Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 106

Painful Thanksgiving

My Thanksgiving Day began around 4:30 in the morning when the cat jumped onto the bed and caught my left index finger with his claw just right, drawing blood.

I was already awake, having opened my eyes a few minutes before, but it still surprised the hell out of me.

A day later, the cut on my finger still hurts. I’m probably a day or two away from a full-blown case of cat scratch fever, which is, by the way, a real thing.

And not just the 1977 Ted Nugent song by the same name. It’s a real infectious illness, too.

As I lay in the dark, clenching my fist to stanch the bleeding (or staunch the bleeding, as both are correct and the subject of linguistic battles between people who enjoy such things), Charlie’s knee crashed into my lip, splitting it open and drawing blood.

He had suffered a nightmare in the middle of the night and was lying beside our bed in a sleeping bag. When he heard me cry out, he assumed that I had gotten out of bed and moved quickly to take my place.

In the dark, he couldn’t see me, so as he jumped onto the bed (because that’s how he climbs onto every bed), he landed on my face, knee first. I cried out for a second time, causing him to cry out as well before apologizing to me about one thousand times.

A moment earlier, I had opened my eyes on an early Thanksgiving morning, feeling well-rested and ready to take on the day.

Now I was hunched over the bathroom sink as blood dripped from my finger and lip.

As far as I could tell, Elysha slept through it all.

Knowing how things tend to happen in sets of three, I was sure that I would slice off my pinkie finger while carving the turkey later that day, but thankfully, I managed to avoid being wounded for the third time.

The Patriots later lost to the Minnesota Vikings, which hurt more than both wounds combined, but that was an emotional pain. Deeper and longer lasting, but it didn’t draw any actual blood.

No real danger of infection.

I hope your Thanksgiving was more pain-free than mine.

Thankful for the times I live in today

I have a multitude of things to be thankful for this Thanksgiving, but today, I’m thankful for the time in which I live.

Nearly two years ago, a Canadien marketing expert named Joey found a story of mine online. He watched the video, which led to another and another, and in a short time, he had fallen down a rabbit hole of my content:

Stories, TEDx Talks, my blog, interviews, podcast, etc.

He became convinced that we should work together to produce online courses centered on storytelling.

Joey reached out to me, and after many conversations, we decided to give it a try.

Soon after, Lionel, an Israeli marketing expert with a deep understanding of the technology side of things, joined the team. Slowly, we began planning what a course on storytelling would look like.

Last summer, I added my friend, Kaia, to the team, first as my production assistant and later as my production manager. Kaia helps to record the content, edits and animates videos, solves technology and hardware problems, and much more.

Recognizing the scope of the work ahead, I had an unfinished room in our basement turned into a recording studio. Once construction was complete, Elysha and Kaia furnished it, and new sound and recording equipment were added.

Recently, Kassandra joined the team as my social media manager. Kassandra is a Canadien who lives anywhere but Canada. Instead, she has been traveling the world, doing her job in whatever city she happens to be visiting. So far I have spoken to Kassandra while she was in visiting the UK, France, and Japan. Kassandra has become a bit of an expert on me, diving into two decades of blogging (more than 7,000 posts in all), more than 100 episodes of the Speak Up Storytelling podcast, and hundreds of hours of video, harvesting content for Instagram, Facebook, and apparently TikTok.

I didn’t know I was on TikTok, but a student stopped me in the hallway last week to say that he saw me on TikTok.

“I’ve never even opened that app,” I said indignantly.

“Sure,” he said. “Whatever you say.”

As he walked away, it occurred to me:

Kassandra.

She has me on TikTok.

Add to this team a new attorney who I have only spoken to via Zoom, an accountant who I have only spoken to via email, and financial folks who I turn to constantly with both good and dumb questions.

On top of all this have been the many content creators whose YouTube channels have become critical to my learning process.

Want to learn to do something new?

It’s almost certainly taught well on YouTube.

I’m standing on the shoulders of many, many people.

Last week we launched our first product, Storytworthy for Business, an online course that includes videos, a workbook, exercises, and much more. Goals were set for the first two weeks of sales, and we exceeded those goals by leaps and bounds.

By all accounts, our first two weeks of promotion and sales were a huge success, and the feedback thus far has been extraordinarily positive.

So I find myself thankful on this day for the time in which I live. Had I not been able to put my writing and videos online for the world to read and see and hear, a man in Canada would have never found me and seen the potential and possibility that I could not.

If the world wasn’t so easily connected as it is today, people in Canada, Israel, the United States, and who-knows-where could not come together and work as seamlessly as we do thanks to technological marvels like Zoom, WhatsApp, and other platforms that didn’t exist a short time ago.

Had the world not become such a global community, I would not have had access to talented people around the world and all that they have to offer.

Today I’m happy to be living in a world where all of this is possible.

I’m also deeply thankful to Joey, Lionel, Elysha, Kaia, Kassandra, Wendy, Chris, Dan, and Darlene for helping me build a business that could never have imagined just three years ago.

I hope you are equally fortunate to have such talented, dedicated, and committed people in your life today.

If not, try to find them.

Or put things into the world so that they can find you.

We live in an incredible world of possibility.

I hope you have many reasons to give thanks today.

Kung Fu Fighting Dance Party

Pay attention to the little things. Remember them. Record them so you will always have them. They are more precious than you could ever imagine.

Last night, I introduced Charlie to Carl Douglas’s “Kung Fu Fighting” for the first time. For the next three minutes, Charlie and I danced around the kitchen and laughed. He thought the song and lyrics were hilarious because they are.

Then we played it again and danced again, jumping off stools, barrel rolling on the floor, and doing our best impressions of kung fu fighters.

Then we called Clara downstairs and played it again for her. In seconds, she was dancing with us, too. Laughing and dancing.

I never want to forget it:

The night the kids and I had a “Kung Fu Fighting” dance party in the kitchen.

But it’s also the kind of thing you will absolutely, positively forget if you make no attempt to hold onto these moments forever. Preserve them. Cling to them like the treasures they are.

I hold onto these moments using Homework For Life.

You should, too. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Building your nest egg via optimism

I love this graphic so much.

As a relentless proponent of optimism for so many reasons. There is a chapter on cultivating optimism in my new book, “Someday Is Today.” I write about how optimists tend to be happier, healthier, and more productive people, as well as how optimism can be grown and nurtured through some simple strategies.

This graphic offers just another reason to be optimistic.

As Warren Buffet has often said, “Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”

While pessimists worry about short-term losses, optimists are more than happy to relieve them of their long-term gains.

Growing golfers! And storytellers!

More than 16 years ago, my friend, Tom gifted me a set of golf clubs that he purchased at a yard sale for $10. He tossed them into the back of my truck on a snowy day in December, wrapped together by a small, red ribbon.

He and our friend, Jeff, had been trying desperately to get me to play, but I had refused, thinking that golf was stupid, boring, and elitist.

When I found the clubs, I immediately called Tom. “Did you leave a set of golf clubs in the back of my car?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Did I?”

I hung up and called Jeff.

“Did you leave a set of golf clubs in the back of my car?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Did I?”

The two hadn’t prearranged this identical response. They are both identically annoying.

So began my journey into the game of golf. Jeff and Tom took me out on an afternoon that spring to play the game for the first time. Jeff told me to move quickly. “You can hit the ball as often as you want, but just don’t stand over the ball forever. Swing and move.”

Tom told me to hit a two-iron off the tee.

If you know anything about golf, you know that one person had my best interests at heart. The other clearly did not.

But I fell in love with the game almost instantly, and it changed my life. Made my life exponentially better.

That set of ancient, yard sale irons was one of the best gifts I have ever received.

Six years later, I called my friend, Kim, and asked if I could introduce her husband, Andrew, to golf. I warned her that golf might remove him from the house for hours at a time, but she agreed. She thought it sounded like a good opportunity for him to spend time with friends.

So I took Andrew to the range before playing our first round together. His first swing of the driver sent the ball farther and straighter than I had ever hit a ball in my life.

I couldn’t believe it. I also hated him.

Thankfully, he couldn’t hit an iron for a year, and his putting is still suspect today, but in a surprisingly short period of time, Andrew became one of the best golfers of our bunch. A legitimately excellent golfer.

Kim isn’t exactly thrilled to find him practicing his swing in a grocery store aisle or losing him to hundreds of hours of YouTube instructional videos. A few years ago, she called to inform me that Andrew was playing alone, in the rain. “Is this normal?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “Definitely not.”

However, Andrew and I played golf while in a snowstorm (the snow started after we had teed off), and we played golf more than once with snow on the ground, so perhaps it’s more normal than I implied.

But today, Andrew loves golf. In the same way that Tom and Jeff brought something into my life that I adore, I did the same for Andrew.

Last spring, after years of coercion, I finally convinced my friend, Rob, to give golf a try. I handed him the same clubs that Tom gave me long ago and took him to play his first round. After two seasons of playing the game, Rob is also hooked. He isn’t as good as Andrew, but his game is coming along well. Being retired allows him to play more often than me.

Eventually, Rob purchased his own set of clubs and returned the old set to me.

A month ago, I handed those clubs to my friend, Chris, also newly retired, and took him for his first round of golf.

Rob joined us.

Not only did Chris immediately love the game, but it turns out that he is a natural as well. He hits the ball clean and far, moves quickly, and he asks all the right questions. He’s playing well enough already to fit right in with the gang.

Chris will eventually purchase a set of clubs of his own and hand me back that original set, and I’ll wait to pass those clubs on to the next person.

I recently gave my second set of clubs to my friend, Kaia. We have yet to play, and given the onset of winter, we may need to wait until spring, but she is my next victim. I hope.

There is great joy in passing on a passion to another person and watching them fall in love, just like you once did. Knowing how much the game of golf has brought to my life, it’s thrilling to see someone begin a similar journey, knowing all that is to come for them.

Expanding a person’s life might be the greatest gift one person can offer another.

I’ve done something similar in storytelling. Through my book on storytelling, my workshops, and now my online course, I’ve brought the joy and power of storytelling to thousands of people. Many of those folks use storytelling in their everyday life. Others have used storytelling to build their businesses, grow their confidence, and improve their mental health. Many have eventually found their way to a Moth stage (or have been strong-armed onto the stage by me) to compete in a StorySLAM, just like I did for the first time back in July of 2011.

Like golf, they have discovered the multitude of ways that storytelling can change your life, too.

If you have the opportunity to expand someone’s life, do it. If there is something that you are passionate about and think others would be equally passionate about, share your passion with them. Invite them into your world. Open their eyes to something new.

I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Incompetent friends

Am I a jerk to think that it’s hard – and maybe impossible – to have an incompetent friend?

If you know for a fact that your friend is terrible at their job, even if their job has nothing to do with your job, does that make it hard to continue to be their friend?

As I run through the list of my current and even former friends, I’m hard-pressed to find an incompetent one in the bunch. A few from the past come to mind, but I must also admit that I was the one who created the distance that ultimately ended the friendship.

But as I scan the horizon today, almost all of my friends are highly successful people in their particular professions. Some are more skillful and successful than others, of course, but I can’t think of anyone who isn’t at the top or near the top of their game.

I take note of this because I have a friend who has an incompetent friend. Even worse, they both do the same job. My friend performs that job exceedingly well, but the other is objectively terrible at the same job, and my friend knows it.

I don’t know how you continue being friends with someone like that.

But perhaps I’m a jerk.

Charlie read “Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend”

Charlie read “Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend” last week.

He began reading it at school after checking out a copy from the library.

We have copies of the book here at home, of course, but the fact that he found the book in his school library is kind of amazing to me.

The book was originally written for adults, so the fact that it can be found in my children’s school library and is part of their curriculum is even more astounding to me.

When Clara read “Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend” back in 2020, she was so sad about the ending of the book that she couldn’t bring herself to discuss it with me for a while. She may have even been a little angry at me for ending the book the way I did.

Like I had a choice. Like I have any say over what happens in my novels.

I’m not kidding.

Charlie’s reaction was very different. He came downstairs the next morning asking me lots of questions.

How did I come up with the idea for the book?

Did I know how it would end when I started writing?

How did I think up certain characters and certain situations?

Did I draw anything from real life?

Unlike his sister, who becomes deeply, and emotionally connected with characters and stories, Charlie is an analyst. He views the world as something in need of deciphering and solving. He looks at the world through the lens of a scientist and military tactician.

He also loved the book and talked to me about how it made him feel, but more importantly, he wanted to know how it happened.

How did you make that thing?

He also told me that he was proud of me for writing something so good, which was probably the best thing he could’ve said to me about anything I’ve written.

“Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend” is dedicated to Clara. “The Other Mother” is dedicated to Charlie. That book features a teenage protagonist, so I told Charlie that he could read it next if he wanted.

“But there are a lot of swears in the book,” I warned him. “The protagonist is a teenage boy and talks like one.”

“Maybe when I’m a little older,” Charlie said.

I understood. The boy despises swearing of any kind.

Like father, like daughter

I write letters to my children. Then I stick those letters in envelopes, affix stamps, and mail them to the kids.

It’s fun to get mail, even if it’s from your father, and it’s my chance to say some things that I want them to remember.

Clara mentioned these letters to me this week. She said, “Yeah, I save them all. When I’m feeling down, I take them out and read them. They always make me feel better.”

I couldn’t believe it.

I wrote a whole chapter of my new book, Someday Is Today, on the importance of preserving compliments and messages of kindness and doubling their power whenever possible through a number of strategies that bring those words back to you again and again.

It’s an important concept to understand if you’re looking to increase motivation and your overall sense of well-being.

None of us experience enough kindness in this world. As idyllic as your life might be, we all deserve more positivity in our lives. Compliments and acts of kindness are far too rare in this world.

Even worse, our ancient, hunter-gatherer brains are designed to remember negative experiences far better than positive ones.

Back when negative experiences – a poisonous berry or a hungry lion – could kill you, remembering those negative experiences was incredibly important. Life was brutal and precarious, so being ever vigilant for the multitude of things that could kill you was required for survival.

But the world today is filled with doors and Doritos. Security and sustenance abound. It’s a much safer place for human beings, yet we are still wired to remember that rotten thing a coworker said to us far better and far longer than the compliment offered to us by our neighbor.

Research shows that it takes six positive statements to counteract one negative one. Sadly, very few of us live in a world where this 6:1 ratio is ever achieved.

But perhaps we can get closer by doubling and tripling the power of the positive statements we receive. My book talks about the many ways of doing this.

Little did I know my 13-year-old daughter was already engaging in my strategy. Doubling and tripling the power of the kind words that I send to her through the mail in a simple, proactive, and effective way.

She gets it. I could be happier.

Brilliant girl. Don’t you think?

Storyworthy has launched at last.

I’m thrilled to announce the launch of my brand new company, Storyworthy, and my very first online course:

Storytelling For Business

If you’re a person looking to tell stories for marketing, branding, advertising, leadership, entrepreneurship, and more, this program is for you. With more than 50 lessons, a workbook filled with exercises, an extensive archive of my stories, and much more, you’ll have access to some of my best lessons, ideas, and strategies – the very same ones that I use when working with small businesses, Fortune 100 companies, nonprofits, advertising agencies, corporate leaders, and more.

The strangest and perhaps most illuminating thing about this new business is this:

I never thought I had anything to say about business. I never imagined that the strategies I used when finding and telling stories could someday help people improve their businesses, increase profits and employee retention, transform their marketing and branding, and more. It was business people who came to me first, asking for my help.

My initial response:

I have nothing to offer you. I tell stories onstage about myself. I wouldn’t know the first thing about helping you with your business.

But business people knew better. They insisted that I could help, and very soon, I discovered that they were correct. So for the past decade, I have grown a consulting business, working with small businesses, fledgling entrepreneurs, nonprofits, and corporations as large as Amazon, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, Salesforce, and ESPN to improve their communication and so much more through storytelling.

Equally surprising, this business was not initially my idea. Happily and thankfully, someone found my work online and convinced me that my workshops, one-on-one coaching, and almost daily consulting could be translated into an online course and community that people would want and need.

So together we built a team and a company that at last has something to show the world.

Along the way, I built a recording studio in the basement. Purchased recording, sound, and lighting equipment and learned how to use it (and am still learning how to use it). We built a website and platform for customers, designed a workbook to help people as they work their way through the course, and gathered a community of business people who wanted to learn about how storytelling could change their lives and their business.

My team consists of Joey, a Canadien who found and convinced me to join him on this journey.

Lionel, an Israeli who has designed and built the website, platform, and much more.

Kassandra, a Canadien who is managing my social media and had become an expert on my teaching, my beliefs, and my voice.

Kaia, my production manager who does more than you could ever imagine.

I also find it incredible that in today’s world, people from around the globe can gather together to execute a project so seamlessly. Other than Kaia, I’ve never met any of my partners in person, but thanks to technology, we have been able to build this company together in ways that were impossible just ten years ago.

I find myself feeling very grateful today.

Grateful to those early business owners and entrepreneurs who understood – long before me – how storytelling could transform their businesses in meaningful, lasting ways.

Grateful to Joey for finding me, believing in me, and convincing me that this business could work.

Grateful to a team of people who have believed enough in this idea to join me on this journey.

Grateful to be living in a time when I can talk to Lionel in Isreal via Zoom, Kassandra in the UK via WhatsApp, and Joey in Canada via text message all on the same day.

If you’d like to check out my course, go to storyworthymd.com/discover. The first module is free, and for the next few days, the price for the course is a fraction of what it will be soon.

Also, join my Facebook group – Storyworthy: Storytelling for Business and Professionals – to receive free lessons and content regularly.

It was a long road to finally get to this point, and quite honestly, it’s just the beginning. I plan to add and improve upon the content in the course regularly – and you’ll receive continuous access to that new content as I do – as well as build new products in the future for parents, children, teachers, YouTubers, clergy members, and more. We’ll also be adding a place on the platform where I will be teaching lessons about storytelling for business for my customers.

I hope to also build a course on storytelling for healing, which might just be the most important reason of all to be finding and telling stories.

Storytelling, it turns out, can help almost everyone.

If you’re a business owner, entrepreneur, marketer, advertiser, leader, or a person who simply wants to improve your communication skills in the workplace, this course is for you.

I hope you’ll give it a peek.

Sonia and The Simpsons

Elysha and I had tickets to see Supreme Court Justine Sonia Sotomayor speak last night at the Connecticut Forum.

I had actually surprised Elysha with the tickets last month.

When we mentioned this to the kids, Clara immediately lamented the fact that she wasn’t going. Not only is Justice Sotomayor one of her heroes, but she had just spent the day learning about landmark Supreme Court cases in history class.

“I’m so jealous of you two,” Clara said. “You’re so lucky.”

It’s pretty fantastic for your 13-year-old daughter to be jealous of parents who are going to listen to a Supreme Court Justice speak for an hour or two. This, combined with the fact that she had just spent dinner discussing some of the cases she had studied earlier that day, led me to offer my ticket to Clara, who was over the moon excited about going.

I would’ve very much liked to have seen Justice Sotomayor speak, but it probably wasn’t going to change my life in any significant way.

But Clara?

These are the kind of moments that can have a real impact on a young person. I decided it was more important for her to attend the event than for me.

But don’t feel too bad for me, because while Elysha and Clara were gone, Charlie and I muddled through. Charlie made a tin foil ball,  and for a solid 45 minutes, we tossed that ball around the house and watched our cat, Tobi, perform hilarious acts of acrobatics and tomfoolery.

Then we recorded a video for my new business, cracking each other up the whole time. When it was finished, we ate some chocolate and plopped onto the couch to watch a couple of episodes of The Simpsons while occasionally punching, tickling, and slapping each other.

I’m not sure if the evening was nearly as transformational for Charlie as it was for Clara, but quite honestly, it was unforgettable for me. One of those nights that makes you feel so blessed to have a son as ridiculous as yourself.

Sometimes sacrificing for others isn’t so much of a sacrifice after all.