TCC Podcast #407: Stories Sell with Matthew Dicks

Story telling is a super power. However, even writers often struggle to find and tell stories in a way that makes them compelling and persuasive. On the 407th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Rob spoke with author and story teller Matthew Dicks. Matthew has a new book called Stories Sell that walks through how to find and tell stories. In this interview, we talked in depth about this critical copywriting skill and how you can develop it for your own business. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.   Stuff to check out: The Moth Story Worthy by Matthew Dicks Stories Sell by Matthew Dicks Matthew's Novel that is a bunch of lists Live Life Like You're 100 Matthew's Website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground   Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: Whether you write copy or content, chances are you’ve heard the advice that you need to be telling stories. Stories are powerful… they help us bond to one another, they help communicate ideas and information far more effectively than if we just share the idea or information alone. They trigger the release of a variety of good hormones and they’re just plain entertaining. But often the advice to tell stories is hard to follow because it’s not always clear what counts as a story or how exactly you should go about telling one. Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, teacher, novelist, non-fiction author and famed story teller Matthew Dicks. Matthew is the author of Story Worthy, a book that is often recommended and shared in the copywriting community as a how-to manual on the art of story telling. And he has a new book out called Stories Sell that takes much of what he shares in Story Worthy and puts it in a business context. I read it a few weeks ago, and honestly believe that every copywriter should have this book on their shelf. And just in case you want a quick link, we’ll have one in the show notes for this episode. This is a great conversation that I think you’ll want to listen to at least twice. Before we jump in with Matthew… If you’re listening to this episode when it goes live, we are about a week away from opening up The Copywriter Accelerator for the only time this year. The Accelerator is our 8-part, 16 week program that helps you build a successful freelance business whether you’re a copywriter, a content writer or you use your writing as a strategist, a social media specialist or something else. You’ll learn how to position your business so clients want to work with you. You’ll learn what it taks to create successful products and services that solve real client problems that clients can’t wait to buy. You’ll learn the various ways to price what you do so you get paid for the value you create, not the time that you work. You’ll set up the right processes and learn how to manage clients. You’ll get more than 29 different ideas for ways to get yourself in front of the clients you want to work with and you’ll take the first steps toward creating a brand that resonates with you and the people you want to work with. Many of the copywriters who have gone through The Accelerator have gone on to build six figure businesses. And if that’s something you want, it might be worth checking out. To find out more, go to TheCopywriterAccelerator.com. And now, let's go to our interview with Matthew Dicks... Matthew Dix, welcome to The Copywriter Club Podcast. As I was saying just before we started to record, I'm excited to have you here. I'm guessing that there are a lot of our listeners who know who you are and may be aware of your work. But for those who aren't, will you just give us the story on how you became writer, novelist, storyteller? Matthew Dicks: Yeah, that's a tricky story. But Well, I mean, I became a writer. I like to say on November 30th, 1988, when a teacher in my high school recognized that I had something to say. And at that point in my life, I was sort of a little lost. I was a senior in high school. My parents had indicated to me that when I graduated, I was. out on my own, like college was a word that was never spoken to me as a child by a teacher, guidance counsel, or parents. So, you know, I spent my senior year of high school worried about where I was going to live and what I would eat. And so, you know, I had a moment in a classroom where a teacher gave me a chance to share my voice with the class and it worked out really well. And I discovered that maybe this would be something that could save me someday. And so I started writing on November 30th, 1988. And I have not missed a day since that day for my entire life. I've written every single day of my life through COVID and pneumonia and the birth of children and my wedding day and my honeymoon and everything in between. I have yet to miss a day. Actually, the next day after that sort of momentous moment in high school, I started my first business writing term papers for my classmates, my first writing gig. And with the money I earned from it, I bought my first car, a 78 Chevy Malibu. So I've been writing for a very, very long time. It took me 17 years after that day to publish my first novel. So I published my novel, Something Missing, in 2009 with Doubleday. And that basically made my dream come true. You know, at that point, if nothing else had happened, I would have been a happy human being. I would have made my dreams come true. So since then, I've published six novels and three books of nonfiction. I thought I was going to be a novelist for a long time only. Uh, and that would be the extent of my literary career. And then in 2011, in July of 2011, I went to New York city to tell a story on a stage for an organization called the moth, a story slam. You put your name in the hat, you hope it gets picked out. You stand on the stage and you tell a five minute story. I was basically pushed there by my friends who said, you've had a terrible life. go talk about it on stage. It's not true. I've not had a terrible life, but I've had one of those weird lives of misfortune. You know, I was homeless for a period in my life. I was arrested and tried for a crime I did not commit. I spent time in jail. I've been killed. I've stopped breathing and my heart has stopped beating twice in my life. And CPR has been performed on me both times. And obviously it worked. So I've had all these odd things happen to me. So my friends say, go to the moth and tell stories about it. And so I thought I was going to go and tell one story. And I got on the stage. I hated every minute of that evening until I began speaking into the microphone. And that was the moment I sort of fell in love with telling stories about my life, and being funny, and being heartfelt, and doing all those things that storytellers do. So I started going to New York, and then later Boston, and now all over the world, telling stories on stages large and small. And then I thought that was what I was going to do, which is I'll be a storyteller and maybe a stand-up. and carve a little bit of a career out of that while I'm writing my books. I'm also an elementary school teacher for the last 25 years. So, you know, also making a dream of mine come true. I wanted to be a teacher for all my life and I didn't get to go to college until, you know, six years after I graduated high school. So I never really thought that would come true either. So I'm still teaching elementary school today. But, uh, you know, I started telling stories on stages and business people started to notice me and they understood before I understood that what I was doing on a stage would be helpful to them in the work that they did, whether it was marketing or branding or sales or. you know, advertising, all of those things. And so the business community came to me, I told them they were all crazy. And then it turned out they were not crazy. And so in 2017, I wrote my first nonfiction book Story Worthy, and that got some attention. And the business world found that book too, which was not written for them, it was really written for people to just want to tell stories about their lives. But the business community sort of took a round peg and shoved it into a square hole and made it work. And then, you know, I started working for some of the biggest companies in the world. Oddly, my wife is still as amazed as I am. Like I'll walk out of my office and she'll say, you were just talking to Amazon. And I'm like, well, I was talking to a VP at Amazon, like not Amazon. You know, I work for the FBI now. I help their hostage negotiation unit learn how to tell stories like weird things keep coming over the transom that I can't believe are happening. And then last year or this year, this year I published Story Sells, which is the story book for business people, it's the one that they don't have to jam the square peg into the round hole anymore. So. So that's where I am today. I'm writing every day, still and telling stories and helping businesses with the work they do. Rob Marsh: The way you talk about it, storytelling is, is definitely a superpower that opens all kinds of doors. It sounds like. Matthew Dicks: It really is, yeah. I often say, actually, my friend said, and now I repeat him, Matt's kind of an unlikable person who tells a good story. And that's a little true. It can get you out of a lot of trouble telling a really good story. Rob Marsh: So I want to go back to that first story on the moth stage, because you said you hated everything about the night until you started telling the story. Like, what is the thing that makes because a lot of a lot of people are the opposite, right? They're OK at the event until they get on stage. And as soon as they're on stage, everything goes blank. You know, they sweat. You know, they freak out… all of the things. I mean, the joke, you know, that, you know,