Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 398

The three great leaders of my life

Truly great leaders are hard to find. In my professional life, I have worked for three.

Allison White and Jalloul Montacer were McDonald’s general managers.

Plato Karafelis was my principal for fifteen years.

Allison taught me the importance of being the thing that you expect from your employees. She taught me that every job, as small and insignificant as it may seem, should be done superbly. In many ways, she was the first person to see my own potential as a leader.

Jalloul taught me to respect and value every employee, regardless of their position, for your success depends entirely upon them. He taught me to seek out the most challenging assignments, for it is through struggle and discomfort that we grow. He taught me that hard work and grit should be prized above all. 

Plato taught me to respect the differences in people. He taught me to  understand that every person is at a different place on their journey, and what may work for one person will not work for another. He taught me that the best leaders quietly protect their employees, absorbing the undeserved, unwarranted, and unnecessary slings and arrows without any need for credit or fanfare.  

I thought of all three of these people while listening to Simon Sinek’s TED Talk on leadership. All three embodied his message perfectly.

Sadly, few leaders do.  

It’s a must listen for every leader and for anyone who wants to demand more from their leaders.

Possible lessons to be learned from Weezer’s unexpected path to success

Weezer’s first album, The Blue Album, was a multi-platinum success.

I liked it very much.

The record industry expected that their second album, Pinkerton, would perform similarly, but when it was released, Pinkerton received mixed reviews from critics and was voted the third worst album of the year by Rolling Stone readers.

Despite the poor reviews, the album sold steadily over the years, thanks mostly to word-of-mouth on the Internet.

In 2002, six years after the original release, Pinkerton was voted the 16th greatest album of all time by Rolling Stone readers. The magazine later gave Pinkerton another review and awarded it five stars.

Possible lessons to be learned from this:

1. Great art will ultimately be recognized as great over time, so do not despair if your creation has not received the attention that it deserves. See Herman Melville and Edgar Allen Poe as perfect examples of this.

a. A corollary to the first possible lesson: If your art is going to ultimately be recognized as great, it’s best when it happens while you are still alive, unlike Melville and Poe.

2. The public is a fickle mass of mindless ninnies who can love something one day and despise it the next, so artists should not invest too much time or energy in public opinion. 

3. Critics are a fickle mass of mindless ninnies whose expert opinions are easily swayed by the public, so artists should not invest too much time or energy in their opinions.

4. It’s best to produce an artistic flop in the age of the Internet, when small tribes of like-minded people can more easily gather and exchange and spread information. The Internet is the place where art can be given a second chance.

The marching band and free hot dogs were great, but the drag queen was the best part of the parade.

My family spent the day with the in-laws in the tiny town of Monterey, Massachusetts, yesterday, enjoying their Memorial Day Parade and the free hot dogs. 

      

The parade was delightful. The hot dogs were delicious (free makes everything taste amazing). The town’s police sergeant treated us to free ice cream from the ice cream truck. The kids and I wrestled in the grass. We swung on swings. It was a perfect day.

But the best part of the festivities was when Miss Gay Western Massachusetts came rolling on down the parade route, dressed in drag.

I never thought that I would see a black President in my lifetime.

I never thought I’d see legalized gay marriage in my lifetime.

I never thought that I would see a local police sergeant’s son, dressed in drag, be celebrated in a Memorial Day parade as Miss Gay Western Massachusetts.

We have come so far.

The New York Post’s Kim Kardashian – Kanye West wedding announcement was quite educational.

A couple days ago, Kim Kardashian and Kanye West got married.

I wasn’t aware of their wedding (or their engagement, for that matter) until I saw it mentioned on Twitter.

I know who Kanye West is. As a wedding DJ, I play his music from time to time. I couldn’t pick him out of a lineup, but I know a few of his songs.

He sings Gold Digger, which brides occasionally ask me to play despite the obvious stupidity of this request for their wedding. 

I still can’t pick Kim Kardashian out of a lineup either, and other than the existence of her reality show, I never understood why she was famous.

Thankfully, The New York Post’s wedding announcement has cleared up all of my confusion (though I’m not sure why Bruce Jenner was walking Kim Kardashian down the aisle):

I had a story on This American Life. The reaction to this news has been interesting.

I had a story on This American Life this week.

 

It was a short story. Just a few minutes long as part of the prologue. Still, it was a thrill. A dream come true.

I’ve since discovered that there are only two kinds of reactions to telling someone that I’ll  be appearing on This American Life.

“OH MY GOD! THAT’S HUGE! AMAZING! CONGRATULATIONS!”

or…

“This American what?”

There is no middle ground.

Are toddlers really smarter than the elderly?

A friend of mine works in the healthcare industry helping people to quit smoking by providing strategies and incentives to those who are willing and able to quit.

Using a breath sensor that attaches to the iPhone, he is able to remotely monitor a person’s respiration output and even determine if the person is being honest about the amount of smoking that he or she has done in the previous week. 

One of his greatest challenges is with the technology. Many of his clients are elderly, and they  have great difficulty navigating the iPhone’s interface.

I find this astounding. My not-yet two year-old son can take my iPhone, close the app that I am using, swipe to an app three screens away, open the folder with the app, open the app, and begin playing a game more complex than any game that I ever played on the Atari 2600 when I was a kid.

If a two-year old can navigate the technology, why can’t an 80 year-old?

Sincerely. I don’t get it.

   

The fascinating history of Softsoap: A lesson in ingenuity and tenacity

Some people are simply more clever and tenacious than others, and this is why they are successful.

In 1980, Robert R. Taylor began selling Softsoap through his company, Minnetonka Corp.

Up until that time, soap had not been sold in a pump bottle, even though the design and patent of such a bottle had existed for more than 1oo years. 

Taylor knew others would quickly copy the soap-in-a-pump-bottle idea, so he purchased 100 million small bottle hand-pumps from the only two U.S. manufacturers that made them, so that any competitors wouldn’t be able to buy any for one year. This, he hoped, would give him enough time to establish the brand name.

It worked.

In six months, he sold $25 million worth of Softsoap. The package made it very easy to spot on store shelves when nearly all other soaps were in bar form.

Taylor sold the Softsoap brand to Colgate-Palmolive in 1987 and retired.

Upcoming appearances

On Saturday, May 31, I’ll be speaking at the Barnes & Noble at the Buckland Hills Mall in Manchester, CT at 2:00 PM. My agent will be with me, so if you have any questions for her, I’m sure that we could pester her with a few.

________________________________

That same evening, Speak Up will be at Sedgwick Middle School in West Hartford, CT for a charity storytelling show. I’ll be telling a story about my high school days along with seven other brilliant storytellers.

Proceeds from the event help to send four middle school students to London this summer to compete in an international literature competition. Three are my former students, so I am thrilled to be able to help them

Tickers can be purchased here.

________________________________

On Saturday, June 7, I’ll be teaching a workshop on publishing at the Mark Twain House. I’ll be discussing the path that a book travels from the first words written on the page to its first appearance in a bookshop. Including in the workshop will be the sale of the book, the author-editor relationship, the complexities of publicity and marketing, the finances of publishing and much more. Perfect for the curious reader or the fledgling writer.

Call: (860) 280-3130 for more information & ticketing or click here for tickets.

________________________________

On Monday, June 30, I’ll be attending a Moth StorySLAM at The Bitter End in New York hoping to tell a story if the tote bag is kind. The theme of the night is Money.
________________________________ 

On Saturday, July 5, I’ll be performing in The Liar Show at the Cornelia Street Café in New York.

At each show, four performers tell short personal stories, but  one of the storytellers is making it all up. The audience then interrogates the cast and exposes the liar to win a fabulous prize.

Information on the show and ticketing can be found here.

________________________________

On Saturday, July 19, Speak Up returns to Real Art Ways. The theme of the show is Who’s the Boss? Tickets are not yet available, but mark your calendars. It is sure to be an excellent show!________________________________

On Monday, July 21, I’ll be competing in a Moth GrandSLAM at The Music Hall of Williamsburg in Brooklyn.

Tickets not yet available.

The secret to happiness is based upon perspective and expectation.

Shaquille O’Neal, the former basketball superstar, NBA champion, actor, and the MBA- and PhD-holding business impresario, offers his secret to happiness:

My secret is waking up saying it could be worse. 85% of all athletes, three to five years after they’re playing, have nothing, no income, no nothing. I could be one of those guys.

I think similarly, though rather than comparing my success to others, I compare my current position in life to where I once was.

Looking back on where I began and the challenges that I have faced, I can’t help but be happy today.

The wife and kids help, too.  

But I also think that happiness is strongly dependent upon expectation.

If you don’t like to relax, you will never be disappointed.

If you don’t like a warm bath or a Jacuzzi or long afternoons sunning yourself on the beach, you’ll never be disappointed.

If you don’t like spending time in bed, you’ll never be disappointed.

But if you love to spend your like moving, playing, working, chasing and creating, you will always be happy.

Storytellers are important, but it’s within the audience that you find the true beauty of storytelling.

As Elysha and I celebrate our first anniversary of Speak Up, our Hartford based storytelling organization, we have many reasons to be thankful.

Since May of last year, we have produced seven storytelling shows. We had about 150 people at our first show (about 100 more than we expected), and since we moved into a bigger space and began ticketing, all of of our shows have been sell outs. with most selling out a week before the door even open.

We’ve recently been contacted by outside venues who would like us to bring Speak Up to their audiences, which has been both surprising and thrilling.

We have made many new friends over the past year thanks to storytelling. Fans of our show who fill the seats, participants in our workshops, and the storytellers themselves, some experienced and most brand new, who have all come together to build this thriving community.

This has been the most surprising part of storytelling for me. When I took the stage for the first time at a Moth StorySLAM in July of 2011, I had no idea about the people who I would meet and the friends that I would make as a result of becoming a storyteller. In the past three years, I have gotten to know some amazing and accomplished people, and I am proud to call many of them my friends.

But it’s the people who unexpectedly reach out to me who often surprise me the most.

Last week, I told a story at a Moth StorySLAM at Housing Works in New York City.

Since then, almost a dozen people who were present in the audience that night have reached out to me via social media or email.

About half contacted me simply to compliment me on my story or tell me how much it meant to them. It was the story of my first kiss, but embedded within that story was also a story about bullying, which seemed to resonate with a lot of people.

Two others have seen me tell stories many times before and reached out to compliment this most recent performance but also discuss my overall success as a storyteller. One commented on how much she has gotten to know me just through the stories that she has heard onstage and on the radio and my YouTube channel.

Here was the most interesting part:

Two people who I don’t know reached out to criticize the story. Both were fairly gentle in their criticism but still offered pointed critiques.

One person who is “very familiar” with my work felt that last week’s story did not compare to others that he has heard in the past from me. He said that he’s always excited when my name is called at a StorySLAM but felt a little let down on Tuesday night by my story.

The other felt that my story was flawed in that I attempted to wedge the story of my first kiss and the story of bullying “into one space” and that it took away from both stories. “It should’ve been two separate stories,” he said. “Fix it.”

As bold as it may have been to offer such unsolicited critique, I think that both of these critics are right. My wife, who didn’t hear the story before I left for New York (which almost never happens) agreed. After hearing the story in preparation for Speak Up, where I told it again, she commented that it wasn’t as tight as my typical story, and that it tried to do too much.

A friend who attended the slam with me told me that my story was slightly  amorphous. “An off night for you.”

Upon reflection, I think they all hit the nail on the head. In attempting to tell the story of my first kiss, which took place on stage during an elementary musical and was orchestrated by our vocal music teacher, I took my audience off that stage and down a dark path for a good portion of the story instead of keeping them in the moment that mattered most.

I felt it, too. As I build my story, I anticipate moments of audience reaction, and I’m usually correct in most of my predictions. But when I was onstage that night, the audience reacted in ways I did not expect. As I made my way back to my seat, I knew that something wasn’t quite right. Though my scores put me in a tie for first place after seven storytellers, the eighth storyteller edged me out and the tenth storyteller crushed us both.

In truth, the tenth storyteller would’ve beaten anyone that night. She was masterful. One of the best stories I’ve ever heard.

But my friend was right. It was an off night for me. Flawed construction doomed my story.

But here’s the beauty of storytelling:

Even with its flawed construction, more than half a dozen people reached out to me because my story meant something to them. Warts and all.

A couple more liked it enough to comment on my storytelling career.

And two people apparently take storytelling seriously enough to offer salient criticism of my story.

In a world where time is precious and no one seems to have enough of it, these people took the time to email and Tweet their opinions to me, and in the end, no one was mean-spirited, hurtful or cruel.

How often can you say that about the Internet?

So I will take my critics advice and “fix” my story. Break it into two parts and retell each part someday at a future slam. I’m grateful to these critics for their sage wisdom, but I’m especially grateful to storytelling audiences, at The Moth, Speak Up and all the other places where I tell stories, for being present, willing, attentive, and sometimes, incredibly generous with their words and their time.