Matthew Dicks
Storyteller & Author, Storyworthy. On 4 shows, 4 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
authorentertainerother@MatthewDicks ↗LinkedIn ↗matthewdicks.com ↗Wikipedia ↗
Matthew Dicks is a multi-time Moth GrandSLAM champion and bestselling author of books including Storyworthy and Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend. A longtime educator, he coaches business leaders and trains corporate teams on narrative structure and public speaking.
4shows
4appearances
126statements
4resolved
2supported
0contradicted
50%fully supported
12said about them ↓ Everything Matthew Dicks said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Audiences Automatically Assume Funny Storytellers Are Highly Intelligent
“Weirdly, we believe that funny people are smart. It's automatic. An idiot can tell great jokes and you'll assume he's the smartest guy in the world when he's still actually an idiot. But the ability to make someone laugh is perceived to be so challenging and d…”
Audiences Engage With Stories of Personal Failure, Not Success
“I discovered that by telling stories about my stupidity, People paid a lot of attention to me. When I told stories about my success, nobody cared.”
Nostalgia Is the Easiest and Safest Humor Strategy in Business
“The easiest one to use, especially in business, is nostalgia. People almost always laugh when you remind them about how the past once was. In business, this is really helpful, because when I'm working with business people, the last thing they want to do is to …”
Effective Stories Rely on 'But' and 'Therefore' Transitions, Not Chronology
“What we want to do when we're telling a story is we want a story to feel the heartbeat monitors up and down. That's what I'm looking for in my story is sort of an up and down path, which means that I'm constantly trying to, but, or therefore through my story, …”
Storytellers Should Ban the Word 'Suddenly' to Preserve Genuine Surprise
“A word like suddenly, we should never use that word. I could have said I turn and suddenly I see Eric running across the kitchen, but suddenly is a word that never makes anything feel suddenly. It only signals that a surprise is about to happen. If I say I loo…”
Promising 'the Funniest Story Ever' Ruins the Comedic Payoff for Listeners
“I guarantee if you use that phrase, it will 100% not be the funniest story I've ever heard. You've just ruined any chance of humor, because now I can see the humor coming. I know you're about to say something funny.”
Every Story Must Conclude With a Realization or Personal Transformation
“The end of every story is always a realization or transformation of some kind. It is seeing the world in a new way. It is the recognition that I once was one person, but now I'm another. I once thought one thing, now I think another. I once felt one thing, now…”
A Story's Opening and Ending Must Be in Direct Opposition
“What you essentially need is an effective beginning and an ending that actually contains meaning. And the two of those are in opposition to each other. It's what I call the frame of the story. The beginning and the end have to be deliberately and strategically…”
Business Communicators Must Treat Dry Presentations as Entertaining Performances
“A performance requires preparation. It's an acknowledgement that there's an audience and it's an acknowledgement that regardless of what you're doing, you should be entertaining. Regardless of what you're doing, no matter how dry it is, you should be entertain…”
The Best Way to Practice Talks Is Passively Listening to Recordings
“The best way is you make a recording of the story you want to tell, and then you begin listening to it.
If you think about all the songs, you know, in your life, you probably didn't try to learn the lyrics to most songs.
You listened to the song long enough th…”
Verbatim Memorization Creates a Rigid Sentence Chain That Breaks Easily
“When you memorize the whole story, what happens is you create a chain of sentences.
And if you forget one of those sentences, the chain breaks and then you're trapped.”
Positive Feedback Should Build Consistency, Not Make People Feel Good
“I'm trying to increase frequency and consistency by giving you positive feedback. I'm not here to make you feel good. I'm here to make you better. That's the purpose of every bit of positive feedback I ever give is to make you aware of what you're doing well s…”
Opening With Location and Action Triggers an Evolutionary Survival Response
“As you start with location and action, the brain gets flooded with chemicals that essentially say, shut the hell up. This might keep us alive.”
Public Stories Must Pass the 'Dinner Test' of Informal Conversation
“I have something called the dinner test, which is the story that I tell you, the story I told you today should be a close cousin to the story I would have told you if we were having dinner together.”
Matthew Dicks: A Real Story Must Center on Change Over Time
“So a story is about change over time. Usually, it's sort of a realization. Like, I used to think one thing, and now I think another thing. That's most stories. Sometimes they're transformational, meaning I once was one kind of person, and then some stuff happe…”
Matthew Dicks: Memorable Communicators Assume Audiences Do Not Care by Default
“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…”
Dicks: Stories Require Personal Change to Linger While Anecdotes Fade
“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 …”
Dicks: Stories Should Trigger Emotional Resonance Over Shared Circumstance
“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.”
Matthew Dicks: Stakes, Suspense, Surprise, and Humor Drive Audience Interest
“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.”
Dicks: Revealing a plan in advance creates tension when it fails
“A backpack works especially well when a plan is not going to go well. You know, the Ocean's 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 goi…”
Dicks: Storytellers should maximize delay when audience anticipation peaks
“So an hourglass is 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.”
Dicks: Corporate earnings guidance functions as narrative suspense mechanism
“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…”
Dicks: Laughs in the first 60 seconds relieve audience anxiety
“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 gonna do a good job. Many, many times I have sat in an au…”
The other half of the tape: Matthew Dicks's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 11 times in 5 episodes across the shows. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Jonathan Becker 4Lane Shackleton 3Shane Parrish 2Ted Seides 1Lenny Rachitsky 1
Statements about Matthew Dicks, by other people (1)
Shackleton: Great stories are built around a five-second moment of transformation
“The nugget of a great story is like five seconds of transformation. So if you just orient like everything else around that, like moment of trans, you know, transformation, then you end up usually telling a reasonably good story.”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
Lenny's Podcast 8
the Knowledge Project 2
Capital Allocators 1
2025 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2024 1 mention in 1 episode
2023 7 mentions in 2 episodes 4 per episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Matthew's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KNOWLEDGE PROJECTLEDGER | Storyteller & Author, Storyworthy | 1 | 48 | 67% 2/3 | full record on the Knowledge Project → |
| LENNY'S PODCASTLEDGER | Storyteller & Author, Storyworthy | 1 | 38 | — | full record on Lenny's Podcast → |
| CAPITAL ALLOCATORSLEDGER | Storyteller & Author, Storyworthy | 1 | 29 | 0% 0/1 | full record on Capital Allocators → |
 PRODUCT MARKET FITLEDGER | Storyteller & Author, Storyworthy | 1 | 11 | — | full record on A Product Market Fit Show → |