207: Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks

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1. 00:00:00 So we don't have a lot of follow-up this week.
2. 00:00:03 Actually, we have no follow-up this week.
3. 00:00:07 I was going to say, by a lot, you mean none.
4. 00:00:08 We have zero follow-up.
5. 00:00:11 Yes, that is correct.
6. 00:00:12 There is no follow-up.
7. 00:00:15 Kind of knew that when we were getting into the last book.
8. 00:00:18 But I have a, I have a question for you.
9. 00:00:21 Yeah, I knew you were going to be here.
10. 00:00:23 I was, yes, you did.
11. 00:00:24 You did know I was going to do this.
12. 00:00:27 So you launched Life HQ officially, October 1st, which was yesterday,
13. 00:00:31 because today's October 2nd.
14. 00:00:34 I want to know about it.
15. 00:00:34 I want to hear about it.
16. 00:00:35 Like, what, what has your last couple of weeks been like?
17. 00:00:38 How did it go?
18. 00:00:39 How are you feeling about it?
19. 00:00:41 I know that you're super tired, but other than that, how is everything else?
20. 00:00:46 It's going well.
21. 00:00:47 The, the launch is, I don't think it's going like off the rails.
22. 00:00:54 Bonkers crazy, you know, life-changing amounts of money, that sort of thing.
23. 00:00:59 But it is going, I think, better than I expected it would.
24. 00:01:05 The feedback that I've been getting has been great.
25. 00:01:09 The, the things that I've been, like the problems that have been popping up
26. 00:01:14 are kind of just standard launch issue stuff.
27. 00:01:19 So yeah, it's the only like negative thing about it is that I'm in the middle
28. 00:01:23 of it right now and we're recording bookworm and I'm tired.
29. 00:01:27 That's good.
30. 00:01:28 But I do want to say thank you to everybody who has purchased Life HQ.
31. 00:01:33 I have been working hard on this for over six months and the last couple of
32. 00:01:39 weeks to answer your question directly have been just absolutely nutty.
33. 00:01:45 I was getting beta feedback, you know, the day before the launch, but it was
34. 00:01:51 good feedback and I'm like, I got to add this, you know, so try just trying to
35. 00:01:56 implement all that stuff and try to make sure that I squashed all the bugs.
36. 00:02:01 Turns out I didn't squash all of them.
37. 00:02:02 I had to fix one, one minor thing this morning before we record it actually.
38. 00:02:07 But I, and I was up till the night before the launch.
39. 00:02:11 I think I was up till like 1130, just putting the finishing touches on things.
40. 00:02:17 But yeah, I'm really proud of the, the, the way it turned out and really, really
41. 00:02:22 happy with the way that it's gone so far.
42. 00:02:25 Um, I really just tried to really pay attention to the details.
43. 00:02:30 So like, if you look at the FAQ question on the website, it's crazy long.
44. 00:02:35 Uh, and that's because I was getting questions during the beta process and
45. 00:02:39 then just adding stuff to that over time.
46. 00:02:43 And, um, I created the night before the launch, uh, special page.
47. 00:02:49 So when you buy, you click the button, it takes you to a thank you page with a, a
48. 00:02:53 video and it kind of explains like, here's what you do, because you can't just
49. 00:02:58 assume that people know, oh, this is an obsidian vault.
50. 00:03:00 You know, uh, you got to explain how to actually like download it and open it as
51. 00:03:04 a vault, that sort of thing.
52. 00:03:06 So, um, just trying to add like little, little things like that, which it's not
53. 00:03:10 just here's some text instructions and links to the files, but, you know, a
54. 00:03:14 personal thank you for investing in this thing that I've sunk, sunk my, uh, my
55. 00:03:19 heart and soul into for, for the last several months.
56. 00:03:22 Um, but yeah, you gave me a video testimonial, which was very kind, makes
57. 00:03:27 the sales page look great.
58. 00:03:29 It was, it was easy to do.
59. 00:03:31 Um, the, uh, the thing that, that encouragement for you, I made it through a
60. 00:03:38 decent amount of the onboarding stuff, cause I wanted to do it like I was brand
61. 00:03:41 new to it, you know, I've been on the beta and playing around with it, but I
62. 00:03:43 wanted to do like, I was brand new to it.
63. 00:03:44 So I made it through it there and I reached a point yesterday where I was
64. 00:03:47 like, I have to stop doing this because I actually have to do my job.
65. 00:03:51 Like I have to go prep and do my job.
66. 00:03:52 So, um, good job.
67. 00:03:54 Like kudos to you.
68. 00:03:55 I would not just be telling you this, you know, regardless, you know, because
69. 00:03:58 we do a podcast together, it's more a matter of like, I'm actually like really
70. 00:04:02 engaged with the way it's set up.
71. 00:04:05 And you know, the PKM stack at the same time you're trying to think about this
72. 00:04:08 thing.
73. 00:04:08 So good job.
74. 00:04:09 Like I think you're, I think you're doing great.
75. 00:04:11 I'm sure there will be, I think, you know, crank, I'm sure there'll be
76. 00:04:14 cranky people.
77. 00:04:14 I'm sure there'll be people who, you know, sing praises.
78. 00:04:17 I'm sure there'll be the whole spectrum of that because those are humans.
79. 00:04:20 Yeah.
80. 00:04:20 Um, but my encouragement is even though you're real tired, uh, it's
81. 00:04:24 something to be proud of for sure.
82. 00:04:25 I mean, it, it's pretty awesome.
83. 00:04:26 So, um, I have lots of plans to make it better, uh, not necessarily like a
84. 00:04:34 whole bunch of workflows that I want to add, but more of the, uh, like
85. 00:04:38 you're talking about the PKM stack and then also the creativity flywheel.
86. 00:04:41 Those are a couple of my frameworks that I have, uh, kind of like text
87. 00:04:46 lessons and screenshots and stuff inside of, um, of life HQ.
88. 00:04:50 But I actually have scheduled two trips to Boise to use the studios again.
89. 00:04:57 And, uh, I'm going to be recording videos and adding those, uh, they're
90. 00:05:01 basically going to be standalone video courses.
91. 00:05:05 I may sell them separately, but, uh, I am going to be, uh, actually putting
92. 00:05:10 those into life HQ as well.
93. 00:05:13 So, uh, all of that stuff is going to be a free update for everyone who, who buys it.
94. 00:05:20 This is the thing.
95. 00:05:21 Like I said, last time I want to be selling this in, in 10 years.
96. 00:05:25 So I really want to just make this as awesome as it can be.
97. 00:05:28 And then the, the thing from life HQ, people really want to go deeper is
98. 00:05:32 obviously the community where all the cohorts are going to happen.
99. 00:05:35 We do have a life theme cohort coming up in November.
100. 00:05:39 I think it's November 11th.
101. 00:05:42 If I'm not mistaken, it's a, it's that second Monday.
102. 00:05:46 And, um, I am not going to launch cohorts anymore, launches are exhausting.
103. 00:05:52 So, um, what I'm going to be doing is actually bundling those cohorts into the
104. 00:05:57 community and, uh, if you look at the sales page for life HQ, I can't talk a
105. 00:06:01 little bit about this, but, um, when you buy a year of the community, you actually
106. 00:06:06 get access to all the workshops, you get access to all of the cohorts.
107. 00:06:09 So the life theme cohort and also the practical PKM cohort for one calendar year.
108. 00:06:15 Uh, and I just think this is a much better value for people.
109. 00:06:19 Uh, plus also like the community is, is always hopping when we're doing those cohorts.
110. 00:06:24 Uh, I want that engagement in the community, so I just came to the point
111. 00:06:28 where it was like, why don't I just bundle this within the community?
112. 00:06:30 So that one November be the first one that we will be doing.
113. 00:06:33 Um, that's, that's fully inside the community, but, um, that community is not
114. 00:06:38 able to be, uh, joined separately.
115. 00:06:41 So there's actually the aversion with life HQ.
116. 00:06:44 And if you're interested in those cohorts, um, I would actually encourage you to sign
117. 00:06:49 up for that option.
118. 00:06:50 If you already bought life HQ, you want to add that on.
119. 00:06:52 Let me know because that is going to be cheaper than the one that will be
120. 00:06:56 available when the life theme cohort opens in November.
121. 00:07:00 So it's basically a $400 add-on and it's a year, yearly subscription.
122. 00:07:07 My goal is I want to turn this into like the PKM version of Ali
123. 00:07:11 Abdall's productivity lab or like J.
124. 00:07:12 Klaus's lab, which I'm a member of, of, uh, J.
125. 00:07:16 Klaus's lab and stole a lot of really great ideas from him, but, um, both of
126. 00:07:21 those are like $1,000 and $2,000 a year respectively.
127. 00:07:23 Like that's the level of programming I want to get to.
128. 00:07:26 It's not the price point I want to get to, but just, you know, kind of set
129. 00:07:29 the expectation for where this is going.
130. 00:07:31 This is not, you know, give me 10 bucks a month to support your favorite
131. 00:07:34 creator.
132. 00:07:35 Um, this is for people who really want to dive in deep with the PKM stuff.
133. 00:07:38 I've already done a personal and treat workshop.
134. 00:07:39 I've got a mind mapping workshop.
135. 00:07:41 So those monthly workshops will be be in there and then the cohorts as well.
136. 00:07:44 So that'll be when it launches separately, it'll be five, uh, 497 for the year.
137. 00:07:50 So you'll save a hundred bucks, basically.
138. 00:07:52 If you, if you buy that option with life HQ right now and the practical PKM cohort
139. 00:07:57 last time I sold for 500 bucks alone, actually that was the low level version.
140. 00:08:02 The one above that with the more, uh, direct support was, was more than that.
141. 00:08:06 So that's all bundled into the, uh, the community now, um, hoping that that's,
142. 00:08:12 that makes sense, but people have questions they can, they can reach out to me.
143. 00:08:15 It's awesome. You're putting together a pretty awesome suite of products and activities and, you know, events and things.
144. 00:08:21 So that's, it's exciting.
145. 00:08:22 It's exciting to see it from this side.
146. 00:08:25 Um, you know, kind of as much as I've seen, it's, it's been pretty fun.
147. 00:08:29 So I'm sure it's more stressful and probably less fun for you, but.
148. 00:08:33 Well, it is stressful.
149. 00:08:35 Um, I think it is fun though.
150. 00:08:37 Like once I decided life HQ was the thing I wanted to make, kind of all clicked into place.
151. 00:08:44 Um, uh, the, I'll have other like smaller courses, but they're all going to point back to life HQ.
152. 00:08:49 That's a signature product.
153. 00:08:50 And then that's kind of like, you can just buy that, go through it on your own.
154. 00:08:53 If you want more help, you can join the community.
155. 00:08:56 Like it's very simple.
156. 00:08:58 Um, and that's what I like about it.
157. 00:09:00 And it makes clear like what the next steps are and what I should be doing and.
158. 00:09:04 Where stuff needs to be done, um, all that kind of stuff.
159. 00:09:07 So yeah, I'm a, I'm a big fan of this model.
160. 00:09:10 I hope it makes sense to other people and other people like it too.
161. 00:09:13 But good, good work.
162. 00:09:16 Let's, uh, let's talk about a book now.
163. 00:09:19 Let's do it.
164. 00:09:19 So today's book is story worthy by Matthew Dix.
165. 00:09:24 And this was a book that, uh, I came across because Ali Abdahl kept raving about it.
166. 00:09:32 Um, there'd been a handful of books that Ali Abdahl has raved about that I have really enjoyed.
167. 00:09:37 One of them was the pathless path by Paul Millard.
168. 00:09:41 We're going to be doing another Paul Millard book here shortly.
169. 00:09:43 Um, so that one, I felt like Ali did not steer me wrong.
170. 00:09:48 And I have had story worthy of a Matthew Dix for a very long time on my bookshelf,
171. 00:09:53 but have never taken the time to read it probably because it's over 300 pages.
172. 00:09:58 Yeah.
173. 00:09:59 Um, but, uh, yeah, Matthew Dix is a teacher and storyteller.
174. 00:10:05 I think he teaches fifth grade, he said.
175. 00:10:09 Um, yeah, that's, that's right.
176. 00:10:10 That's right.
177. 00:10:11 Okay.
178. 00:10:11 And, uh, he has won the, there are these storytelling competitions called the
179. 00:10:17 moth grand slam.
180. 00:10:19 He's won it like 38 times or something.
181. 00:10:21 And have you ever heard about that prior to this book?
182. 00:10:25 I'd never heard this ever, but it sounds pretty cool.
183. 00:10:28 Yeah, it does.
184. 00:10:29 It does sound cool.
185. 00:10:30 I agree.
186. 00:10:31 Well, in the structure of it sounds cool too, to wear like for some of the, not the
187. 00:10:35 grand slams, but like some of the, the precursor shows, people just show up.
188. 00:10:41 You put your name in a hat and they pick 10 names out of the hat.
189. 00:10:44 And those are the people that get to tell the story that night.
190. 00:10:46 And like that's, that's a cool, it's a cool model.
191. 00:10:48 I mean, it is just, yeah.
192. 00:10:50 Yeah.
193. 00:10:51 And, uh, so there will be hundreds of people there most of the time, but not
194. 00:10:55 everybody has volunteered to tell a story.
195. 00:10:57 So you say, yeah, I'm good to tell a story.
196. 00:10:58 And then yeah, the numbers go in the hat and then you might get picked.
197. 00:11:01 You might not, you have no idea when you're going to go.
198. 00:11:04 Sometimes you go first, that's kind of the spot that nobody likes.
199. 00:11:07 Um, and then they grade you, there's like a panel of judges and they grade your
200. 00:11:11 performance and they pick a winner, uh, for every, every, I don't know how often
201. 00:11:16 they, they do it, but.
202. 00:11:18 It, uh, kind of sounds like a more stressful version of Toastmasters.
203. 00:11:24 I was going to ask you.
204. 00:11:25 So at one point, Toastmasters came up with my head and I was like, I wonder how
205. 00:11:28 this compares, uh, to what Mike's experience was with Toastmasters.
206. 00:11:32 But my, my suspicion would be Toastmasters is more formal.
207. 00:11:35 Like you're, you're actually like doing things, but I don't know.
208. 00:11:38 Like I've never done Toastmasters.
209. 00:11:40 Uh, it probably is a little bit more formal, but I've never done a Moth
210. 00:11:46 Grand Slam.
211. 00:11:46 So I couldn't tell.
212. 00:11:48 Um, I actually have a Toastmasters related to anecdote that I want to discuss
213. 00:11:54 when we get to part three.
214. 00:11:56 So, um, well, I'm sure we'll, we'll talk about that more, but this, this book,
215. 00:12:00 I guess, to get back to what we're talking about today, there are three
216. 00:12:03 parts to this book.
217. 00:12:05 Part one is finding your story.
218. 00:12:07 Part two is crafting your story.
219. 00:12:09 Part three is telling your story.
220. 00:12:12 And, um, I, if I were to kind of give us synopsis of this book, it's sort
221. 00:12:17 of like how to be a good storyteller one on one.
222. 00:12:21 And Matthew Dix is probably the, the most qualified person on the planet to do
223. 00:12:28 this, uh, not just because he's won all the Grand Slams, but he, uh, he has a whole
224. 00:12:37 bunch of stories that he weaves into this.
225. 00:12:41 He's got a YouTube channel where he shares a lot of the stuff.
226. 00:12:44 I did not go look at the YouTube channel, but it would be interesting to see some
227. 00:12:47 of these stories in video form versus written form.
228. 00:12:51 But there are essentially, uh, in all of these different parts, 23 different
229. 00:12:55 chapters, some of the chapters are simply a story that he tells at the beginning,
230. 00:12:59 like chapter six charity thief, where it's setting the stage for some principles
231. 00:13:04 that he's going to talk about in the following chapters.
232. 00:13:06 And we are not going to tackle this chapter by chapter.
233. 00:13:09 We are going to tackle this in parts.
234. 00:13:12 Um, we'll probably put, we'll try to put chapter markers for where, you know,
235. 00:13:16 we end up talking about different anchor concepts or there's lengthy discussion
236. 00:13:21 about specific things, but I really think we just got to tackle this part by part.
237. 00:13:26 If you think that's a good approach.
238. 00:13:28 No, I think that's, that's perfect.
239. 00:13:30 Um, he actually says at the very, very end of the book, it might even be like the
240. 00:13:33 last few lines of the book.
241. 00:13:35 This book is an, is the instruction manual.
242. 00:13:38 Like he, like he writes it as I wrote this book to help you become a better
243. 00:13:42 storyteller.
244. 00:13:42 Essentially, like I'm putting up my teacher hat on, but I'm just going to teach you
245. 00:13:46 about storytelling.
246. 00:13:47 And that's the whole point of this book.
247. 00:13:48 So, um, I really think that's a good way to frame the book before we get into, um,
248. 00:13:53 the discussion.
249. 00:13:54 You mentioned that there are chapters that are just stories, basically like
250. 00:14:00 charity thief, but then he also does what he calls story breaks in between.
251. 00:14:03 And those aren't chapters, they're like maybe a page or two.
252. 00:14:07 I don't even know.
253. 00:14:08 Like they're, they're very much not long.
254. 00:14:11 Um, but he basically just tells you a story.
255. 00:14:13 Like he just kind of in the middle of it tells you the story, which we'll
256. 00:14:16 talk about that more in style and rating, but like that's the other thing.
257. 00:14:18 So you got these 23 chapters broken into three parts.
258. 00:14:21 And then oh, every so often he just like pops in.
259. 00:14:23 He calls it story break and he just pops in and it's like, I have to think
260. 00:14:26 that's him like just being like, okay, I just have to tell him a story right now.
261. 00:14:29 Like I, I can't keep teaching this thing.
262. 00:14:31 I just have to tell him a story.
263. 00:14:33 And whether it really relates or not is, is kind of funny.
264. 00:14:36 Like cause it, some of them don't.
265. 00:14:38 It's just this random story and then it moves on to the next thing.
266. 00:14:40 So, um, I don't, I don't think we're going to talk about those as much.
267. 00:14:44 Uh, correct me if I'm wrong.
268. 00:14:45 Um, I suspect that the story breaks are just going to be in there.
269. 00:14:49 And you know, you're going to read them if you, if you go read the book.
270. 00:14:52 Yeah, I mean, maybe there'll be some specific stories that will come up in
271. 00:14:55 our discussion here, but I actually think the, the value here for bookworm
272. 00:15:01 listeners is probably just the principles and maybe some of the exercises.
273. 00:15:07 So spoiler alert, I guess, um, for regular show listeners, um, we do have
274. 00:15:14 a pro show, it's eight bucks a, eight bucks a month, seven bucks a month.
275. 00:15:18 A month, a Patreon.com/bookwormfm, which gets you access to a bootleg version
276. 00:15:22 and a pro version.
277. 00:15:23 The pro version has no ads when we do have them, they removed.
278. 00:15:26 And it also includes a pro segment.
279. 00:15:28 So for the pro segment today, Corey and I went through an exercise called first
280. 00:15:33 last, best worst as it pertains to coffee.
281. 00:15:37 Um, that is actually from the first section.
282. 00:15:39 And so we'll talk about those exercises and things, but we won't actually go
283. 00:15:42 through and we won't share the details of a lot of the stories that he shares.
284. 00:15:45 But, you know, it comes up often in the books that we read.
285. 00:15:48 It's like, Oh, this person's a really good storyteller.
286. 00:15:50 I feel like I can't say that anymore because Matthew Dix is way above every
287. 00:15:54 other author that we have ever read in terms of his ability to tell a good story.
288. 00:15:58 He really is.
289. 00:15:59 Um, I have another question for you about the motivation behind this book.
290. 00:16:02 So you mentioned, you know, Ollie, Ollie, Ollie, Ollie rated it super high
291. 00:16:06 and that put it on your list.
292. 00:16:08 Do you have a desire?
293. 00:16:10 I mean, I know you've done Toastmasters.
294. 00:16:11 Do you have a desire to be a better storyteller?
295. 00:16:14 Do you have a desire to tell more stories?
296. 00:16:16 Like, was there any kind of motivation there for you?
297. 00:16:19 Cause this was your book.
298. 00:16:20 You chose it.
299. 00:16:21 I mean, I teach.
300. 00:16:22 So the, the ability to tell a good story in the middle of class or like, you
301. 00:16:27 know, make something connect and relate.
302. 00:16:29 It's very, very helpful for me, um, to, to gain the skills from this book.
303. 00:16:34 But what's, what's your goal out of this?
304. 00:16:36 Well, actually before I answer that, let's move to part one.
305. 00:16:40 Because the answer is actually one of the first things that he says in this section.
306. 00:16:46 OK, all right.
307. 00:16:47 Um, so part one has five different chapters, finding your story is the name of the part.
308. 00:16:53 And then chapter one is my promise to you.
309. 00:16:55 So this is basically Matthew Dix explaining why you should read this book.
310. 00:17:00 And this hits on the answer to your question.
311. 00:17:03 So I jotted three things down in my mind map file.
312. 00:17:05 Storytelling is for everyone.
313. 00:17:07 Whatever you do, storytelling will help and you can be a great storyteller.
314. 00:17:11 So yes, I do want to become a better storyteller.
315. 00:17:16 I don't necessarily want to become a better storyteller so that I can stand
316. 00:17:20 on a stage and tell stories.
317. 00:17:23 I do like that, but really the, the point of emphasis for me right now has been
318. 00:17:30 on the writing process.
319. 00:17:32 Uh, by the time this goes live, I will probably be in the right
320. 00:17:36 of passage cohort.
321. 00:17:37 Oh, yeah.
322. 00:17:38 And yeah, so I got a scholarship, not a full scholarship, but a good chunk of it
323. 00:17:43 was, uh, was paid for.
324. 00:17:44 It's the last one that they're doing.
325. 00:17:46 So I really wanted to do it.
326. 00:17:48 It's been on my radar for a while.
327. 00:17:49 Everyone I know that's gone through it has said that it's been life changing.
328. 00:17:52 So it just so happened that I was able to make it happen.
329. 00:17:56 And, um, I know that in there, uh, they kind of talk about, you know, personal
330. 00:18:02 monopolies and just telling your, your story, your unique angle on, on things.
331. 00:18:10 Um, but I, uh, the way that they messaged that, and I also listened to David
332. 00:18:14 Perel's podcast, how I write, which is really, really good.
333. 00:18:18 It's very evident that the, both David and all the guests that he has, which are
334. 00:18:23 like Morgan Howzel, uh, Stephen Pressfield, like big name authors, they, uh,
335. 00:18:30 they are really good at telling stories.
336. 00:18:33 Um, and I, so I feel like there's been a, uh, something intriguing to me about
337. 00:18:39 that.
338. 00:18:39 I feel like I'm a decent writer, but I feel like if I could get better at storytelling,
339. 00:18:44 I can see how that would benefit the newsletter.
340. 00:18:48 It would benefit the YouTube videos.
341. 00:18:51 It would benefit any sort of like course materials that I would write scripts for.
342. 00:18:57 But I don't know exactly how, like I don't look at my scripts right now and
343. 00:19:00 say these are boring.
344. 00:19:02 I wish I had a formula for writing a better story.
345. 00:19:05 That, that's not it at all.
346. 00:19:07 It's more so just I have gotten better at this thing.
347. 00:19:11 I recognize that writing is the foundation for everything that I do creatively
348. 00:19:15 online and I want to get even better at it.
349. 00:19:17 And this feels like an aspect of that that I could improve in.
350. 00:19:22 Okay.
351. 00:19:22 Good.
352. 00:19:23 Yeah, I, I like that he, he talks about like that everybody can be one, you know,
353. 00:19:30 that it's a skill that you can develop.
354. 00:19:32 Um, so, um, it's more art than science.
355. 00:19:34 Like I like, I like all those aspects of it.
356. 00:19:37 I, I've, I'm driven by stories, right?
357. 00:19:40 It's the reason why I watch movies.
358. 00:19:41 It's the reason why I read nonfiction books or listen to them when, you know,
359. 00:19:44 I'm doing things.
360. 00:19:45 I like to get caught up into the war, like into these worlds.
361. 00:19:48 So for the, for Mike wouldn't do my pro show, uh, one today, which is basically
362. 00:19:52 what world would you want to live in?
363. 00:19:54 Um, if you had to live in like a fictional world, but it's like, I love thinking
364. 00:19:58 about stuff like that.
365. 00:19:58 It's like, Oh, I would want to be in that world because they made that, you know,
366. 00:20:02 they set that stage so well and those character development.
367. 00:20:04 So we can, we can do that one for next time.
368. 00:20:06 If you want, okay.
369. 00:20:08 Um, so Mike, so we go into what I thought was interesting about this, this part one.
370. 00:20:15 I don't remember.
371. 00:20:16 So correct me if I'm wrong.
372. 00:20:17 He doesn't actually say this is a story and like here is the definition of a story.
373. 00:20:23 Does he?
374. 00:20:24 I don't remember him ever like defining it.
375. 00:20:26 He, he provides a ton of characteristics, but maybe I'm wrong and I don't, I didn't
376. 00:20:30 grab that.
377. 00:20:32 Um, I think you're right in that he doesn't provide like a dictionary
378. 00:20:37 definition.
379. 00:20:37 This is, you know, on page, whatever, what a story is chapter two is what is a story.
380. 00:20:44 And there are some things I jotted down there, which I think are important.
381. 00:20:48 But yeah, he doesn't explain specifically.
382. 00:20:51 Like these are the characteristics.
383. 00:20:54 Cause I was looking for like a, it starts this way.
384. 00:20:57 It does this.
385. 00:20:57 It does that.
386. 00:20:57 It's that it's more a matter of like, it has this component.
387. 00:21:00 It has this component.
388. 00:21:01 You think about it this way.
389. 00:21:02 So for instance, um, you know, true, like it's better if it's true.
390. 00:21:07 Um, you know, it's got to be a change over time.
391. 00:21:09 Then he'll get later in the book.
392. 00:21:10 I'll start talking about physical location and it needs to be anchored in a physical
393. 00:21:13 location.
394. 00:21:14 And it's like, he's got all these characteristics, but I was really shocked
395. 00:21:16 that he doesn't come out and say, all right, here's a story.
396. 00:21:20 And it was like, oh, okay.
397. 00:21:21 That's a, that's a surprising thing to me.
398. 00:21:24 Yeah.
399. 00:21:25 Um, I actually don't mind that.
400. 00:21:28 I, I didn't even really notice that until you called it out.
401. 00:21:33 And if I had to project a reason why he doesn't define it, it's probably
402. 00:21:40 because everyone is coming into this with their own idea of what a story is.
403. 00:21:45 And I feel like he just chips away a little bit at the, the beliefs about what
404. 00:21:51 a story is that maybe should maybe are wrong or need to be changed and then
405. 00:21:54 drops in different aspects of it as he goes.
406. 00:21:57 He does mention in chapter two, what is a story that every story is like a diamond.
407. 00:22:00 It has many facets.
408. 00:22:02 Um, he has a couple of, uh, of tips in there.
409. 00:22:06 You mentioned, you know, story must reflect change over time.
410. 00:22:08 You can tell your own story.
411. 00:22:10 You can tell all those stories, but tell your side of it.
412. 00:22:12 That's sort of a thing.
413. 00:22:14 Um, but I, I realized as we went along that he just kept adding additional details
414. 00:22:21 and you could sort of see what an effective story looks like, not the definition,
415. 00:22:26 but sort of like, I know it when I see it develop as he went through all of these
416. 00:22:32 different chapters and maybe that's not as necessary because he has so many
417. 00:22:37 stories in here that he's giving you practical examples as, as you go.
418. 00:22:42 So there's always that one that he just shared, which is sort of anchoring in
419. 00:22:46 the back of your mind as he's talking about these different things.
420. 00:22:51 Yeah, I agree.
421. 00:22:52 Like I, I, I think he does a really good job telling you what a story is and showing
422. 00:22:56 you what a story is without defining it in a way that it's like forced or, or
423. 00:23:01 it's over, overly done.
424. 00:23:04 Um, all right, uh, I didn't like, you know, we're kind of working through the
425. 00:23:08 chapters without actually like going super deep into them.
426. 00:23:11 But so if I push you too, too fast, let me know, but it's like, I actually didn't
427. 00:23:15 like homework for life, right?
428. 00:23:16 So chapter three is homework for life.
429. 00:23:18 I didn't like that.
430. 00:23:19 Um, do I think this would generate a ton of stories?
431. 00:23:23 Yes.
432. 00:23:23 I 100% think like this would help you generate a ton of stories.
433. 00:23:26 So just to give everybody what it is, I decided that at the end of the, uh,
434. 00:23:29 every day I'd reflect upon my day and ask myself one simple question.
435. 00:23:32 If I had to tell a story from today, right?
436. 00:23:34 What would it be?
437. 00:23:35 And he basically outlines this process of like trying to figure out like,
438. 00:23:38 what's the one story?
439. 00:23:39 What's the one story?
440. 00:23:40 What's the one story?
441. 00:23:41 Um, a sentence or two that captures the moment.
442. 00:23:44 This is great.
443. 00:23:45 And I'm sure that if you are a professional storyteller, like he is,
444. 00:23:48 and you are somebody who needs to get on stage, like every so often,
445. 00:23:52 which is, it sounds pretty frequent for him.
446. 00:23:54 This is a great idea, but this, like this homework, it overwhelmed me.
447. 00:23:58 I'm like, I, I don't need this many stories.
448. 00:24:00 I don't want this many stories.
449. 00:24:02 Um, and maybe it was because like, I don't know, like I, I, I just,
450. 00:24:06 I just felt overwhelmed.
451. 00:24:07 Like while I was reading this chapter, like did you, are you going to do this?
452. 00:24:11 Like, are you actually going to do homework for life?
453. 00:24:13 Yes.
454. 00:24:13 Is it one of your reflections?
455. 00:24:14 Spoiler alert.
456. 00:24:15 Yes.
457. 00:24:15 That's my one action item.
458. 00:24:16 I think now I'm not going to do it exactly the way that he describes it though.
459. 00:24:19 So, and there's context for this.
460. 00:24:21 Um, so we mentioned Toastmasters previously.
461. 00:24:24 And, um, at one point, remind me to come back to the, this, but at one point,
462. 00:24:30 I was performing for the district finals in the humorous speech contest.
463. 00:24:37 And I don't think I'm a funny guy.
464. 00:24:38 This is the thing I want to talk about part three, how I actually got there.
465. 00:24:41 But I lost at that district conference to this professional comedian.
466. 00:24:46 But while I was there, kind of like the keynote speaker was this guy
467. 00:24:49 named Aaron Beverly, who at that time had competed in the world championship
468. 00:24:56 of public speaking, I think is what they call like the big Toastmasters conference.
469. 00:25:01 And he had been runner up.
470. 00:25:02 He has since won the world championship of public speaking.
471. 00:25:07 But at the time he was a runner up and there was a video that he shared of his
472. 00:25:13 speech because Toastmasters has this very specific format.
473. 00:25:16 You say the name of the speech, the person's name, then you repeat the person's
474. 00:25:22 name and the name of the speech.
475. 00:25:24 So he wanted to get the audience on his side from the very beginning.
476. 00:25:28 His title was like 41 words long.
477. 00:25:31 So you have this very formal guy up at the podium saying this big, long
478. 00:25:36 speech, Aaron Beverly, and then Aaron Beverly.
479. 00:25:40 And he's got to say the speech again, everyone's like cracking up.
480. 00:25:44 So it was really good.
481. 00:25:45 And while he was there, I actually got connected with him.
482. 00:25:48 And I did individual coaching with him for a while.
483. 00:25:51 OK, he was just trying to get his like consulting business going.
484. 00:25:56 And one of the pieces of homework that he gave me was to create a story file.
485. 00:26:01 And it was basically just have a bunch of stories and different formats that you
486. 00:26:07 can pull out and you can tell different places.
487. 00:26:10 And he was encouraging me to have like these stories and like a really short
488. 00:26:15 version, a longer version.
489. 00:26:18 And I feel like one of the stories that came from that that I end up telling
490. 00:26:23 different places, different ways is the story of how I hurt myself when I was
491. 00:26:28 training for my first half marathon.
492. 00:26:29 I'm not going to go through the whole story again because people
493. 00:26:31 listen to this podcast, probably heard it like 12 times.
494. 00:26:34 But that was different versions of that came out of that story file exercise.
495. 00:26:40 And when I moved over to obsidian, I had that story file, but I've kind of neglected
496. 00:26:47 it. And I realized that some of those stories have gotten a little bit stale.
497. 00:26:50 And also there are other stories that should be added to that file.
498. 00:26:54 And I already have the journaling stuff that I do in obsidian every single day.
499. 00:26:59 So it's going to be really easy for me to create a quick add thing just like I do
500. 00:27:04 for the journal and cheese, just like I do for the gratitude.
501. 00:27:07 And I'm not committing to adding something there every single day, like he's saying,
502. 00:27:11 but I am going to have that on my daily note.
503. 00:27:13 And when I'm doing my journaling at the end of the day, basically just asking
504. 00:27:16 myself, was there a cool, cool story from today?
505. 00:27:20 And I don't have the specifics of like what exactly that, like how I'm going
506. 00:27:23 to phrase the, the section or anything like that.
507. 00:27:25 But that's what I want to do is I want to start logging those, those stories.
508. 00:27:29 I should have known you would have put this in your daily prompts.
509. 00:27:33 Like it didn't, like that never even crossed my mind.
510. 00:27:35 It's like, Oh, really?
511. 00:27:36 This is Mike.
512. 00:27:37 This is Mike.
513. 00:27:37 We're talking about here, like this would definitely have become one of his daily
514. 00:27:41 prompts and that might just indicate to you how I don't use daily prompts.
515. 00:27:46 So therefore they're not anywhere near the front of my brain, but you use them
516. 00:27:50 so much that this actually makes complete sense that you would add your homework
517. 00:27:54 for life to the daily prompts.
518. 00:27:56 I think one of the things that, that I guess ruins this for me ruins is the
519. 00:28:00 wrong word, but you know what I mean, that like makes me not think I'm going to do
520. 00:28:03 this is I don't have any desire to like tell a lot of stories, like publicly
521. 00:28:08 and on stage, but I also understand that that's not the point of what he's saying.
522. 00:28:13 He's saying, if you're at dinner, if you're out with friends, if you're doing any of
523. 00:28:16 this stuff, we're always telling stories and the better storyteller we are, the more
524. 00:28:20 we relate to people and the more they like to hang out with us and all that stuff.
525. 00:28:24 So it's like, I get why this makes sense and I get why I should do this.
526. 00:28:27 But my brain goes, well, I'm not going to be on stage telling stories.
527. 00:28:30 Like I don't need to make a story file and all this stuff.
528. 00:28:33 I did add a note or a task to my obsidian that said create a story file because I
529. 00:28:39 really like that idea of creating a story file where I go in every so often.
530. 00:28:43 And I update it with the ideas of the stories.
531. 00:28:45 So okay, okay.
532. 00:28:49 Yeah.
533. 00:28:49 And the genesis of the story file, you know, at the time that I got that advice,
534. 00:28:53 it wasn't so you have a bunch of speeches that you can give.
535. 00:28:57 It was just so you have a story to tell in these unexpected moments that pop up.
536. 00:29:02 And I realized over and over and over again that that's valuable to have.
537. 00:29:06 Sometimes those moments are with other people.
538. 00:29:09 You're at a dinner or something.
539. 00:29:11 Sometimes it's I need a newsletter topic for Monday.
540. 00:29:14 Like you kind of don't know what they're going to look like, but they are
541. 00:29:18 valuable to have like a backlog of that stuff.
542. 00:29:21 The one that I didn't like from this section was dreaming at the end of your pen,
543. 00:29:25 which is basically like the morning pages from The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron.
544. 00:29:31 Are you familiar with with The Artist's Way and morning pages?
545. 00:29:36 Not as much the book, but I am familiar with morning pages.
546. 00:29:38 So I've either heard you talk about it or I've heard somebody talk about it at
547. 00:29:41 some point.
548. 00:29:43 Yeah, it's like free writing in the morning, right?
549. 00:29:45 Yeah.
550. 00:29:45 So morning pages is three pages of stream of conscious writing.
551. 00:29:50 And I've done it before, but it hasn't stuck.
552. 00:29:54 And I just think it's really not for me.
553. 00:29:57 I do see the benefit that comes from it.
554. 00:30:01 And I just feel like the crash and burn exercise that he talks about here
555. 00:30:07 is kind of unnecessary structure added to this.
556. 00:30:11 There's really not a whole lot new that's here.
557. 00:30:13 I do like his advice of always starting with an object in the room because I feel
558. 00:30:16 like just starting with that stuff is sometimes a big mental hurdle that people
559. 00:30:20 have to get over, but essentially this is stream of conscious writing.
560. 00:30:24 And Julia Cameron wrote about this first and better, in my opinion.
561. 00:30:28 So but that's a minor thing.
562. 00:30:30 The other one that is from this section is chapter five, the first last best
563. 00:30:35 worst, which as I mentioned, we actually went through that already.
564. 00:30:37 I thought that sounded like a cool exercise when I read about it.
565. 00:30:41 And then when we went through it, I think it was really cool.
566. 00:30:43 So yeah, I agree with that.
567. 00:30:45 How remind me, because I got to swear, I took some notes on this, what was the
568. 00:30:49 crash and burn exercise?
569. 00:30:50 What was the mechanic behind it?
570. 00:30:52 Um, did you, did you know?
571. 00:30:54 Oh, I'm sorry.
572. 00:30:54 I didn't think I, uh, okay, you must not get attached to any one idea.
573. 00:30:58 You must not judge any thought or idea that appears in your mind.
574. 00:31:00 You cannot allow the pen to stop moving.
575. 00:31:02 So the crash and burn is essentially like you stream of consciousness.
576. 00:31:04 And then you stop, you can't allow yourself to stop.
577. 00:31:07 Just jump to something else.
578. 00:31:08 That's the crash.
579. 00:31:09 Then you switch to something.
580. 00:31:11 Yeah, it is, it is stream of consciousness writing.
581. 00:31:13 So, cause I was like, I couldn't connect those two things in my head,
582. 00:31:16 but it is stream of consciousness writing, which I agree.
583. 00:31:18 Like I don't resonate with that as much.
584. 00:31:21 Um, but I very much resonate with the first last best, worst.
585. 00:31:26 The thing that's interesting about this book, so, um, to the listeners,
586. 00:31:30 like he does throw out some of these like tricks, tips, tools to help you
587. 00:31:36 generate ideas, to help you, uh, create stories, to help you structure stories,
588. 00:31:40 to, to do these things.
589. 00:31:41 So when he says it's an instruction manual, like he's actually, you know,
590. 00:31:45 really good at both giving you the philosophy behind the way he thinks
591. 00:31:49 about creating stories and like what, what stories are at the same time with
592. 00:31:52 giving you practical things.
593. 00:31:54 So for somebody like me, this book, like made a lot of sense because I got
594. 00:31:57 both these ideas.
595. 00:31:58 It's like, okay, well, how should I be thinking about it?
596. 00:32:00 Over arching Lee from a storytelling perspective, but then also like,
597. 00:32:03 what are the smaller individual components of like making progress on
598. 00:32:07 becoming a better storyteller?
599. 00:32:08 So I really liked, um, I really liked the way he did both of those things in the book.
600. 00:32:14 Yeah, I agree with that.
601. 00:32:17 Do you want to move on to part two?
602. 00:32:18 Yeah, I think so.
603. 00:32:19 I'm ready.
604. 00:32:20 Part two is huge.
605. 00:32:21 So it is, and I'm looking at the time.
606. 00:32:24 All right.
607. 00:32:25 So part two is the longest part, that is crafting your story.
608. 00:32:29 And there's lots of great advice in this particular section.
609. 00:32:35 I kind of don't even know how to tackle this.
610. 00:32:38 Um, I guess we'll mention the first chapter here is a story that he shares
611. 00:32:44 called charity thief, which he uses as a reference throughout probably the rest
612. 00:32:50 of the chapters in this section.
613. 00:32:51 So we go from chapter six to chapter 17, um, I don't think we're going to talk
614. 00:32:56 through all of these, but essentially they're broken down into individual
615. 00:33:00 components of good storytelling.
616. 00:33:04 Uh, the next chapter, chapter seven though, does include one that I think
617. 00:33:08 really kind of resonated with me.
618. 00:33:10 And that is that every story takes only five seconds to tell.
619. 00:33:14 And, uh, the big takeaway from this, if you're going to condense this down into a,
620. 00:33:20 do this style action item is, um, whenever you have a story that you want to tell,
621. 00:33:26 you want to focus in on the five seconds of that story, which represent the pure
622. 00:33:33 transformation.
623. 00:33:34 And that's what you want to build off of.
624. 00:33:38 And, uh, sometimes you have to dig to find those five second moments.
625. 00:33:43 So just as an example, I guess, cause I mentioned the, um, hurting myself while
626. 00:33:49 running the half marathon, having to learn how to run again.
627. 00:33:52 My five second transformation there is when I crossed the finish line after the
628. 00:33:58 first half marathon and I had hurt my leg, my, my patella tendon slipped off my
629. 00:34:02 kneecap on the side of my leg.
630. 00:34:04 So it was really painful.
631. 00:34:05 I knew I had, well, I didn't know how bad the injury was, but best case scenario,
632. 00:34:09 physical therapy, worst case scenario, surgery, crossing that finish line because
633. 00:34:14 I was so focused on that goal. And then immediately after getting the metal,
634. 00:34:20 getting a bottle of water, like before I'm even out of the shoot, feeling very
635. 00:34:25 depressed. Like now, what do I do?
636. 00:34:27 This identity that I had built is now just been shattered because I can't just
637. 00:34:31 pick another race and the goal post just moved. Um, so it's not like the whole
638. 00:34:37 story of the year and a half of training for that first half marathon,
639. 00:34:40 everything that came after that, the story is really those five seconds.
640. 00:34:45 And I think that's a cool approach to crafting a story.
641. 00:34:50 I, he, he does a really good job at, so he has long titles in this.
642. 00:34:55 So basically I have the title that is like, here's the thing I'm going to talk
643. 00:34:58 about and then like he'll add these like extended titles for it.
644. 00:35:02 So the title of this first chapter, because he hits it a couple of different
645. 00:35:05 times in part two, every story only takes five seconds to tell.
646. 00:35:08 And Jurassic Park wasn't a movie about dinosaurs, right?
647. 00:35:11 Which, but I want to get to the idea of most stories.
648. 00:35:16 Aren't about what they, they seem on the face of it.
649. 00:35:19 Like there about that five second moment, that moment of transformation,
650. 00:35:22 like you're talking about, and then what do we do?
651. 00:35:24 We add in this other stuff that sets the context that like kind of keeps you
652. 00:35:28 engaged. So like he hits us in chapter seven. He hits it in chapter nine,
653. 00:35:32 because chapter nine is, um, stakes five ways to keep your story compelling and
654. 00:35:36 why there are dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, right? Like, so it's like, I like the way
655. 00:35:39 he does, he like sets up the connection between that thing, that five second moment
656. 00:35:46 that we actually care about, that transformation, that change, and then how
657. 00:35:50 does the other stuff that's happening in the story drive toward that?
658. 00:35:54 How does it push that forward?
659. 00:35:55 How does it set up, you know, these, this idea of stakes and like the fact that we
660. 00:35:59 want, we want there to be something there that makes us care.
661. 00:36:03 He's, he's going to call it stakes. And then, you know, if we, if we do great,
662. 00:36:07 great, if we don't do great, then we all feel bad about it.
663. 00:36:09 And I really like the idea, you know, in the, the specific reference in this
664. 00:36:13 situation is basically Jurassic Park is about an old man learning that he
665. 00:36:19 realizes that children are okay, and they're not little like stinky, stinky,
666. 00:36:23 like annoying blobs. Um, and that, you know, it's, it's resolving that like inner
667. 00:36:28 turmoil with having children and the idea of children. And oh, by the way,
668. 00:36:32 how does he learn that through dinosaurs? Like through the dinosaurs and them
669. 00:36:36 getting attacked by dinosaurs, which I haven't like, it makes so much sense.
670. 00:36:39 Like why you would, why you would structure that way, but I would never,
671. 00:36:43 ever think to do that. Like I would never have come up with that in my head.
672. 00:36:48 But then you look at all the like different stories and movies and, and all
673. 00:36:52 that stuff and it's, it's so true. Like this story looks like it's about,
674. 00:36:56 you know, like Harry Potter, Harry Potter. It looks like it's about wizards,
675. 00:37:00 you know, it's really not about wizards, right? Like it has nothing to do with
676. 00:37:03 wizards. It's about, you know, light defeating dark and all of a sudden,
677. 00:37:06 like, it's, it's, it's about so much more than, than that. And I, I think that's
678. 00:37:10 really cool. So yeah, I have a little bit of a context, I guess, for the formula
679. 00:37:17 of storytelling, just because I've gone through story brand by Donald Miller.
680. 00:37:24 And that is actually a good book. People are probably sick of hearing about it.
681. 00:37:30 But I remember being at the Entre Leadership Summit when Donald Miller spoke
682. 00:37:36 and introduced the concept of story brand. I think it was right before the book came out.
683. 00:37:41 And I was like, this is genius because he talks about how all stories follow the same
684. 00:37:45 arc. And he used the example of Star Wars and really as it pertains to marketing.
685. 00:37:54 You're not the hero of your story, which a lot of brands don't get. You come alongside your
686. 00:37:59 customer and you help them do something, you're Yoda, they're Luke. So like, just that was kind
687. 00:38:06 of eye opening, but he used a whole bunch of examples, like in Star Wars, this is how it fits
688. 00:38:10 into this model. And I forget the other examples that he used, but he was like, oh, yeah, there
689. 00:38:15 actually is like a very clear formula for this. One thing that I think Matthew Dix does a great
690. 00:38:22 job of is articulating the different pieces. So you're talking about stakes, about ways to keep
691. 00:38:30 your story compelling. And he has a whole bunch of definitions here, which I thought were great.
692. 00:38:34 The elephant is the thing that everyone in the room can see. The backpack is something that
693. 00:38:38 increases the stakes of a story by increasing the audience's anticipation about a coming event.
694. 00:38:43 Breadcrumbs, which are when you hinted a future event, but you only reveal enough to keep the
695. 00:38:47 audience guessing an hourglass when like you're focusing in on those five seconds. And that's the
696. 00:38:52 point where things really slow down and you let them hang. And you can see how he defines these
697. 00:38:58 pieces. And then you can put them together to create an effective story because by this point,
698. 00:39:02 he shared several stories of his own. And you can see, you read those stories and you're like,
699. 00:39:07 oh, yeah, I like this. And then you see kind of how he deconstructs how he put it together.
700. 00:39:13 One thing I did want to mention here was from chapter eight, finding your beginnings. He says,
701. 00:39:18 a written story is like a lake, an oral story is like a river. I never really thought about it like
702. 00:39:22 that before. And I do think, I tend to agree, I think with the perspective in which he's explaining
703. 00:39:32 this because a written story isn't moving. You're just working your way through the
704. 00:39:37 text that's on the page where an oral story of things can just move right by you, which related,
705. 00:39:44 that's why I'm not a fan of audiobooks most of the time. Because if you're well for nonfiction
706. 00:39:51 books specifically, for fiction, it's fine because they are literally telling you a story for biographies,
707. 00:39:57 it's fine, like creativity, ink, that's one that I would listen to, stuff like that, things I want
708. 00:40:02 to just like review, I'll listen to it. But if I come across a passage in a printed book,
709. 00:40:10 I can my eyes stop moving down the page and I sit and I wrestle with that for a minute.
710. 00:40:15 If I come across a passage in an audiobook, my phone's in my pocket, the audio just keeps going.
711. 00:40:21 And I have the thought, oh, I should take this out, caption, no, it's all right, the moment's gone.
712. 00:40:27 You know, it just keeps moving.
713. 00:40:28 And the number of times I've like said, I want to write that down and then I've had to rewind
714. 00:40:33 the audiobook like six times to actually capture it. It's like the friction there is just so high.
715. 00:40:38 So yeah, that makes total sense to me. I think Matthew does a really good job at
716. 00:40:44 effectively utilizing lists because a lot of his chapters have lists in them, but they don't
717. 00:40:49 feel like lists, like they feel like ideas that are coming out to you. So you brought up the first
718. 00:40:54 one where he unpacks the different stakes and like, you know, the backpack and the crystal ball and
719. 00:40:58 all these other things. He does the same thing with the next chapter, which is the lies, permissible
720. 00:41:03 lies that you can do. It's essentially a list, right? So you got lie one, lie two, lie three,
721. 00:41:07 you know, assumptions and compression and progression. But he doesn't like when I was reading it,
722. 00:41:12 I didn't feel like it was a list. I felt like it was, consider how you would lie in this way.
723. 00:41:18 And he doesn't couch lies in like bad things. I don't like the word lies, actually. I don't think
724. 00:41:25 he uses like, I don't think the word lies does it justice? I do like the way he frames it though,
725. 00:41:30 because the issue, the reason he's bringing it up at all is he's figured out what makes a good story,
726. 00:41:37 and then he'll tell the story and somebody else who was part of that story, it's like, well,
727. 00:41:42 that's not exactly what happened. He's like, yeah, I know. But the real version isn't as entertaining.
728. 00:41:48 So the five permissible lies he talks about are omission, compression, assumption, progression,
729. 00:41:53 and conflation. And I feel like he does a good job of explaining where like you do want to take,
730. 00:41:59 if you are so focused on telling a great story, there are things where you want to describe.
731. 00:42:07 Again, it's not just like making stuff up, but it's like picking out and highlighting specific
732. 00:42:16 details. Okay. And he does call out at some point later that like you never are going to recall
733. 00:42:20 the event exactly as it happened. So don't put so much pressure on yourself to like absolutely
734. 00:42:26 nail it, like figure out what makes the best story and tell it as truthfully as you as you can.
735. 00:42:32 So you're not just like pulling stuff out of thin air, you're not inserting stuff that wasn't
736. 00:42:36 there, but focus on the good stuff. You don't have to tell every single detail that's boring.
737. 00:42:41 So this gets into an ethical issue, right? Because I'm reading this chapter thinking about,
738. 00:42:44 like, where did my ethics stand on on this? So compression, let's use compression for an example.
739. 00:42:50 So we you and I are telling a story or I'm telling you a story. And it started on Monday. And then
740. 00:42:56 the the culmination of the story actually happens on Saturday. Well, when I'm telling you that story,
741. 00:43:01 I just let basically all the days, and this is an example he used in the book, I basically let
742. 00:43:05 all the days in between go by and I say it happened in the morning and then it finished in the in
743. 00:43:08 the afternoon. And the reality is it doesn't actually impact the meaning of the story. Like that five
744. 00:43:13 second moment that transformation that change doesn't matter that it happened on Monday and
745. 00:43:18 then finished on on Saturday. And he's saying that a lot of times there'll be a there'll be a
746. 00:43:25 claim to say like, just shrink it to one day. The audience gets it better. It res it resolves
747. 00:43:31 better and it all is presented better. So it makes for a better story. And I start to go,
748. 00:43:35 we have it. It's it's not a it's not a completely true story then. And he would say it doesn't have
749. 00:43:40 to be a completely true story because the goal here is to tell a story. The goal here is to,
750. 00:43:45 you know, tell a good and compelling story. And I don't know how like there's something about that
751. 00:43:49 that doesn't sit right with me. Although I put it in the context of I go to one of these competitions
752. 00:43:56 and is the expectation that my story is 100% detail for detail accurate. I don't think that's
753. 00:44:03 the case. Like I don't think when I walk into there, anybody cares that it's 100% detail to
754. 00:44:08 detail accurate. Now if I'm telling a story to like, you know, you or my wife or something like that,
755. 00:44:15 I also don't think they care about the story being as good as it needs to be to win a competition.
756. 00:44:20 So therefore I can be like, I started on Monday and we and then Saturday rolls around. And I don't
757. 00:44:23 think they get pulled out of the out of the story. Like he's saying they would in the thing. So it's
758. 00:44:28 like, I get it. I understand what he's doing. But there's something in there in this lie section
759. 00:44:33 that I'm like, I just don't feel right about that. I just don't feel right about that. So so I don't
760. 00:44:36 know how you feel about it. I I sort of agree and sort of disagree because I think the issue you have
761. 00:44:46 is that there's nuance to this. So if he's telling a story, this happened on Monday, then this happened
762. 00:44:53 on Saturday and he just leaves out the date information and you connect the dots that this has happened
763. 00:45:01 in a truncated timeframe. I feel like that is different than saying in the morning this happened
764. 00:45:08 and then a couple of hours later, this happened. Yes. I feel like if you were to actually see
765. 00:45:14 Matthew Dix tell a story, he's going to cherry pick the the the facts that he wants you to have. And your
766. 00:45:22 brain as he's telling you this story is going to try to connect all of these dots. And I feel like
767. 00:45:28 he's really good at this because he he's picking some dots because he wants you to connect things
768. 00:45:33 sometimes in in ways that are not not in alignment with the end of the story, because then when he
769. 00:45:40 tells the end of the story, you're surprised. But I don't think he's actually saying these things.
770. 00:45:45 And I personally, I think that is a different scenario than the one you're describing. I don't
771. 00:45:50 think I would change details just because it made a better story. But I think I probably would
772. 00:45:56 focus in on specific details and omit other details so that the the audience is is telling
773. 00:46:04 their own story because when you have a couple of minutes, I forget how long the moth sessions
774. 00:46:09 were, but Toastmasters was five to seven minutes, most of the those speeches. And you've got an
775. 00:46:15 introduction, you've got a conclusion, you've got essentially like three main points. That's kind
776. 00:46:19 of what they walk you through in the curriculum. You don't have you don't have a lot of time. And
777. 00:46:24 that's one of the things you discover when you give a speech is that that time flies much faster
778. 00:46:29 than you think it will. You're practicing your speech. Oh yeah, this is you know, I can easily get
779. 00:46:34 this done in seven minutes and you get up there and you go for 12. So this is advice that most
780. 00:46:41 people who speak publicly need to hear is like, don't say so much. So I have little kids. I can't
781. 00:46:49 remember how old how young is your littlest? She's seven. Seven. Okay. So I've I've younger,
782. 00:46:55 right? And he gets into a whole chapter about button therefore using using
783. 00:47:00 buttons and yeah, and not doing the and and and and and the number of times we sit at the dinner
784. 00:47:06 table. And my kid is telling me a story about their day. And it's just that and and and and
785. 00:47:12 I'm like, okay, hold on. We have to like, we got to pump the brakes on this. Like, we got to stop.
786. 00:47:16 We got to breathe a little bit. And I could not and I fell off my bike. And I could not think of
787. 00:47:20 anything of like, this guy is spot on like these stories that they tell where it's just and and
788. 00:47:25 and they're so bad. They are just so like such bad stories. And he gets into the idea of instead
789. 00:47:32 of the and and and and there needs to be a but or there needs to be a therefore in there because
790. 00:47:37 exactly switch that like change in thinking is what makes the story interesting and what keeps
791. 00:47:42 you engaged. And this is where some of my favorite like teachers stress this point and the in the
792. 00:47:50 phrase is like, what's the therefore therefore? Like, that's what they'll say. It's like, what's
793. 00:47:54 the therefore? Therefore? And it's like, Oh, it's there because we're counteracting a point that
794. 00:47:58 was made earlier up here or it's there because we want to stress this this other point. I thought
795. 00:48:03 that was like that chapter could not have resonated with me more in terms of how do I structure things
796. 00:48:09 and how do I teach in a way that I'm not just going and and and but I'm I'm making contrast and
797. 00:48:15 I'm bringing out key points and helping people like, Oh, wow, like that inverse ideas is really,
798. 00:48:22 really powerful. Yeah, and he does a great job in that section. He's got text based examples of
799. 00:48:27 some stories that he shared previously and he changes all the like the unifying words to and
800. 00:48:33 at the beginning just and make some bold so you can see him so you can see what effect that has
801. 00:48:37 on the story and how boring it makes it and then changes them back and shows you know the words
802. 00:48:41 that he actually used and the version of but or therefore that that they they were in service of
803. 00:48:48 yeah there's there's a lot of really good technical stuff in in here in this whole section.
804. 00:48:55 You can really see where like so he runs what workshops is that what he said he doesn't call
805. 00:48:59 him classes he calls him workshops right right and you could really see where this book
806. 00:49:04 came out of the workshop stuff that he was doing and like they kind of go hand-in-hand because
807. 00:49:10 I could easily see this content scaled to whatever length of the workshop you have
808. 00:49:17 being really really effective at helping you become a better storyteller because you're going to
809. 00:49:21 learn about this idea and then he's going to like actually work it with you and he's going to have
810. 00:49:25 you practice it on some story that you have and it was like man like what a powerful way to help
811. 00:49:30 people learn storytelling and and you would expect this or at least I would you would expect this
812. 00:49:35 from a fifth grade teacher who then got really really passionate about a thing called storytelling
813. 00:49:40 and it was like well I'm just going to teach this to other people when I'm going to figure out the
814. 00:49:44 way to make this the best and then oh by the way he's really competitive so you know that brought
815. 00:49:48 out that brought out that side too so right yeah the other thing I wanted to call out from this
816. 00:49:53 section before we go to part three is chapter 16 the simple effective way is to be funny in
817. 00:49:58 storytelling because uh the thing that he mentions at the beginning is even if you're not a funny
818. 00:50:04 person you can still craft a story with funny moments that's kind of what happened to me when I
819. 00:50:08 entered the humor speech contest uh I went into it thinking like I'm not a joke teller this is
820. 00:50:15 going to be really hard my kids were little at the time and I just ended up crafting a speech about
821. 00:50:22 the uh the funny things kids do uh essentially from a parenting perspective and um I would I kind
822. 00:50:31 of saw firsthand the the things that he's talking about here like you want things to be relatable
823. 00:50:37 to people and you want to focus on these these little moments um in this section he talks about
824. 00:50:43 milk cans and baseballs where milk cans are the setup and the baseballs are the punchline you know
825. 00:50:47 as I told that the first time you know and I kept progressing through the different competitions
826. 00:50:53 that actually became more refined and and more developed um so I really like this uh this section
827. 00:51:02 and I just wanted to I guess double click on the fact here that anybody can add humor like he does
828. 00:51:10 to a lot of these stories I think if you don't have that experience maybe you read this and you're
829. 00:51:16 like well mathy dicks is just a really funny funny guy but I can't do that you can um you just have
830. 00:51:23 to understand how how this stuff works and also the thing that that really you got to be aware of
831. 00:51:30 he calls out in this section is that jokes don't stay with you stories do like you go here a stand-up
832. 00:51:36 comedian and you can't remember any of the jokes that they they told the next day but if somebody
833. 00:51:40 tells you a powerful story that can stick with you the the rest of your life so make sure you're
834. 00:51:45 you're focusing on the content and not the the humor but then recognizing how the formula for humor
835. 00:51:50 works I guess yeah um is uh is relevant for everybody yeah I'll just summarize like my take on part two
836. 00:52:00 part two was a large part of the meat of this book right I forget what you said it's chapter
837. 00:52:06 you know six through seventeen or something like that I forget what it actually was but but like
838. 00:52:11 it was not at all it did not at all feel like oh my gosh will this section ever end like will
839. 00:52:18 this you know part of your end it was always like oh I can see how this idea relates to better
840. 00:52:22 storytelling I can see how this idea relates to better storytelling um and and it's not saying that
841. 00:52:26 you agree or disagree with every every part of it but you can see the value of everything that he's
842. 00:52:30 saying as it relates to um better storytelling so overall like I thought I thought there were a lot
843. 00:52:36 of really actionable and tangible things to take away from part two there are uh there's a lot of
844. 00:52:43 just like one liner things that are tangible takeaways like chapter 17 your story can never be about
845. 00:52:49 two things you got to pick one pick one which I think about the number of times you tell a story
846. 00:52:54 though that it's you realize it's about two different things at the same time and you're like I
847. 00:52:57 knew you confused in it what a what a powerful takeaway it's like exactly I read that and I was
848. 00:53:02 like wow I do that a lot and he could have written you know hundred pages on why that's not the thing
849. 00:53:10 to do but he very succinctly addresses you know don't do this and this is why yep exactly exactly
850. 00:53:16 exactly um I this is one of those situations too where he does a good job at like explaining to
851. 00:53:24 you why you should listen to him without feeling like he's like bragging about it like I didn't get
852. 00:53:30 the impression at all that he was like look at me I'm so amazing I went all these like moth it was
853. 00:53:35 I he told you that but he didn't do it in a way that was like over but at the same time like I
854. 00:53:42 thought the I was like man this guy's a good storyteller I should pay attention to what he's
855. 00:53:45 to what he's talking about so I thought you'd be balanced that well well that's the perfect
856. 00:53:50 place to get into part three so you ready to go there yes sir okay so part three um and I'm just
857. 00:53:57 going to jump straight to the the section that pertains to what you were just talking about that
858. 00:54:01 is chapter 19 the two ways of telling a hero story he has two tips for telling success stories
859. 00:54:06 malign yourself and malign your accomplishment yep yep yep so other than the little decal style
860. 00:54:12 graphic at the beginning of 38 time moth grand slam champion or whatever every time he tells
861. 00:54:17 the story is he's like I'm an idiot I'll use all the dumb things I did which makes him more
862. 00:54:24 relatable that's kind of the whole point of that chapter 19 he tells a story where he's like look
863. 00:54:29 at what I just told this one person who is about to go up on stage and like he explains he's like
864. 00:54:33 he basically like makes her exponentially more nervous before she goes on stage and he's like
865. 00:54:39 I was such an idiot like I mean he's like I didn't even realize I was doing it he's like I wasn't
866. 00:54:43 competitive I wasn't trying to do anything I was just being dumb and like I think about oh yeah I
867. 00:54:47 do that all the time like I said that thing and I'm like what was I thinking like I should never I
868. 00:54:52 should have never been saying that right and and that's funny because I didn't even mean the
869. 00:54:56 transition is into chapter 19 but it's so it's so true how how that works yeah so this one like
870. 00:55:03 part of as I'm going through this I'm thinking like I don't really see a disconnect like this
871. 00:55:07 could have been part of part two as well but then other times this does feel like okay now that
872. 00:55:12 you understand how this is all constructed here's what you use tangibly going forward as you are
873. 00:55:17 crafting your own stories so I think that that makes sense but there's so much good stuff in here
874. 00:55:23 like just in that section he talks a little bit about how failure is more engaging than success
875. 00:55:28 humans love underdogs stories people prefer small stories over large leaps
876. 00:55:33 so instead of telling a story about the full accomplishment tell about a simple like one small
877. 00:55:38 step and like you can look at how he's done that with the different stories that he's told
878. 00:55:46 and be like yeah you know this makes a ton of sense and it's kind of like one right after the other
879. 00:55:52 these practical tips this could easily be like a thousand pages I feel with everything that he
880. 00:55:59 knows about this stuff but he's done a really great job of condensing it down even though it's
881. 00:56:03 like 330 pages I do like chapter 18 the present tense is king this is a great way to start
882. 00:56:09 this section really just encouraging you that when you're telling a story tell it in the present tense
883. 00:56:15 he shares again a personal story here and shares examples of like jumping back and forth between
884. 00:56:21 present and past tense so that he can fill in some back story stuff but the majority of the
885. 00:56:26 story is happening in the present tense and with all the examples that he gives you it really helps
886. 00:56:30 solidify these concepts so you really understand how they work yeah yeah I I agree with the way you
887. 00:56:37 said it and I like the way you said it but it's basically like hit this point hit this point hit
888. 00:56:42 this point hit this point and like he's providing examples the whole time but I'm looking at my notes
889. 00:56:47 and like as more than any other book like as I'm I'm looking at these like almost everything I've
890. 00:56:52 lined out is a key principle like key principle key principle and there are just so many of them
891. 00:56:57 in here you know you called out you called out some of them but like don't ask rhetorical questions
892. 00:57:02 don't ever use props avoid and acronyms right like like there's just so many and then he explains it
893. 00:57:07 and you're like oh yeah like that that makes sense why you wouldn't want to do that and I've seen a
894. 00:57:11 story go wrong and that way or it pulls you out of it and then there's other ones like I've never
895. 00:57:16 even thought about that he talks about everything you know so this is the basically telling the story
896. 00:57:21 part so before was crafting the story this is a telling story so then he gets into things in chapter
897. 00:57:25 21 you know like what should you do with profanity what should you do with vulgarity what should you
898. 00:57:29 do with other people's names and celebrities and references and and it's like so have you thought
899. 00:57:35 about this let me give you a perspective on it or yeah sometimes he even like just goes real hard
900. 00:57:41 on he's like don't he's like just don't use props because it pulls people out of the story yeah you
901. 00:57:46 know and and whether I'm sure that if you're more knowledgeable on this or you have you know more
902. 00:57:53 experience than I do you could say like oh yeah but there's this one time somebody told me a story
903. 00:57:57 and they used the props and it was amazing and it's like sure I'm sure there's a there are
904. 00:58:01 exceptions to the rule but I just have to think that like a lot of these things he's throwing out
905. 00:58:05 there are the rule you know that there are very very few exceptions to um which I liked I mean I
906. 00:58:12 liked a lot the the problem I have and I'll get to this in style and rating there's so much in here
907. 00:58:18 that you almost feel like you need to like review it and it's like yeah I know we covered a ton of
908. 00:58:23 stuff if I actually want to get better at storytelling how do I review this in an effective way and
909. 00:58:28 this is where like your notes and your series of notes and pull outs come into play but yeah you
910. 00:58:32 don't know what my mind map that's why yeah exactly yeah exactly uh you're right there is a lot
911. 00:58:38 light in here um before we get to celebrating though one other thing I wanted to hit on and that is
912. 00:58:44 the chapter 22 time to perform he talks about memorization and this is the the open loop that
913. 00:58:50 I mentioned at the beginning the reason that I entered the humorous speech contest in the first
914. 00:58:55 place so page 313 he talks about how some storytellers memorize word for word and then they get on
915. 00:59:02 stage they lose their place and they just freeze that actually happened to me when I was competing
916. 00:59:08 in the I think it's the inspirational speech contest which is kind of my wheelhouse I feel
917. 00:59:14 that's what I try to do it's in line with my life theme I want to help people multiply their
918. 00:59:18 time and talent leave a bigger dent in the universe and I liked uh when I was doing public speaking
919. 00:59:24 like in my my club and I started doing the the Toastmaster stuff I realized that I can make a
920. 00:59:30 a deeper connection with people when I'm talking live in in front of them then I can even via
921. 00:59:35 video and especially over like text or or things that you would share online so yeah this is scary
922. 00:59:41 but this is kind of cool and then I got to a competition where I got past the club level and
923. 00:59:47 with Toastmasters there are several different levels I forget all the names but there's a club
924. 00:59:51 level and then there's kind of like the all the clubs in our city basically they had a contest
925. 00:59:56 with with those people and um this was my story about my life you know I'm up there on the stage
926. 01:00:02 for the inspirational speech contest and I had memorized the whole thing okay and I got about
927. 01:00:07 four minutes into it and I just blinked and there was this big long pause kind of like that one
928. 01:00:14 that just got cut by overcast probably and what do I do you know and I kind of stumbled through it
929. 01:00:23 after a little while and and did obviously did not did not advance and felt like that was terrible
930. 01:00:31 and I hated that but I needed to prove to myself like as soon as I walked off the stage I'm like
931. 01:00:35 I need to get back up on that same stage do this again and prove to myself prove to myself that I
932. 01:00:41 can do it so I walked out of there I'm like what's the next contest I can enter and it happened to be
933. 01:00:47 the humorous speech contest like well my only goal here is to get back up on that stage
934. 01:00:54 and deliver my speech in front of the the actual judges and uh and then I'll be done you know I'm
935. 01:01:01 not gonna advance I'm not funny so I'll just deliver the speech and move on and I won at that
936. 01:01:10 competition and then I won at the next competition and then I won at the next competition and then I
937. 01:01:15 won at the next competition and I made it to the district finals which was the whole state of
938. 01:01:19 Wisconsin and upper Michigan that's where I lost to a professional comedian which was cool you
939. 01:01:26 know I shared earlier I got connected with him Beverly while I was there and a lot of good came
940. 01:01:29 from that but that was never the goal the goal was just I got to get up on stage because I fell
941. 01:01:33 into this trap that he talks about in chapter 22 so don't be like Mike do what he says don't
942. 01:01:40 memorize your story but think about the different scenes and only memorize three parts memorize
943. 01:01:46 first few sentences the last few sentences and then all the different scenes in your your story
944. 01:01:52 and I think if there was like one takeaway that I would tell 18 year old Mike to grok from this book
945. 01:02:00 that would probably be it yeah I uh I've never been very good at memorizing anything like in my life
946. 01:02:08 like it I feel like it takes me three times as long and at least twice as much work as everyone
947. 01:02:15 else to memorize anything like so states capitals any of that stuff right like I had to work so
948. 01:02:20 a charter and that's why like I didn't go into a field like biology or anything like that I was
949. 01:02:24 like I I just don't want to memorize all the body parts and I don't care and I don't want to do that
950. 01:02:29 um so this this was like oh yeah that makes sense right first sentence last sentence
951. 01:02:34 you know seeing scenes will walk you through and it was like okay cool as long as we can
952. 01:02:38 as long as we can do that um but but did you memorize it for the second time like the second
953. 01:02:43 time around did you still memorize um I think when you started winning I think uh so I remember
954. 01:02:52 well with the humor part that kind of changes it a little bit because remember the the milk cans
955. 01:02:56 in the baseball so I I'd gotten some advice from one of my mentors in the club who had been at
956. 01:03:04 that competition and they basically walked me through the what is it mind palace idea you know
957. 01:03:10 where you you have the different parts of your story and they're basically related to rooms in
958. 01:03:15 your house and I never like the rooms of my house never really clicked for me but I kind of made
959. 01:03:21 that my own okay so there's like these different sections of the story and these are the important
960. 01:03:25 things like the milk cans that I need in order to set up the punch line which is happening here
961. 01:03:30 so if you were going to go back and listen to the recordings they probably are very similar but
962. 01:03:35 that wasn't the exact approach I took I didn't realize that I was pushing back against memorizing
963. 01:03:42 at that that point I think I just kind of stumbled into a more effective way to do it and if you
964. 01:03:46 were just watching me present you probably would have thought the approach was the the same and I
965. 01:03:50 just didn't freeze the that time yeah yeah yeah yeah um the last one I want to bring up before we
966. 01:03:58 before we move on is this superhero idea so the last chapter is you know to become a superhero
967. 01:04:02 he talks about storytellers having a superpower I think this is a really well-made point that's very
968. 01:04:08 very valuable in terms of he talks about it like you can make people feel good whole and right
969. 01:04:14 inspire and inform make them think in a different way you know make them think better about themselves
970. 01:04:19 or about the world and what I want to call out here because he doesn't call it out quite as much
971. 01:04:24 at least for my memory he doesn't you can also do the negative of that right like so you have to be
972. 01:04:29 careful with storytelling if you're a really good storyteller you can also have negative impacts
973. 01:04:36 on people and manipulate them through through story and like so this is where he he I briefly
974. 01:04:42 remember him saying something about it in terms of the spider-man principle where with great power
975. 01:04:47 comes great responsibility but like yes there's a lot of positives yes you can do a lot of good
976. 01:04:52 but you can also do a lot of bad so you got to be like you got to be careful if you get really
977. 01:04:55 good at this be really really careful and there are like examples through history of people who are
978. 01:05:00 really really good you know orators and really really good storytellers and it's like oh man like
979. 01:05:06 that that's not good what they did you know overall for society so you got to be really
980. 01:05:10 careful with that um but I agree with the principle like you you essentially have a
981. 01:05:14 superpower if you will right cool ready to uh to move on to action items action items yes all
982. 01:05:26 right so i've got the the one action item uh well i guess there's a couple exercises he gives you
983. 01:05:31 so you could say i'm going to try this exercise i'm going to try that exercise whatever but
984. 01:05:35 in terms of actually applying all of the things that he's mentioned here um though the one that
985. 01:05:41 stood out to me was to start logging stories and i captured this as a question mark because i'm
986. 01:05:46 going to add it to the the template like we talked about then i'm going to set up the quick add you
987. 01:05:51 so i can capture these things quickly when i'm journaling at the end of the day but i am not
988. 01:05:55 putting pressure on myself to capture these i'm going to see if it's if it resonates like in the
989. 01:06:03 moment do i feel like i have something or do i feel like this is a another big burden at the end of
990. 01:06:09 the day because if it feels like a burden it's not going to stick but it feels very similar to the
991. 01:06:17 gratitude practice that i've established at this point where i forced myself now to write about
992. 01:06:22 something that i'm grateful for every single day and at first it was a little bit difficult
993. 01:06:26 over time it became easier i have a feeling the same thing is going to happen with these
994. 01:06:31 story moments which don't have to be three four sentences it's just this thing happened a couple
995. 01:06:36 of words and then you can develop those into a story file later but i just want to start capturing
996. 01:06:43 these to my my daily note okay i didn't have any action items coming into this uh recording
997. 01:06:52 not for really any reason it's just nothing like jumped out at me in the book now you've
998. 01:06:56 been you've inspired me through the story file idea so my my first action item or my main action
999. 01:07:03 item is going to be log key stories and i'm going to narrow this down or skip this down to my family
1000. 01:07:08 like what are key stories for my family up until now that i want to make sure i don't forget and i'm
1001. 01:07:13 doing it purely as an archival mechanism i want to make sure that like i have this file that i can
1002. 01:07:18 go back to and like remember this thing that happened so i want to add key stories for my family to the
1003. 01:07:24 story file and at least brainstorm what those would be like get that one sentence down for those
1004. 01:07:30 the other one is like this and this is more like a creative project idea i think there's an interesting
1005. 01:07:38 um opportunity for like stories and certain contexts so i don't want to be like just general
1006. 01:07:44 storytelling like i i think that's too broad for me but is there like a creative outlet for
1007. 01:07:49 storytelling in the in the context i care about so i'm going to call this action item like creative
1008. 01:07:56 project around specific storytelling and i want to brainstorm that i don't know what that means
1009. 01:08:03 but that's what i'm gonna that's what i'm gonna do for now so those are my two action items
1010. 01:08:08 cool yeah all right style and rating yes uh i have been kind of apprehensive about this
1011. 01:08:20 because i think this is a phenomenal book and i think it's a five star book uh it feels a little
1012. 01:08:26 bit weird to rate a book about storytelling as five stars because on the surface it feels like
1013. 01:08:36 how much value can you really get from becoming a better storyteller but the truth is quite a bit
1014. 01:08:43 it can significantly improve your life um which was a little bit of a like i kind of knew that was
1015. 01:08:52 gonna happen i sort of understood conceptually that point but it's sort of like you know about
1016. 01:08:57 something and then you know something at different different levels it's a different thing so i
1017. 01:09:03 kind of if you would ask me do you understand the power of storytelling for this oh yeah yeah i
1018. 01:09:07 might understand it now i really understand it and so um i went into this thinking this is probably
1019. 01:09:13 going to be a great book it's probably going to be written perfectly from Matthew's point of view
1020. 01:09:17 and i'm gonna rate it four stars because it's just a book about storytelling yeah yeah yeah
1021. 01:09:22 but i do think it's really good and um yeah it feels weird like putting this one up there
1022. 01:09:29 alongside man's search for meaning and some other five star books maybe but uh this is a really good
1023. 01:09:36 one i do think anybody who picks this up is going to enjoy it i think it is definitely
1024. 01:09:42 worth a read by anybody in the bookworm audience um i don't think everyone is going to be in the
1025. 01:09:48 position to really want to sink their teeth into what he is talking about and that's okay if you
1026. 01:09:55 just read it because he tells some interesting stories and maybe there's one or two things you
1027. 01:09:58 get from it it's still beneficial but if you are looking for a book that is going to help you
1028. 01:10:05 become a better storyteller than this is the textbook this is the the one to read i think this is
1029. 01:10:12 probably uh the best book by Matthew Dix i had read one other one um i think it was today is the
1030. 01:10:20 day something or someday is today that that's what it was called um and that one was was good but
1031. 01:10:28 this is next level like this is so much better than that you could just tell like this is the
1032. 01:10:33 the thing that he really knows a ton about cares a ton about he's he's the guy for this he is the
1033. 01:10:40 the storytelling guy and um yeah i so i think whether storytelling is something that you really
1034. 01:10:47 want to improve as a skill or it's just something that you're vaguely curious about uh you will
1035. 01:10:53 both enjoy this book and get a lot out of it good good i agree that um this is a highly like this
1036. 01:11:02 book gets a high rating for me as well i won't go to five i don't think it's a i don't think it's a
1037. 01:11:07 five worthy book um one of the things that brings it down for me is i and this is personal preference
1038. 01:11:17 right so like i mean i there's really it's really nothing with the quality of the writing or the
1039. 01:11:23 organization of the book or the um the way he uses examples or the point that he makes like all of
1040. 01:11:30 that stuff would be five star without a doubt five star i'm totally okay with that story breaks
1041. 01:11:35 even though i thought there were a ton of them i thought they were all valuable and they weren't
1042. 01:11:38 that long so it didn't it didn't give me that much i think some of the i so i didn't resonate with
1043. 01:11:46 some of the stories that he tells like the context of some of the stories that he tells so for me
1044. 01:11:51 personally that knocks the the rating down uh some so uh for instance if you are on the more
1045. 01:11:58 conservative side of life which i am very admittedly um some of the stories he tells are like oh man
1046. 01:12:04 like holy shoot like that's a that's a story right there and like i would never like i would never
1047. 01:12:09 tell that story like i would never even think to tell that story that story would never even like
1048. 01:12:13 like would it be a good story to the population of people in the world yes i'm sure they would get
1049. 01:12:19 they would like it they would get a lot out of it sometimes they would laugh sometimes they would
1050. 01:12:22 cry and be shocked and odd and on all of those things but like i would never ever even think to
1051. 01:12:27 tell that story much less tell it on stage right like much less tell it to a root a room for 500
1052. 01:12:32 people but i can see why he would do that if you're trying to conduct construct the best story
1053. 01:12:39 possible and you're trying to win a competition right it would be a really good story that hits a
1054. 01:12:43 lot of his points emotional response physical location like it hits all of these points that he brings
1055. 01:12:48 out so for that reason pretty much alone like for that reason pretty much alone it drops it to a
1056. 01:12:54 4.5 like so i'm not gonna i can't give it a five um but that's again i'll freely admit it's
1057. 01:13:01 purely personal like i if if you don't have that um that bent of like that conservative you know
1058. 01:13:08 kind of bent okay you'd be fine like you'll be like oh no he's crazy like course crazy on
1059. 01:13:13 on that rating dropping it down but it's a it's a 4.5 for me because of that otherwise from a
1060. 01:13:17 content standpoint oh i i know the one other thing i want to say is like this book will change the
1061. 01:13:23 way i think about stories forever like i will i will now like look at a story and be like okay
1062. 01:13:30 what is the five second thing that they're trying to tell me and then how are they filling in with
1063. 01:13:34 all this other stuff and then how are they using physical location and how are they doing this other
1064. 01:13:38 like this this book changes the way i think about stories and that's why it that's why it bounces
1065. 01:13:44 above above the four uh and goes to a 4.5 because um i don't think i'll ever look at stories again
1066. 01:13:49 and i also don't think i'll ever craft stories again the same way so huge i highly recommend
1067. 01:13:56 that if you're interested in stories at all um i highly recommend you you read this one
1068. 01:14:01 nice uh i want to respond to something that you shared uh and and i'm not trying to adjust your
1069. 01:14:07 or influence your rating at all but you mentioned the conservative bent because i also have a conservative
1070. 01:14:11 bent yeah but i realized that i have a different context probably than than you do and i also know
1071. 01:14:17 some more details of some of the stories that he did not share here because i had read his other
1072. 01:14:22 book some days today okay like he alludes to a couple of different times when he was a mcdonald's
1073. 01:14:28 manager and the thief's broken and held the gun to his head and opened the safe or we're gonna kill
1074. 01:14:36 you he tells that story in detail at the beginning of some days today and that was kind of the catalyst
1075. 01:14:42 for like what are you doing with your life you got to get this together and that's sort of like a
1076. 01:14:46 productivity book and essentially just don't don't waste your time and he talks about meeting somebody
1077. 01:14:52 and they don't have time to write and he's like well you have a phone you've got a couple minutes
1078. 01:14:56 here and there like i wrote a page on my phone in the ten minutes i was waiting for you because
1079. 01:15:00 you were late for the meeting like that's not you know just as an illustration of how you can
1080. 01:15:04 how you can redeem that those those moments so um i think you're right though i can i can put myself
1081. 01:15:10 in your shoes and and real and then think about like especially some of the ways that he frames
1082. 01:15:13 the stories he does it a little bit for shock value yes but uh it didn't hit me the same way that
1083. 01:15:19 it hit you and i think it's probably because i had a little bit more context yeah there were
1084. 01:15:23 just a couple times right and again it's completely personal right like it's completely personal
1085. 01:15:27 there were a couple times when i went uh like i don't i don't like that you know like i don't like
1086. 01:15:32 that i in his words um from what chapter would be one of the later chapters it's like 22 or something
1087. 01:15:38 like that um yeah let me think no it's 20 it's 21 right from so from his in his words i thought
1088. 01:15:46 some of the some of the context or some of the ways he framed things were vulgar to me yeah and
1089. 01:15:51 was this fair and that's okay right like they're not going to be vulgar to everybody and i'm not
1090. 01:15:55 going to like judge anybody and say like you should think that's vulgar too no no way right i'm just
1091. 01:16:00 saying for me i went which takes my rating from a five down to a four and a half and i and i usually
1092. 01:16:06 don't do half ratings but it takes it down to a four and a half for this one because the book
1093. 01:16:10 was just still so good otherwise so yeah and and so like to to reiterate the the point though like
1094. 01:16:16 he has been through some stuff oh yeah so that's shocking to you and me it's not that's not even the
1095. 01:16:23 top ten most shocking things that have happened to him i mean he tells a story of like in the car
1096. 01:16:27 accident flying through the windshield the mcdonald's thing like he has so many stories where it's like
1097. 01:16:33 i should be dead and the whole time like i'm reading this and i'm thinking like in the other
1098. 01:16:38 half my brain is going this poor guy yeah like my goodness like this poor guy like
1099. 01:16:43 his life has been so difficult and so terrible at times yeah so it's like don't like don't think
1100. 01:16:50 that you know i'm trying to come down harshly on him it's more a matter of like my goodness like
1101. 01:16:54 i can't imagine still being productive and a you know a member of society when that kind of bad
1102. 01:17:02 stuff has happened to you like holy cow it's intense for sure yeah yeah let's put story worthy
1103. 01:17:08 on the shelf what's next kori so my book is next and this book came from you so it's by a guy named
1104. 01:17:16 paul millard and he wrote the pathless path which mike has read before i have not read that before
1105. 01:17:21 but this is his new book it just came out in september of twenty four that's called good work
1106. 01:17:26 reclaiming your inner ambition so i think it fits in with uh with the audience it talks about you know
1107. 01:17:31 uh doing work and and kind of how do we um i don't want to say redeem but how do we how do we
1108. 01:17:36 think about our our work and and go from there so uh if if you're reading with us um that'll be the
1109. 01:17:42 next book good work by paul millard cool yeah i picked this one up initially as a gap book because
1110. 01:17:48 i was anxious to read it and i still haven't cracked it open well now you know that story worthy is done
1111. 01:17:54 we can't how about you uh after that we are going to read meditations for mortals by all
1112. 01:18:01 of her bergman all of her bergman is one of my favorite authors and uh he's got a new book out so
1113. 01:18:07 we're gonna go through it actually comes out october 8th so that is after we record but i think
1114. 01:18:12 it's probably before this goes live um so when you hear this it should be available but i've had
1115. 01:18:20 this one pre-ordered for months awesome i'm excited for that one too that that hit my radar
1116. 01:18:27 before you suggested it so i was i was excited to see that you picked that one too nice genny gapbooks
1117. 01:18:34 i do not and i'm okay with that right now we have to we just have too many sports and other things
1118. 01:18:42 going on in life that it's like i can't do gapbooks right now so no gap that's fair how about you i
1119. 01:18:48 also do not have a gapbook sorry everybody i probably will have read another book by the time we get
1120. 01:18:54 there but i got this one done about 20 minutes before we record it so i haven't had time to think
1121. 01:19:02 about a gapbook i do know that good work is going to be a pretty quick read it looks like so you
1122. 01:19:09 you wrote a gapbook though that's true yeah over 60 000 words for for life hq so so you wrote a
1123. 01:19:17 gapbook which we're you know we'll credit that we'll give you the green the green check mark on them
1124. 01:19:20 yeah thank you all right um as we wrap up here thank you to everyone for listening thank you
1125. 01:19:27 specifically to the bookworm pro members if you want to become a bookworm pro members support the
1126. 01:19:31 show directly that would be great we would love to have you do that it's at patreon.com/bookwormfm
1127. 01:19:38 and that gets you access to a couple of perks the big ones being the bootleg feed so when
1128. 01:19:44 we get done recording here i upload the bootleg so you get it actually about a week and a half
1129. 01:19:49 early most of the time there's also a pro version which when there are ads those are removed and
1130. 01:19:54 includes bonus segment today korean i didn't exercise from story worthy first last best worst
1131. 01:20:01 and there's also a bookworm wallpaper as well so thank you to everyone who supports us financially
1132. 01:20:10 you help us keep the lights on keep this thing going really appreciate it if you want to become
1133. 01:20:14 one of those people you can do so at patreon.com/bookwormfm i believe it's seven dollars a month
1134. 01:20:21 if you're reading along with us pick up good work by paul millard and we'll talk to you next time