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.
Dicks: Storytelling is about decision-making, not vocabulary or language facility
“Storytelling is not about facility with the language or your vocabulary. It's all about decision making. That's all it is. Storytellers are people who think before they speak. They make strategical, tactical decisions before they speak.”
Matthew Dicks: 98% of stage nervousness occurs before speaking starts
“98% of your nervousness is actually before you begin speaking. Once you begin speaking, almost all of your nervousness falls away.”
Matthew Dicks: Every story should open with location and immediate action
“So two things should start every story you ever tell for the rest of your life. So you start with location. Where are you? Location activates imagination, right? If I say I'm standing in the kitchen, You've already automatically applied a thousand adjectives t…”
Dicks Teaches Storytelling Techniques to the FBI Hostage Negotiation Unit
“The FBI I work with these days, helping their hostage negotiation unit tell better stories.”
Dicks Spends 75% of Prep Time Crafting a Story's Opening Lines
“I spend 75% of my time deciding on where to begin and what that first few lines are going to be”
Suspense Relies on the Strategic Inclusion and Exclusion of Information
“Suspense is the strategic inclusion of information alongside the strategic Exclusion of information.”
'Speaking Through Adjacency' Translates Personal Stories Into Business Concepts
“One of the ways that works really well is what I call speaking through adjacency, meaning we're going to use a personal story, but we're going to use it in order to relate a business concept to it.”
Steve Jobs Mastered Four Key Storytelling Tactics in One Minute
“If you watch Steve Jobs' 2007 iPhone launch, he uses steak, suspense, surprise, and humor. All four of them in the 1:06 minutes of the presentation. He does it masterfully and brilliantly. He's not really telling a story. He's bringing out a new product for a …”
Steve Jobs Practiced for Months and Still Misstated His Second Sentence
“Jobs famously practiced for months on that performance. The crazy thing about it is he messes up on the second sentence. He actually speaks the fourth sentence second, cuts himself off, fixes it, and then goes back.”
Stories Designed for Self-Praise Make Audiences Dislike the Speaker
“The pet peeve is someone gets on stage because they want to say nice things about themselves and they couch it within a story. Nobody wants that. I don't even think your mother wants that. It's weird because they want us to like them more, but what they've don…”
Matthew Dicks carries five backup anecdotes to re-engage drifting audiences
“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.”
Dicks: Storytelling transforms ordinary objects and products into meaningful symbols
“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…”
Dicks: Reducing speaking pace before climaxes amplifies emotional impact
“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.”
Dicks: Humor alters brain chemistry to boost perceived intelligence and receptiveness
“Humor changes brain chemistry in really meaningful ways. You know, causes you to 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 che…”
Dicks: Humor following difficult story beats provides relief and signals safety
“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.”
Dicks: Comic characters with less detail evoke stronger audience connection
“They found that when you compare comic book characters, the comic book characters that have less visual detail are the ones people feel more connected to.”
Dicks: Compelling trailers establish relatable stakes without revealing resolutions
“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 so…”
Dicks: Early Facebook retention hinged on acquiring seven friends in ten days
“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…”
Matthew Dicks: Planning Six Months Ahead Prevents Finding New Opportunities
“And I resist it all the time. Cause I feel like if you've planned out six months, we don't have the opportunity for me to stumble upon the new thing that I want to stumble upon.”
Dicks: Starting in Present Tense Enables Backstory in the Past Tense
“By opening with the present tense, I get to tell backstory in the past tense, and that just aids in comprehension.”
Dicks: Tension Between Future and Past Keeps Audiences Engaged
“And that tension between what's going to happen and what has happened, that causes an audience to be wrapped in a story constantly.”
Dicks: Leaders should build a story vault rather than use one-off fixes
“If you're building bricks, you're a storyteller that's capturing stories and building bricks that you can eventually deploy into business. If you're a band-aid person, which is fine, that happens. I have a problem, Matt, and I need a story to solve it. Essenti…”
Dicks: Listing two expected items then one unexpected item creates humor
“Essentially, it's three things. Two of them are expected, and one is unexpected, and the unexpected one will be funny.”
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 → |