time at the lake where we go and then he couldn't get back he got nervous

cuz he had gotten so tired swimming out to the dock which was only like 40 yards out I knew that going into this scouting swim test He might not pass and if you don't pass it doesn't mean you can't swim but you have limitations placed on you so when I was a kid when I first went to Scout camp they had us do our swim test at 8:30 in the morning right after breakfast on a Monday and I was annoyed I was just that kid that I always wanted to do things on my own terms

to this day I'm sort of that way my wife says it's a double-edged sword I've got like nine pancakes in my belly And I go down in the cold of the morning and I have to jump in the lake and I swim about 50 yards and I'm done I'm like this is stupid so I get out and they go okay you can swim but you didn't swim far farther enough you're a beginner swimmer and I said okay whatever and they said that means you can only swim in this little area here and I was like

oh and they said and you can only take a rowboat and I was like oh forget it I'll do it again I'll I'll Take the test they go great Wednesday that's when the next test is happening so for 2 days I was a beginner swimmer which also meant on Tuesday when we went across the lake to camp on the other side all my friends glided across in a canoe and I was in a stupid rowboat it took me 45 minutes longer to get across the lake everyone made fun of me I hated it I remember

that moment it Sears in my brain so as my son's getting ready to go to Scout camp I'm not sure if he's going To pass the swim test but I tell him that story I say this is what happened to me I say it's okay if you don't pass but what I want you to make sure you do is not the stupid thing I did which is just get out cuz you're annoyed I said just try I said and don't stop swimming because you get tired stop swimming because you physically can't swim anymore and then

it doesn't matter what the results are because you'll feel good about yourself so I pick them up a week Later I don't make it the first question I ask but it is the first question I want to ask I sort of like try to play it cool I wait a while and I go oh hey what about the swim test how' that go he goes oh I passed on the first try and I was like thank goodness like you know my heart is with him and I said how did it go and he said actually

on the second lap I I was going to quit because I was so tired but then I heard you in my head and I remember you said don't quit just Cuz you're tired quit if you can't swim anymore and I heard you say it Dad and I swim the other two laps I'm oddly emotional not oddly emotional I'm appropriately emotional right now because I sent my son off for 7even days and there was a moment when I was in his head it was like I went on that swim test with him and it was cuz

I told him a story mhm and I was vulnerable and I tried to make it as relatable to him as possible and as accessible to him as Possible and it carried the day it's probably going to be a story I tell someday it's a little trickier to tell cuz I don't like to tell stories where I'm the hero necessarily you know that is definitely a Matthew Dix is the greatest father in the world story I'm going to have to therefore temper it with some of the terrible things I've done as a father so that I

can indicate to people that I am not here to place myself on the top of the mountain as the Greatest parent but as a parent who screws up quite often but isn't it beautiful in those moments of Parenthood when you do the right thing and it actually works out and your kid is wise enough to tell you that it worked out like it was just a perfect moment for me so that's probably something I'll tell and I knew right away that it was going to be a story so so you had this little memory and

then you just did this all in real time so walk me through like how You structured it how you thought about the beginning you know what the ending is cuz you know that moment that was the moment you're sort of like recording almost right like that's your note yes so why did we start where we started why did we go on that J journey and obviously like you did this in real time so you would refin this but like walk me through your decisions when you made that story the most important decision to make in

that story is the structure Meaning what's the chronological um structure of that story I used a babc model which is a model that I started in the middle actually of the story I started with my son is going to camp and I know he has to take a swim test and I know it might not be easy for him the real beginning of the story happens in 1983 I'm going down to the Waterfront to take a swim test with nine pancakes in my belly I jump in the pond and think It's stupid and get out

and I end up a beginner swimmer 30 years later I'm with my son that's a terrible way to tell that story can you can feel that already but that's how most people tell it right most people tell it chronologically meaning a b c I started in the middle because for a bunch of reasons one is if I tell you that beginning of the story it already gives away the end you know what's going to happen right right so I don't want that also stories that take Place over the course of 30 years actually that story

takes place over 40 years nobody wants to hear a 40-year story a 40-year story sucks right so what we do is we turn the 40-year story into a week-long story which is my son is getting ready to go to camp and I don't want him to make the same mistake I made so I'm going to tell him a story so I start in the middle at the B the next part of the story the next scene is the a which is 40 years earlier I'm at Camp and I do this thing right so that's I'm

bringing us back in time but I've started Us in sort of the present so it's a story that takes place in the present but I yank the past into the present for a moment and that way the story doesn't feel like it's taken 40 years it feels like it takes a week a guy tells a boy a story and then he waits to see how the story plays out that's the most important thing to figure out in a story like that is where Should I start and it is absolutely not in 1983 it's absolutely in

2024 now things I already know I did poorly when I was telling you that story I didn't start with a scene right I started by teaching you I said my son's getting ready to go to boy scout camp that's a terrible beginning what I should have said was my son's trunk is laid out in the bedroom and he's throwing stuff into it in a way that will never work out for him I'll let him make this mistake for a While and then eventually my wife will come in with packing cubes and she will solve all

these problems right but while he's throwing stuff into this trunk for Scout camp I'm sitting on the edge of the bed and I decide this is the right moment to tell him what he needs to hear and that sentence is important right in the new version of the story because that makes you want to know what it's going to be right so I'm constantly trying to create a sentence that causes You want to hear the next sentence or I open the story by making you laugh right you actually laughed when I said throwing stuff in

in a way that's never going to work out and then packing cubes is a funny thing so all of that is designed to I'm going to make you laugh and then I'm going to get you to wonder what the story is and then I'm going to tell the story and then I'm going to go ahead and have him come back and I really liked the thing I did with you Where I said it was the first thing I wanted to ask ask him but I tried to play it cool you laughed when I said that

and I knew it I knew you were going to laugh because I thought that was the truth and I said it and I knew you were going to laugh because that is the truth of Our Lives which is there's so many times in our lives when we want to just ask the question right away but we know we're not supposed to so we order we order the coffee and we ask how your day Was and we ask how your wife is and we ask how your kids are doing and then eventually when we feel the

moment's right we get to the question that sameness that reality that makes you laugh cuz you think oh I've done that like that is a that is a real thing in life that we do all the time all of that is how I sort of thought about that story the structure was good the opening was not but fixing the opening you can see is pretty easy 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 league and how he turned that into a story for his company and I thought that was really interesting but like how do we find those metaphors 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 uh 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 your F 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 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 it like right away

I went uhhuh 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 marriage you know my wife and I were just not getting along and we had gone to coup's 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 M 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 end up kissing her and somehow today we're the happiest couple in 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 cuz that happens all the damn time I don't understand why people don't see it cuz

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 M 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' go M but for some reason cuz 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 uh 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 we going to do that we're Going to use metaphors we're going to find ways to send lessons and messages to people and 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 there 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 is 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 a 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 how do we teach confidence to get on stage to tell a story to have the ability and and not only to get on stage and tell a story but to be vulnerable it requires a certain degree of confidence in the audience I know yourself I get asked inevitably if I work with someone long

enough by every client if I can help them learn how to be confident I have um more confidence than I need my Wife will tell you you know and if I could teach people how to be confident like a a magic pill I would be the richest person on the planet cuz it is the most powerful thing you can have when you genuinely don't care what other people think most of the time my wife will tell you it's extraordinary and terrible depending on the day and that's very true sometimes when I you know I genuinely

don't care about most of what people think it allows such freedom in Life but also as my wife will say sometimes is disastrous were you born that way or is that something you learned like how do you teach people not to care about what other people think well well um I used to think and I still kind of think most of it happened for me when I was you know around the age of 21 I was in an armed robbery I was managing a McDonald's restaurant after closing three men broke through the glass and came

into the into the restaurant and I Knew I was in a lot of trouble because the police had come they had told me about these guys they had already killed two people so when I heard the glass break I knew what was going on I was sort of managing the safe at the time collecting all the money and for reasons I will never understand I had to deposit of about $7,000 in my hand in a bag when I heard the glass break I took it and I reached to the back of the safe and I

dropped it down the Chute into the box That I did not have a key for you it a little placard on the box said manager does not have key they got to me they put me on the floor they told me to open the box cuz they figured out there's not enough money and the say if I told them I can't and they um they began beating me and eventually one of them put a gun to my head and said I'm going to count back from three and then I'm going to pull the trigger and

I'm going to shoot you if you don't open the box and then They count it back from three and he pulled the trigger on an empty gun and um I kind of fell apart at that moment and I tried to crawl away and they pulled me back and um then the the guy I was afraid of the guy I was afraid of all of them there's one you know that there's just one I'm like that's the one that you don't that's the one I don't want to deal with and that was the one who put

a gun to my head and said this one's loaded and now I'm really going to Blow your head off if you don't open the safe and when he counted back from three again I remember being so astounded because all of the sudden I wasn't afraid and I wasn't angry the only thing I felt was regret for what I had not accomplished yet that I was 20 years old I was on a greasy tile floor at the back of a McDonald's restaurant I had just been homeless like 6 weeks before I was actually awaiting trial for

a crime I did not commit my life was a disaster I Had all these dreams and I knew with absolute certainty that I was going to die that moment and I just felt I haven't done anything and then he pulled the trigger on an empty gun again which you know resulted in a lifetime of PTSD but it's a trigger in my life that suddenly made everything else seem unimportant like nothing seems to matter very much I get yelled at by my fellow teachers some of my teacher friends say Matt doesn't care about anything there's An

a schedule B schedule and C schedule you guys have to figure out who's going to get which schedule and I'll say I don't care about what schedule I get and they get mad at me for not caring but I'm like that's not irrelevant thing and so you know what I tell people is that's sort of a moment where other people's concern over what I looked like or thought or did all just washed away but often times I'm saying listen there's not a gun to my head and I'm not about To die so this is nothing

and sometimes it's not true sometimes it is something so and my wife will like that can't be the level for everything and she's right and sometimes it is something and I have to acknowledge that with all of that said my brother and sister would tell you you that when Matt was a kid he just didn't care what other people thought either and maybe that is in me a little bit I was the oldest of three and then later five growing up in a home that Sort of didn't have very much parental support I was sort

of taking care of myself at a very early age and I suspect that when you're nine and you're trying to find food and take care of your siblings and you know going to your sister's parent teacher conference because you know that the parents aren't going to go to the conference so maybe you can figure out what's going on like I think maybe that helps a little bit too so I it's a the problem with all of That is to say it's I don't know how teachable it is public speaking is very difficult and storytelling is

even more difficult because you have to be vulnerable it's kind of like going off a high dive MH you know when I was growing up there was a 14ot high dive at the Town pool which would absolutely not be allowed today it was very dangerous when you went off it like you always had to hold your hands out or you'd smash your head into the bottom of the pool but I Remember standing there and watch watching kid after kid after kid go off that high dive and everyone was fine they all swam to the surface

jumped out of the water did it again and finally I decided to do it and even when I was up there and I knew everything was going to be fine and I'd seen a million kids do it before me still terrifying and eventually I just had to go off and hit the water and the second time it was still terrifying even though I had just Done it and it didn't kill me I had to do it a whole bunch of times before I finally was able to just go off and not care and I often

think that's what I'm trying to get people to do I can't make the fear go away the first time right you just have to go off the diving board and see that it worked out okay and the beauty of it is if you stand on a stage and you share something vulnerable and I have lots of people who have experienced this you share something vulnerable the Response you get is extraordinary often times when people share something like that they're worried they're going to be judged for the stupidity the shame the Ridiculousness but we just all

walk around with that we're all walking around with something that we are we think we're the only one who does and it's never true but the problem is so few people are willing to speak about their stupidities and their shames and their foolishness is that the people who Are willing to do it are really valued in this world because they make the world easier for everyone else and I've never had never in my life have I ever said something on stage and had someone come to me and say I think less of you because of

it you know I tell a story about pretending to be a charity worker for Ronald McDonald's Children's Charities when I get stuck in New Hampshire one day without any gas I actually go collecting door Todo as a Charity worker to get gas money to get home it's a pretty terrible thing now I'm able to tell that story cuz I was 19 at the time so a long time ago that's okay but I tell that story a lot it's actually in my first book and one of the first times I told that story when I stepped

off the stage it was sort of intermission a woman came up to me and she said aren't you worried about what people are going to think of you for that and I said well what do you think About me she said I actually love you for it and I said do you think you're some kind of unicorn do you think you're the only nice person in the room they all like me better for it just some of of them want to be at the bar some of them are using the bathroom and you came to

talk to me I said but no one in the room is thinking he's a scoundrel because at 19 with absolutely no money in destitute the best solution he found was pretend to collect money for charity Now if IID done it the day before maybe then I don't tell the story and maybe you're right to think I'm an awful person I've never had a situation where I say something like that on stage and have anyone say anything but something kind to me is there a difference between writing a story and telling a story and what are

those differ yeah I had that conversation with someone today uh a client who said can you write my keynote for me and I said no I don't do that That's also boring I don't want to do it I've never written anything down that I actually speak on a stage other than maybe an outline but even then it often is just I'm going to tell this story to make this point and this story to make like almost nothing because I know that what I put on a page is always going to be more grammatically correct than

what I'm saying and so when I help someone with a keynote I don't ever want to see the page they want to send me the they Always want to send me the document I say I don't want to see the document because a speech does not live on the page it lives in life it lives in the air it lives in your voice I want to hear what you say because what I say and what you say are going to be very different things so we're going to say them in different ways so when I'm

writing which I do I mean I have nine books I believe in writing I know that if I was to take something out of my Book and read it out loud it would sound wooden inauthentic it would sound written if you've ever seen David Sedaris perform he reads from his books and his notes he stands behind a lectern and he reads it and you can tell it's read like and that's the goal of that and there's nothing wrong with it but it's not performing and it's written more to make you laugh than it is to

connect with you because it is a little harder to connect To someone as they read you know it's why even politicians who use teleprompters you can't see the teleprompters right they're designed in such a way that you often don't even know they're there when a politician's using one because you want to believe someone's speaking from their heart and their mind which is why I don't memorize anything everything is remembered but not memorized if I was to look at a page or even memorize a page you would know It right away my wife and I when

we attend storytelling shows we'll hear a Storyteller and I'll be like that was a great story and it was fully memorized and I'm sure it was off the page and she'll go yes it was and it just does not make us love the person as much as the imperfect stumbling Storyteller who who also told us a story and did it in that authentic imperfect way the former director of The Moth uh Katherine Burns once told me I was getting ready to Speak in front of 2 200 people I told the story and I made a

mistake in it and no one knew it but me and Catherine cuz she knew the story there was just a place where I forgot something and I had to double back and like slide it back in cuz I knew I I had to have this thing to have the end play out and I sat down and the first thing I said was I screwed that up and she's like don't be ridiculous you and I are the only two people who knew you had to double back She said you did it a great job I said

fine and she said to me it's in the imperfection that the beauty lies because the imperfection tells us you had not memorized that thing you remembered it and then you realized in the midst of the story that you had forgotten something and you went back and caught it and then moved on and that made everyone feel like you were speaking to them and not at them and I always think about that the imperfection Is the beauty go deeper on the speaking to people and not at them speaking at them is the idea that it's almost

irrelevant who's in front of me 90 entrepreneurs at a conference or 2,000 people at the Brooklyn Academy of Music or six people in a library you know and all of those are audiences I speak to someone who has a sort of memorized speech I know authors who have them you know authors who have their speech that they take wherever they go and it never Changes because they've crafted it memorized it and they deliver it that's speaking at an audience meaning nothing's going to change I'm here to say words I'm going to basically say them to

the middle distance and when I'm done I will take a few questions and I will go home right that's at if you're speaking to an audience people know right away that what I'm hearing tonight will not be the same thing he says tomorrow night and it's in those Imperfections that people will detect that stopping a sentence to correct what you just said or circling around or even repeating yourself accidentally and then saying oh I already told you that I'm sorry like that's a beautiful thing because then they know it's for them right people want to

know that when you're speaking it's specifically for them like I've brought this part of me to you and it's never going to be this way again it's going to be the same Stuff right but it's going to be done in a very different way tomorrow and I might leave something out put something new in which I often do but that's the difference between speaking to the middle distance regardless of who's in front of you or looking at people and saying who are they I want did a show at the Brooklyn Historical Society I went there

with a story to tell for a moth story slam and i' had never been there before it was like a one-time deal when I got in and looked at the audience they were basically all blue-haired old ladies and I thought the story I have is not going to be appreciated by these ladies it was a sort of runer story like it just wasn't going to work but because I don't memorize my stories I spent 15 minutes pulling out all the humor that I knew wouldn't land and leaning Into the Heart instead and I won that

slam and it was absolutely not the story I would ever tell the next night no one laughed At the story that night and yet they loved it the next night if I tell it everyone's going to be roaring with laughter and they're going to love it and that's the difference between speaking you know to an audience versus at an audience so if I come to you and I'm an author and I say listen I don't talk I don't do talks uh but I need to write really compelling stories what are the key points that you

would get me to learn or understand the first thing I Would do is especially for an author I'd say let's tell stories so we're not going to read read from our book cuz no one has ever wanted that in the history of the world let's tell stories and let's find interesting stories about how your book got written moments along the way people are really interested in the work that other people do they want to know like how the process works what do you do as a firefighter like do you live in the firehouse how many

days do you Live in the firehouse what's it like people really want to know that stuff and the same thing for an author so if you ever hear me give a book talk it's never about even the content of the book I almost don't tell you anything about what's inside the book I tell you about the journey to write the book and that's the method of let me find half a dozen stories about the writing of the book where the idea came from that better be a story not just a one Sentence it's a story

I I don't know if you've noticed but like I can't answer a question without going on for a long time with a story we're looking for those stories along the way that will lead people to want to open the book because they've taken the journey on the creation of the book and now they're going to want to open it up and find out what's inside they're invested in it almost the same thing with the keynote people for someone who says can you help Me with my keynote we start at the end just like a story

what are you trying to say and when they say I'm trying to say three things I say well you can't you got to say one thing and then we'll say all right that's what you're trying to say let's find a beginning that's the opposite of that the acknowledgement of there was once a time when you didn't know this thing and now you know this thing but then the next step is to find those stories let's find some stories Along the way that led to that understanding because a keynote is typically 60 to 90 minutes we

can't tell a 60 or 90 minute story but we can tell six stor stories over the course of 90 minutes that will support it and be entertaining so that's what I'm helping authors do all the time is find those stories to tell but those are stories that you're telling people I mean like in a book I'm writing a book on XYZ like how do I tell a better story in that Chapter I see yeah yeah what makes a difference when you're writing a story versus you're telling like you can use intonation and pitch and you

can speed things up and you can go faster and slower and you can pull me I can't do that on the page as easy right no one of the things you can feel a little better about with a book is you can actually use more adjectives because people expect them I still don't the first novel I wrote I'll never forget it my Agent called and said we have no idea what your character looks like you have not provided one ounce of description of your protagonist that's crazy and I said I don't know I kind of

visualize them as me you know and she's like that's not actually a thing like I have such a poor visual memory that helps me as a Storyteller I lived in my home for 10 years with my wife we were driving home one day somehow we started talking about the color of houses I told her we lived In a yellow house she said we live in a tan house I said it's yellow like the sun and when we pulled down the street I looked and went oh my God it's yellow 10 years I didn't know the

color of my house so it's not surprising that I I don't love adjectives anyway but on the page we can use a few more so that can be helpful the paragraph in sentence structure often times can replace intonation and pacing what I'm always fighting with my editors on is this Single sentence should be part of the previous paragraph and I Say No it should not because I want it to stand out in the way I would punch the sentence if I was speaking it so if you look at the way I write especially today actually

if you compare my first novel to my latest novel you'll see an enormous difference because this understanding has come to me I can craft the sentences and the paragraphs to look such a way that it can provide some of The humor and some of the suspense that's why I hate closed captions my kids watch everything with closed captions all the time and I can't stand it cuz it the joke away all the time right you see the joke before the person says the joke but that's how sometimes people write which is they don't allow the

the punch to stand alone they lose the punch in the previous paragraph of you know the eight sentences and the punch is the last one and I say take the Punch out and make it its own paragraph it looks weird in the eyes of an editor because it is associated with the paragraph before but I say I'm not interested in that I'm interested in the physical effect that the reader has when they finish the paragraph and then bang there's another sentence there all by itself in a way that I love it's also the reason I

drop subjects all the time in sentences so rather than saying I went to the store especially if I'm Emailing people I'll say went to the store rather than I went to the store cuz I want to punch right away I want to get into the sentence quicker and I want them to feel the action of it so you can start to think about things like that when you're writing to sort of bring some of those things that we get to use on a stage you know onto the page a simple version would be someone would

say use italics and bold and that's fine but like I kind Of feel like that's a 400 yearold trick that's been used for a very long time and I think sometimes it actually doesn't work it feels almost corny to suddenly land on italicized words oras I would much rather be doing the things like I've described so thinking about the way the print lands on a page can really make a difference uh in the way that it's affecting a reader that's really interesting I think also sort of like your topics sentence for a Paragraph pulls people

in or sort of like a lot of people just read the first sentence and so when you put the the final point at the end of a paragraph that's five or six sentences you're losing a certain percentage of your audience along the way because they're they're reading the first sentence and they're like okay I get this paragraph I'll go to the next paragraph right and so they miss that point uh common mistake with storytellers all the time As I teach them you've been taught to write in a boring way which is topic sentence and supporting

details that's a disastrous way to write CU you're right once you present the topic sentence people know you're going to provide some evidence and unless I'm like a nerd who wants to know the efficacy of the evidence I'm moving on so in storytelling we never start with a topic sentence if I want to say I had a really rotten grandmother right I would never Start the sentence with my grandmother was a terrible person and then list the way she was terrible that's how you were taught to write but that's a terrible way to write instead

I would say my grandmother did this to me my grandmother did this to me my grandmother did this to me and then the last sentence might be my grandmother was a terrible person or I might say to myself as the writer or the Storyteller I've made my point I'm going to allow That topic sentence to go unsaid because I think they're going to know it already and audiences love that they want to put things together on their own but you're right when you lead with a topic sentence you've kind of failed most of the time

now there are times when this is appropriate if you're writing for a newspaper right if you're writing scientific things I was going to write a book with a sociologist at one point cuz I've spent 26 years years now primarily In the company of women cuz I'm an elementary school teacher I'm almost always the only man in a room and I actually attended an all women's college so for four years before that I was in a classroom and I was the only man so I wanted to write a book about sort of my Reflections on living

in a world filled with females for all my life and I was going to partner with the sociologist and ultimately the project fell apart because she wanted to write it like a Sociologist which was topic sentence and supporting details and I said no one reads your book and I know why cuz your books are boring because you write in the way that you were sort of taught and I wanted to do the opposite I said I want to lead them to the conclusion and she said no you start with it and then you explain why

it's the conclusion and we just couldn't we couldn't come together because she wanted to write a boring book and I wanted to write an Entertaining book her book would have been respected by like you know academics you know but your book would have been read and my book would have been read and been impactful to the people I actually wanted to be impactful which was not academics but basically men who maybe operate in a female world and are not doing it effectively which is what my goal was 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 Grammer 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 cuz 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 cuz 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

does the thing that's a do and then there's the thing you're cheating on right and then there's the 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 know you want to expl like 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 you know 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 she 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 we 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 cuz that's the things they understand how to fix Right so they're like oh show me that cuz 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 to1 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 cuz

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 2 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 a Stage and shares a story they're essentially saying here's my Humanity what do you think of it when a kid write 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 right there you're just like I'm you're stabbing the person they are you need a capital letter yeah it makes them want to never go back to it again and again The goal for every teacher or every parent is to get kids excited about writing and worry less about the the mechanics of writing you know that comes and it's relevant but not important it's been a fascinating conversation thank you for your time we always end

on the same question which is a personal question uh what is success for you 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 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 6 months or a year and I know he wants to do it actually my production manager wants the same thing and I resist it all

the time cuz I feel like if you've planned out 6 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 as 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 so avoiding this moment that we're in right now making sure that everything that's going on in my life right now is not what's happening 6 months from now that'll be perceived as success for me