Matthew Dicks
Storyteller & Author, Storyworthy · 1 appearance on the record.
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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.
38statements → 1claims → 0claims resolved → 4.13/5average certainty → 2.05/5average debate potential → ≈4.0/5argument clarity, estimated → 9said about them ↓
1 not checkable as stated how the 1 claim stands · each chip opens the sources
1 assertion · 1 opinion · 35 insights · 1 disclosure · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertion are the 1 claim: statements the public record can support or contradict. 0 are resolved, and 1 names no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.
The record, in short
What the tape says about how Matthew argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.
How they sound: not measured why? →
We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Matthew Dicks on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.
Everything Matthew Dicks said on Lenny's Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →
Dicks: Married men in business should disclose marriage to project safety
“If you're married, you should always make it clear to people you're married, especially if you're a man, because if you're a man and you're married, you're safer in the world because men are inherently just dangerous human beings.”
Dicks: The original Star Wars is fundamentally a movie about religion
“You know, if you think about a movie like Star Wars, the first Star Wars that came out, right, that is a movie essentially about religion, which people sort of don't always see, but it is true.”
Matthew Dicks: Shortest version of every story is the best version
“The shortest version of every story is the best version of every story.”
Dicks: Biotech scientist telling pure story won more conference leads than peers
“He got more leads at the conference than the other scientists combined. All the other four scientists combined.”
Dicks: Being entertaining is the most important requirement in any communication
“Ultimately, no matter what you're doing, whether I am teaching a fifth grader how to behave better, or presenting a new product for a large company, or helping someone deliver in all hands, the first and most important thing you have to be is entertaining. You…”
Matthew Dicks: Speakers should avoid rote memorization of presentations
“If you can avoid memorizing, that'll save you. A ton of suffering because memorizers, they're the most tortured souls in the world. So avoid that if all possible. Remember your talk without memorizing your talk.”
Dicks: Every compelling story centers on a five-second moment of transformation
“Essentially every story is about a singular moment. I call it five seconds. It can be 1:02. Honestly, it's a moment of either transformation, meaning sort of, I'm telling you a story about how I once used to be one kind of person and now I'm a new kind of pers…”
Dicks: Stories resonate because audiences universally relate to finding belief
“And that's why a story like that resonates with us in a way that another story might not, because we all understand what it's like to not believe in something, And then find belief in something, whether that is religious belief, or I used to think cheeseburger…”
Dicks: Compelling stories begin and end in opposition
“Every story should be essentially a beginning and an end in opposition to each other, and you should start at the end. That guarantees that you have something important to say, rather than what most people do, which is they simply report on their lives. They j…”
Dicks: Stories in formal pitches should sound like natural dinner conversations
“When you're telling a story in a formal way, if you're performing on a stage or delivering a keynote, or even delivering sort of a pitch to entrepreneurs or a sales pitch, essentially the story that you're telling should be very closely related to the story yo…”
Dicks: Storytellers should never open a story with unattributed dialogue
“Weird things that people do should not be done, like opening a story with unattributed dialogue. You know, so you're standing on stage and you open your story with, Jim, it's time to come in for dinner, my wife said. Like, that's just weird. We don't talk like…”
Dicks: Stories Must Be About the Speaker to Convey True Vulnerability
“If you're telling a story about someone else, essentially you might as well be telling fiction because that person's not in the room and to the audience, they don't really exist unless they're, you know, if they can't see them, that person is just another huma…”
Dicks: Stories should always begin as close to the end as possible
“Starting as close to the end of a story is always the best place to begin.”
Dicks: Audiences stop listening when not wondering what comes next
“If your audience isn't wondering what you're about to say, They're no longer listening to you.”
Dicks: Business leaders mistakenly assume job titles grant audience attention
“When I work with people in business, they are constantly under this misconception that people want to hear what they have to say. You know, some vice president of marketing thinks that because they're a vice president of marketing and everyone is sitting in a …”
Dicks assumes nobody in the audience wants to hear him speak
“I assume all the time, 100% of the time, that no one wants to hear anything I have to say.”
Dicks: The best story surprises feel inevitable yet completely unexpected
“You build information into the audience's mind that will allow the surprise to land in an inevitable and yet surprising way. That is the best surprise you can offer someone.”
Dicks: Storytellers should spread stakes across the first half, not front-load them
“So often people load the front end of a story with all of the stakes because they're worried that the audience will not pay attention to them. So they think I'm going to throw everything right in front and that'll hold an audience for the rest of the story. An…”
Dicks: Most Business Communication Is Bland Because Workers Fear Standing Out
“Most communication in business is round, white, and flavorless, right? Intentionally so, because a lot of people are afraid to stand out.”
Dicks: Communicators Who Rely on Data Without Storytelling Are Inevitably Forgotten
“Our minds are not designed to remember a pie chart. Or facts, or statistics, or, you know, platitudes, or ideas that are not attached to imagery. So the risk you take if you're not telling stories is that you will be forgotten. 100% you will be forgotten.”
Dicks: Answering 'how are you doing' with 'great' is a wasted opportunity
“You know, if someone asks you, how are you doing today? If you say I'm doing great, you've just really screwed it up. That's the stupidest answer you can offer, right?”
Dicks: Corporate leaders want to have been funny without taking humor risks
“Everyone wants to be funny. Every person I've ever met who I've worked with every business person in some way wanted to be funny, but that's really not actually what they want. They want to have been funny. Because being funny means you must take a risk.”
Dicks: Speakers must use stakes, surprise, suspense, or humor to keep attention
“It's stakes, it's surprise, it's suspense, and it's humor. Those are the ways that you're going to hold people and keep them listening, and if you're not engaged in one of those four things while you're speaking, people are not listening to you anymore.”
Dicks: Using nostalgia demonstrates company expertise and reliably adds humor
“It's relevant to talk about the past as a company to demonstrate your expertise in your field. To understand that we know the market backwards and forwards for the last 50 years. We have expertise, and we can demonstrate it by telling a story, right? So that's…”
The other half of the tape: Matthew Dicks's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 8 times in 3 episodes on Lenny's Podcast. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Jonathan Becker 4Lane Shackleton 3Lenny 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
2024 1 mention in 1 episode
2023 7 mentions in 2 episodes 4 per episode
Appearances (1)
| Episode | Date | Speaking time |
|---|---|---|
| How to tell better stories | Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy) | Dec 15, 2023 | 1h 18m |