The Exchanges

Q best software I've seen for allocators to find and track managers, and I've seen a lot of them. If you haven't seen OWL, check them out at oldwell-labs.com slash ted, that's O-L-D-W-E-L-L hyphen labs.com slash ted, and trust me, it'll be worth a look. All right, Matt, a couple of closing questions, and we'll wrap up. What's the one thing most people don't know about you that you find interesting?

A I think it's interesting I had a raccoon as a pet as a kid. I've never told that story officially. I had a raccoon as a pet as a kid, and that raccoon loved me, really loved me, and didn't love anyone else. I know it sounds crazy to care a lot about a raccoon that's definitely dead. I'm a person who doesn't know his father very well. My father left when I was seven and has been In, but almost always out of my life. Occasionally making a slight appearance. But my father was a horse guy. A cowboy in every sense. He was the guy who would break the horse that couldn't be broken. I grew up on a horse farm until my parents got divorced. He was known as being a horse whisperer. He wasn't with me when I had the raccoon, but the raccoon loved me in a way it did not love the rest of the family. We have cats now. The cats love me in a way that they don't love other family members, and it's stretching it out of hunger and desperation, but I think about that raccoon a lot and think like maybe that's the thing that my father had that I had, that somehow we look at animals and we know what they need and what they want and what they see in us. As a boy who never knew his father and as a man who wants to know his father and can't seem to Break through in order to do it. I'm always hungry for anything that I can find to relate to my father. So that raccoon is not a story I've told, but it is a t…

AI assessment note: “I think it's interesting I had a raccoon as a pet as a kid.”

Q How did you go about breaking down how you construct a story that led to Storyworthy?

A I started teaching people. I started telling stories first at the Moth, had lots of success. Then my wife and I launched Speak Up in Connecticut, a curated storytelling show that we do quite often. People would watch me tell these stories, and then eventually people said, will you teach us how to do this? I thought at first, no. I teach kids all day. I don't want to teach adults in the evening. Eventually enough of them asked that I said, I'm going to do one workshop and never again. 10 people paid me to teach them storytelling. We did it in the Newington Public Library. I got a room for six weeks. On the first night, I had them all tell me a story. All their stories were terrible. Not terrible in terms of the content, but terrible in terms of structure and all the things that stories need. I came home and I said to Alicia, I don't understand why people can't tell stories. What's wrong with them? Why would you tell it that way? And she said, I don't know. Maybe you should teach them because you do it and they don't, and maybe not be a jerk about it. She was right. I started thinking about what they were doing wrong and what I was doing right. I essentially had to take my process and break it down for them. And because thankfully I'm an elementary school teacher for the last 27 years, I happen to have the skill of taking large complex processes and breaking them down into small,…

AI assessment note: “I essentially had to take my process and break it down for them.”

Q Let's dive into this story that you just told. Right before you started, you said, oh boy, that first line really matters. How do you decide where to start a story?

A It's probably the most important decision a storyteller makes. I spend 75% of my time deciding on where to begin and what that first few lines are going to be, so it's a good question. There's different chronological structures to stories. If I'm telling you a story that takes place over a short period of time, an hour, a day, even maybe a week, I'm probably going to tell it to you in chronological order. Start at the beginning, end at the end. That's how more than half of the stories I tell get told. And that makes sense to people. Time flows in one direction. It's the easiest way to tell a story. That story that I just told you though, has a moment that takes place in 2008. But it also has a moment that takes place literally a week ago with John Paul. I could tell you that story chronologically, but that would not be the right way to tell that story because essentially what it would be is two stories at that point. It would be a story that happens in a Vermont lake house. And then a whole bunch of time goes by where we don't really know what happened. Mystery time. And then I have a moment with a boy in front of my classroom. That's a disjointed way of telling that story. So instead what I do is I say, let me try B A B C, which means I'll start somewhere in the middle. And then at some point I'll work my way back to the past to pick up anything I need to pick up. And then I'l…

AI assessment note: “I'll start somewhere in the middle. And then at some point I'll work my way back”

Q How do you think about the balance of memorization versus the comfort of having a conversation speaking?

A What we say is you want to remember your talk, but not memorize your talk. The story that I just told you, I actually crafted that story about two hours before I performed it on stage. I had no time to memorize it. I told the first version of that story in here to my production manager, Kaya. I got in the car with a couple of buddies. We drove to Boston. They said, what's your story? And I said, I got to work it out a little bit in the car with you guys. I just told that the Kaya was a little messed up. So I told the second version to the guys in the car. I told the third version to myself as we were walking from the parking lot into the venue. And on the fourth time I told it on stage. So it was definitely not memorized. The version I just told you sounds different than the one I told on stage two nights ago. They're the same story though. They have the same beats, the same moments, but the sentences are going to be different. That's what you want to get to. Now, admittedly, I memorized the first sentence of the story because you want to start out great. I tried to memorize the end a little bit when I say never in the universe was there a student sitting in a class who wants it. I knew I had to get that sentence perfect. So I worked it and worked it and worked it while I was sitting in my seat, waiting for my turn. I was going over that sentence, trying to create a groove. So …

AI assessment note: “What we say is you want to remember your talk, but not memorize your talk.”

Q So I'd love to take a step back before we dive through the art of storytelling and get a little bit of your story. How did you find yourself after all these years in the situation where you're creating such incredible stories?

A In July of 2011, on a whim and encouragement from my friends, I went to The Moth, this non-profit in New York City. True stories told live on stage without notes. I went there because my friend said, you'll be great at this. You've had the worst life of anyone we've ever known. So go and tell stories at The Moth. I went there with the intention of telling one story and never again, a bucket list item that I would check off and be done. I dropped my name in the hat. As soon as I dropped my name in, I prayed that my name would not be chosen. I was in a room full of hipsters with side-eye and man buns, and I thought, why am I here? This is not what I do. I'm a novelist and a writer. I don't want to be on that stage. We got through nine names that night without my name being called, and they only call 10. My mind was on I-ninety-five. I was already driving home when the 10th name came out, and it was mine. I sat still for a minute. Because it occurred to me, no one in this room knows who I am. There's 500 people here, but nobody knows me. So if I sit quietly and still, they'll eventually just give up on me and pull another name. But my wife was with me, Alicia. And so she kicks me under the table and she says, that's your name. And I said, I know, I know my name. I don't want to do this. She said, get up there and do it. So I got on that stage. I hated every minute of that evening …

AI assessment note: “In July of 2011, on a whim and encouragement from my friends, I went”

Q How do you describe the homework for life as you do it?

A We have an app. You can do it lots of ways, but essentially for me, it started with a spreadsheet. I was worried that I was running out of stories to tell. I had started with a big list when I first decided to become a storyteller. As I saw the list get shorter and shorter, I realized I'm going to run out of stories. And I didn't want to be one of those guys who just repeat stories over and over again. They exist in the world. I just wanted always something fresh. I want to be able to sit across from you and say, hey, here's a brand new story I just told Tuesday night. Now we're together. I'm going to tell it to you. I wanted to be that guy. Because I'm an elementary school teacher, I gave myself homework. It's my way of solving problems. I just said, I'm going to look at every day at the end of the day and ask myself if I had to tell a story from something that happened on this day, what would it be? Really the prompt used to be if someone kidnapped Alicia and Clara and Charlie, and they wouldn't give them back unless I took a stage. And told a story about something that happened today. What would that story be? I wrote it down. Not the whole story. Cause that's a chore. That's writing. That's hard for people. But on my spreadsheet, there's a date. I stretched the B column across the screen and it's in that B column that I allow myself the room to write. So it's not much, it's…

AI assessment note: “on my spreadsheet, there's a date. I stretched the B column across the screen”

Q What are some of the other important speech patterns that you try to get people to not use?

A I try to avoid words that don't help us in any way. 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 look outside and suddenly I've now spoiled the opportunity for surprise because I've indicated a surprise is here. What we should instead say is I turn and I see a ten-year-old boy running across the kitchen. That's surprising. I see my pregnant wife running in a terrycloth robe. That's surprising. We load in these words that are purposeless, like suddenly or little did I know. We never move through our lives going little did I know because we can't see the future. And yet those phrases appear in stories all the time. So we have to get rid of those. We have to get rid of things like, guess what? Someone comes up to you and says, guess what? My answer is always no, thank you. I'm trying to train people that that meaningless phrase Is a horrendous way to begin any conversation. What it really is, it's an indication that I'm facing a human being who doesn't know how to tell stories well and can't get the attention of his audience or her audience. So they load in a phrase like, guess what? Or what John Paul said, you're not going to believe what happened at recess today. Rather …

AI assessment note: “We load in these words that are purposeless, like suddenly or little did I know.”

Q wealth management firms moving to Ridgeline gain a decided advantage. That's why customers call it miraculous, game-changing, and an awakening. If that's not how you would describe your investment management tech, request a demo at ridgeline.ai. And now, back to the show. When you take it from the words to the aspects of the story, how do you decide what details to keep in and what details to take out?

A If the detail does not serve the story, if it does not help me get to the end, if it does not bring something to clarity or entertain, then it goes away. Phil is sitting next to me in that Adirondack chair. I don't tell you how old he is. I don't tell you what he looks like. I don't tell you his race. Don't tell you his religion. One thing is important about Phil in that story, and it is that he is more offensive than I am. That was actually crafted in that story because when I went and told it in Boston at the Moth, the theme was manners. I was demonstrating how Eric threw that door open and had bad manners. And in the manners version of the story, the one I was on stage that night, I attached Phil's bad manners to his son's bad manners, and I combined them because I had to match a theme. When I tell that story again someday, is Phil still going to be in the story described in that way? Probably not. I may even remove Phil from the story because he's not actually relevant. And I'm always removing people who don't serve. If I'm sitting in that Adirondack chair and I hear a scream, do I need Phil standing next to me? Probably not. So Phil's probably going to disappear in the best version of the story. The one that doesn't try to match a theme. I'm only telling you details that are relevant to the story or ones that help the story to be more entertaining. My wife is in a terry cl…

AI assessment note: “If the detail does not serve the story... then it goes away.”

Q I'd love to tap into your ability to teach this. We could start with the story you just tell. Where did the ideas come from that lead you to construct a story?

A My stories come from my daily life, and oftentimes the ones I end up telling are the ones that happened yesterday, because I find those really interesting. They come from either a process I call homework for life, where I'm examining my day, extracting stories from the day, holding onto my day in meaningful ways, and then telling those stories. Then also through lots of exercises I've created over time that allow me to probe my life, look back on time and pull stories from the past that we've left behind. The tragedy of all of our lives. We live throwing everything that we've ever done, our memories away. The worst game I play with people is I'll sit down with a group of people and say, let's think back onto 2018. Not that long ago. Take a pen and a paper, write down everything you can remember from 2018. I'll give you 15 minutes. And so they go. And some people can't remember a single thing. If you're good, you get 10 items. Then I say, okay, take out your phones. Now you can use your calendar. I'll give you another 15 minutes. Go through your calendar and add to the list. At the end of that time, people will get, if they're really good, 50 items. 50 from a full year. So when we talk about how time flies, it doesn't actually fly. That's just nonsense. What happens is it just gets forgotten. So we look at a full year, 365 days, and we reduce it to 50 days or 50 moments or 20 mo…

AI assessment note: “My stories come from my daily life, and oftentimes the ones I end up telling”

Q How do you think about landing the plane when you construct it? Where does it end?

A Well, I start at the end before I begin saying anything. I know what my ending is first. If you don't, you're like getting in a car and you don't have a destination. You will make bad choices. In fact, you get in the car and I say, go to Maine. You don't have a map. You're going to make some bad turns along the way. You're just not going to know where to go. That's what most people do. They start at the beginning weirdly, and then they think they're going to get to the end in an efficient way, but instead they're going to throw in the kitchen sink along the way and just take detours that don't even make sense. The end is what I'm thinking about always. At the end of that story, what I want to say is a little boy told me that something happened that I wouldn't believe. I didn't think it was likely, but I was hoping it was true. That's what I want to get to. That's the whole purpose of that story is to say there are moments of singularity in your life where you know you do something that will never happen again and has never happened before, and they're pretty amazing. I had one once, and now I'm hoping it might happen again. That's all I want to say. Once I have the ending in mind, I always say the typical pattern is you saw something, Which made you think something, which made you feel something. And that will almost always work, because the end of every story is always a reali…

AI assessment note: “I start at the end before I begin saying anything. I know what my ending is”

Q If you're giving the Cliff Notes version, if someone just wants to get 80% of the way there, what are the most important things they need to take away?

A I often say I can get you 80% of the way there pretty quick. Tell the, the B minus version of a story, which is better than most stories. Most stories are D minuses, so if you get to B minus, you're actually going to be recognized as a very good storyteller. 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 chosen and chosen well. The beginning needs to use strategies that leverage brain chemistry and get people's attention. Right there, you're probably better than most people because that means you're actually going to say something of meaning because you've started at the end. You're going to start at a place that garners attention and And really causes people to want to hear you. And if you just do that, that's pretty great. If then you say to yourself, to get from A, the beginning, to B, the end, I need to be entertaining. Let me at least attempt to leverage some strategies. I'm going to say some of the thing, but not all of the thing right away. I'm going to use Matt's strategy of suspense. It's pretty easy. So if you're like, I'm going to get from A to B and I'm going to be funny twice, And I'm going to use suspense once, and I'm going to load a stake into the begi…

AI assessment note: “What you essentially need is an effective beginning and an ending that actually contains meaning.”

Q What are some of the worst things that you've seen business executives do at the beginning of your trying to teach them how to do this?

A I get together with a company and they say, we have a new product, Matt, that we want to launch. And then they open PowerPoint and they open a slide and they say, what should we start with? And I say, why are we looking at PowerPoint? It's weird that they think that stories begin with slides. Stories don't begin on slides. Stories begin with the words that we're going to speak or the words that are going to be on the page or some combination of the two. Slides should be used to support a story only when necessary. They should not be the story. And yet every time I meet with a company, they open the slides, they have a blank first slide and they go, where should we start? And I say, close it. I say, if you need slides, you're not telling a story. You're just a slide monkey. You're just building slides that people are going to shove around in weird orders. You're not going to tell a story anymore. I said, what we begin with is we're just going to talk. We're going to talk about what the actual story is. Just like me telling, You, the story I just told you, I start at the end. We're going to start at the end. What are we trying to tell our customers? What's the final message that we want to land with customers? Let's begin at the end. Let's start the beginning as the opposite of the end. And then let's work our way through it in such a way that it makes sense, that it contains som…

AI assessment note: “they open PowerPoint and they open a slide and they say, what should we start with?”

Q So before we get close to wrapping, I have to ask on the off chance that it mattered. What did JP say?

A It's pretty funny. He said, this kid was swinging really high and then jumped off the swing so high and went flying through the air. And I said to JP, JP, I saw a kid fly off those swings once so high that I was calling nine one one before he hit the ground, because when he hit the ground, he broke his leg. So was the boy that you saw Taken away on an ambulance today? And JP said, no. And I said, and I've seen it before, buddy. So sadly, it was not a singular moment, nor was, by the way, the time the kid broke his leg, because that has probably happened a 100,000 times over the course of history.

AI assessment note: “He said, this kid was swinging really high and then jumped off the swing”

Q So you've led me with suspense. What are three or four of your favorite humor strategies?

A 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 make a joke that doesn't work. They feel really stupid. There are some humor strategies that you can use that even if they don't make people laugh, it's almost like you're being informative anyway. I'm demonstrating my wisdom of the past, and if it happens to make you laugh because it's funny, that works out great. If I tell you that when I was a kid and had an allergic reaction, it actually ends up being an anaphylactic reaction and it's terrible. I die and get brought back to life. But I don't know what's happening to me because in the 19 eighties, no one was allergic to anything. We all ate gluten packed bread baked in asbestos factories by men who were smoking cigarettes. That's all nostalgia. My favorite example of this was I was working with one of these companies that helps you find employees. I wanted them to open their pitch with the idea that in 1986, if you wanted a job, the way you found a job was you sat on your front porch and around three 30 in the afternoon, a 16 year old boy rode by on his bike and threw the internet at you. The internet at the time was a newspaper. On the back page of that newspaper was a…

AI assessment note: “The easiest one to use, especially in business, is nostalgia.”

Q You mentioned that once you learn how to unlock humor, you can use it wherever you want. How do you unlock humor?

A I learned how to be funny as a kid. 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. I would always lean into the failure, and then I became self-deprecating. So I instinctually absorbed humor strategies that I was then able to deploy throughout my life. But then people came along and said, Matt, I want you to teach me how to be funny. I began looking at my stories and jokes that I tell and breaking them down into strategies. Content is different, but the strategy is the same. It's a different joke, but it's the same math that leads to the joke. I currently have a list of 27 humor strategies that I can teach people. My top 10, you can use them all the damn time and be funny. It doesn't mean you become funny in life necessarily. You might if you practice enough, but what it affords you is the opportunity to put humor into stories that you're preparing ahead of time.

AI assessment note: “I began looking at my stories and jokes that I tell and breaking them down”