This Expert Storyteller Believes Manipulation is Good

Jeffro (00:01.19)
Welcome back to Digital Dominance. Today, we’re diving into a crucial aspect of business that can set you apart from the competition, the art of storytelling and how it can transform your digital marketing efforts. Now, this isn’t the first time we’ve talked about storytelling. So if you missed the episode with Cal Fussman, go back and give that a listen after today’s episode. My guest today is Matthew Dicks. He’s an internationally bestselling author and a master storyteller. Matthew’s expertise lies not only in crafting,

engaging narratives, but also in teaching others how to harness the power of storytelling to connect with audiences, build brand loyalty and drive business success, which is what we all want, right? Matthew’s background in education actually gives him a unique perspective on how stories can be used to engage, teach, persuade and change lives. So we’re going to explore how you listening as a service -based business owner can leverage storytelling to enhance your digital marketing strategy. We’ll discuss some practical techniques, some common challenges and some tips to help you

create this compelling content that resonates with your audience and helps boost your business growth. So let’s get ready to learn from what I would consider a storytelling champion who’s mastered the craft and has a bunch of experience to share and I’m excited to hear about. So welcome to the show, Matthew. Thank you.

Matthew Dicks (01:13.07)
Thank you very much. Happy to be here.

Jeffro (01:15.878)
Well, as I was telling Matthew just a minute ago, I was just getting set up real quick for this episode and I’m excited for it. And I, you know, Matthew, we’ll just start by talking about you for a second. You’ve been doing this for a long time. Can you explain why storytelling is such a powerful tool in marketing and how it can impact a service -based business?

Matthew Dicks (01:37.71)
Well, if we just think about it, oddly on a biological level, you know, we know from science that when we tell someone a story, we actually change their brain chemistry in significant ways. So even if we want to just take it on the sort of tactile level, when I tell a story, at least three chemicals, more than three, but three very helpful chemicals get released in the brain almost immediately. You know, one is dopamine, which makes people feel good about themselves and about you. And that’s wonderful. Cause we want.

people who are learning about our products, our services, our companies to feel good about us. It releases endorphins, which sort of gives a high, it’s the empathy gene, the empathy chemical. It’s the one that makes people feel what you’re feeling. And then it improves cognition. It actually helps people understand what you’re saying and remember what you’re saying. So even a few sort of don’t buy into any of the other benefits of storytelling. And there are many of them.

The idea that we can tell a story and change the brain chemistry of the person listening to us and in doing so make them feel better about us, feel better about themselves in the world and improve their ability to understand what we’re saying. That alone is extremely useful when it comes to storytelling on top of all the other things, which, you know, I would argue all boil down to the fact that most of communication today, particularly in business, tends to be round, white and flavorless, meaning it’s forgettable. It’s just like everybody else.

Jeffro (02:59.334)
Mm -hmm.

Matthew Dicks (03:01.55)
and it doesn’t stand out. But when you tell a story, when you actually convey an idea in an authentic story, then you become memorable, then you become impactful, then people trust you, believe in you, and want to be a part of whatever you’re doing.

Jeffro (03:17.734)
Yeah. So, I mean, stories have been around forever. You know, it’s part of human history sitting around the campfire and everything. And it is so interesting that it changes our brain chemistry. So someone hearing this though, if they haven’t considered this before from a business perspective, does it feel, you know, manipulated to say, okay, I’m going to go tell stories now to my audience to get them to buy from me. But how can, as a business owner, you obviously don’t want to trick people. I hope most people are honest and have integrity. So.

How do you find and develop these stories that are going to resonate with your target audience and be relevant so it’s not a forced thing?

Matthew Dicks (03:54.926)
Well, you know, I’ll first say that there’s nothing wrong with being manipulative. You know, when, when we tell a joke or when we seek to make someone laugh, we’re being manipulative. We’re essentially assembling words in such a way and speaking them in such a way to produce an involuntary reaction from our audience. That’s authentically what is happening, right? A laugh is an involuntary response, which is nothing but manipulation. The same thing is if I tell a story that makes someone cry or surprises someone and makes them sort of like,

Jeffro (04:00.23)
haha

Matthew Dicks (04:23.054)
speak out in shock, all of those are involuntary reactions to stories or humor that we deploy. So manipulation is not always a terrible thing. It is absolutely what communication is all about. It’s the desire to get people to see something in the way we want them to see it. And ideally the way that we see it as well. So if we want to tell a story about the product or service that we have, what we want people to do is to see that product or service through the same lens that we see it ideally.

that we make the best broom in the world or our social media platform is better than any other social media platform. Our hair salon is the best hair salon in town, right? That’s something we believe in our heart or something we want to be true. And if we tell a story about it, then we’re gonna get people to believe in it as well. So I’m all into manipulation. When I tell a story, I’m absolutely manipulating people into understanding, believing and trusting the things that I have to say. So, I wouldn’t shy away from it. There’s certainly,

nefarious purposes to manipulation, but not in storytelling, not in comedy, not in those kinds of things.

Jeffro (05:29.19)
Gotcha. Well, it does. The word itself has a negative connotation because of the way people have used it in order to trick someone. Right. So the way you’ve defined it, you know, as long as I really do believe my product can help this person, then of course, you know, I’m simply persuading them or informing them of why it’s great and why they should choose it. And that is, as you’ve described, a manipulation that’s positive, right? Because I am trying to help them. Yes, I benefit, but there is truth and honesty behind what I’m doing. As long as you’re not lying about what you’re

Providing if you you know, you say I’m gonna do X they pay you and then you don’t do it That’s obviously a problem and that That’ll get noticed real fast, right? It’ll hurt your reputation. So what?

Matthew Dicks (06:07.886)
Yes. It’s a lot like a first date really, right? On a first date, you’re trying to tell the story of your life in such a way that will cause the person to want to go on another date with you. Ideally, if you want that second date. We’re doing the same thing as a company or as someone who is selling something. We’re on a first date with a customer and we’re trying to get that customer to believe in us enough to have a second date, which is either coming to our showroom or handling our product or…

or purchasing it. That second date is what we’re looking for in terms of how we want our customers, our clients, or even our people, our own employees to feel about what we’re doing. So, you know, it’s not dissimilar to that, which is not manipulation for a terrible reason, but manipulation in order to get people to sort of adore the things that we do.

Jeffro (06:53.446)
Right. So once you have that story that you want to tell, let’s say, you know, we have the best brooms made out of porcupine quills. What do you do with that? What are some practical steps to take that story and kind of integrate that into whatever you’re doing for marketing or social media or blog or et cetera.

Matthew Dicks (07:10.67)
Sure. I like the broom with the porcupine quills. That’s pretty good. And we’ll play with that one. Well, first we have to understand what a story is, which is not a reporting on an event, but rather change over time. Quite often when it comes to sort of advertising or marketing, what we devolve into is here’s a thing and here’s what it does and here’s a list of product features. And that’s not a story. That’s essentially a book report on the product that we’ve made. And no one has ever wanted a book report in the history of the universe. So we have to avoid that.

So what we’re looking for is a significant change over time. Now that can come in a lot of forms. It could be us telling the customer, you used to think that a broom that had, I don’t know what brooms typically have instead of porcupine quills, but the things that brooms typically, you know, whatever that is, you used to think that’s what you needed, but actually what you really need is a broom made of porcupine quills. And here’s why that’s change over time, which means.

Jeffro (07:53.51)
Bye, needles.

Matthew Dicks (08:03.95)
I’m gonna take a belief that you have, I’m gonna honor it and acknowledge it, and then I’m gonna upend it through storytelling. I’m gonna show you why the thing that you used to think was true is not true anymore. As soon as we acknowledge that stories are about change over time, meaning either our customers are gonna change their minds or we’re going to show how our products has changed over time to convince people that this is what they want, that change over time is what people remember. They don’t remember lists of product features, they don’t remember.

Jeffro (08:28.902)
Mm -hmm.

Matthew Dicks (08:31.566)
descriptions of products, those aren’t things that are gonna grab people’s attention. So we have to seek protagonists who are going to, whether it’s the customer is the protagonist or we are the protagonist or our product is the protagonist, that’s gonna have to change over time in order for people to understand, relate and believe in what we’re trying to say.

Jeffro (08:50.534)
That makes sense. And then once you have that story and you want to tell it, you can use other mediums like videos and commercials to kind of add visual cues to that memory to enhance it, right? Whatever someone’s doing something with a porcupine quill broom that they couldn’t do before with the pine needle broom, right? And so then that sticks in their memory even more.

Matthew Dicks (09:11.662)
Right, I mean, it could be as simple as an image. You could simply have an image of someone sweeping their kitchen floor and their mother -in -law and father -in -law are standing in the doorway to the kitchen and they actually look happy. They got a smile on their face and the caption can just be, I never thought it would happen, but I’ve finally managed to meet my in -laws expectation of floor cleanliness.

Right and that’s a change over time right and there’s a little humor in it. It’s playing on the trope of the in -laws. You know we could flip it to something else if we didn’t want to play on that trope we could put anyone in that doorway right, but we have finally reached the level where we can have a clean kitchen floor and you can play that in a million ways. But again it’s change over time. You know it could literally be a pile of Cheerios if it’s my home. It’s a pile of Cheerios in the middle of the kitchen floor because my kids eat Cheerios and about every third Cheerio ends on the floor.

So if it’s me sweeping chairs, the caption could literally say he’s finally managed to wrangle all of the Cheerios that escape his children’s cereal bowls, thanks to the porcupine quill broom. And that again, has changed over time. That’s a little bit of humor. That’s memorable. That’s a story as opposed to here’s a broom and here’s why it’s good.

Jeffro (10:27.142)
Well, and that’s kind of a good litmus test, right? If you can capture the essence of your story in an image, then you’re on the right track. But if you are trying to capture that book report, you’re going to want to put bullets on top of it because you’re listing features and that’s not what we’re going for here. So I like that.

Matthew Dicks (10:41.422)
Right. Yeah. No one likes the, the features are, you know, fine nine inches down on the website, you know, when they finally get down and they want to really start comparing things, but that’s not why people purchase, you know, you know, as, as they say, you buy an emotion and you justify through logic, meaning I want to wrangle all my Cheerios. I have Cheerios too. I want to wrangle them into a pile. That’s what I want.

And then they go down to the list of product features and they go, okay, the product features look good. I’ve already been emotionally attached to the product. Now I’m going to purchase it, but we have to start with that emotional response. We have to start with that story. And ultimately what that means is as people, as marketers or salespeople or brand specialists, whoever we are, we have to have stories to tell. I’m able to talk about the wrangling of Cheerios or the in -laws in the kitchen doorway, because I have those experiences that I can take to my work.

Right, so often I’m telling people that the stories you need to tell are the stories that you have that you can now convert into, you know, content related to your product. If you’re not searching for stories in your life, if you don’t see them in your own life, you’re often gonna find yourself staring at a blank screen wondering, what am I supposed to say next?

Jeffro (11:49.35)
Right. Well, and this brings me to another question I wanted to ask about AI, right? That’s kind of looming over everyone’s shoulder, but now authenticity is becoming a very sought after trait. And, you know, as you’re telling these stories, they need to be real. So how can business owners make sure their stories are coming across as genuine so that they’re not second -guessed like, Hey, did AI write that? Or, you know, what are they supposed to do?

Matthew Dicks (12:09.742)
Yeah. So what we need to do is to find those true stories in our lives, in the lives of our customers, in the lives of our people, you know, so we need to tell stories about the guy in your company who stumbled upon the idea that porcupine quills are going to make the best broom in the world, right? That guy needs to be the hero of a story as part of your marketing campaign. And we need to know who he is and how that happened. AI can’t come up with any of that. That’s going to have to be a story that we understand and that we find.

Jeffro (12:28.07)
Mm -hmm.

Matthew Dicks (12:38.254)
And then we need to interview customers and say, why is that broom working for you? How’s it changing your life? And as they give us their stories, that becomes part of our branding and our marketing. And then we have to think about ourselves because oftentimes it’s as simple as what am I doing with this broom or what do I need a broom for that I don’t currently have? Think about your life and what you need to do with it. And that becomes part of the story. So it’s the idea that the world is filled with the content we need, our lives, the lives of our customers, the lives of our people, the employees we have.

They have the content that we require. We just have to extract it from them. And oftentimes businesses fail to see that content. They fail to utilize it or leverage it. And so often, if you just start asking people and customers what they have to say about your product or your service or your company, they’re gonna give you all the content you need and none of it is gonna be able to be generated through AI. AI is not gonna come up with rogue Cheerios wandering through a kitchen that get piled into the middle by a…

you know, a dad who can’t get his kids to keep the cereal in the bowl.

Jeffro (13:40.07)
Right. So that, I mean, this is, I think, really important because people fear AI, but this is just another reminder, like it’s a tool, right? It’s not going to replace human creativity and stories. That’s the thing it’s worst at, honestly. It’s great at some of the boilerplate tasks and, you know, automating stuff, but coming up with unique stories is, can’t do that yet. So what about…

Let’s say a business owner’s got a story, right? Or they ask their customers, how do you use this? that’s great. Now they want to turn into a story. What are some of the pitfalls that you see when someone does this the wrong way, right? Where then it becomes manipulative or it feels just like a canned commercial or something.

Matthew Dicks (14:28.494)
Right. So it’s essentially has to be a well -told story. If you do a well -told story, it’s always going to feel authentic. So like in the stories that I’ve just told you about this fictional broom that we’ve created here, right? We have to do things like feature a moment in the story as opposed to sort of telling the story after the fact. So I could have told that story about how, you know, I’m a dad and I have a problem and my problem is Cheerios. The problem is that Cheerios leave the ball.

And when they leave the ball, they end up on the floor and I need to sweep them up and I can’t seem to catch up to them. So I need a broom that can help. Or I can tell a real story, starting with location and action and actually giving people something to think about, which is there’s an enormous pile of Cheerios in the middle of my kitchen. Thank goodness. I can’t believe I finally managed to wrangle all of these Cheerios, the honey nut and the plane and the strawberry, they’re all mingled in a giant pile in the middle of my kitchen. And I’m thrilled about this. I’m thrilled about it because I finally managed to collect them all.

thanks to something that I cannot believe exists. And just by doing that, what I just did, which is a very rough version of what I would ultimately do, I create a sense of wonder. Why is he excited about Cheerios in the middle of his kitchen floor? That’s not where they belong. What is the thing that has happened? What is the thing he has that has managed to wrangle all these Cheerios? Why are they on the floor? All of these things make people want to hear what I’m going to say next. It creates surprise and suspense and wonder and humor and all of those things. If you’re worried about AI doing any of those things, that’s not gonna happen.

Jeffro (15:34.406)
Mm -hmm.

Matthew Dicks (15:57.102)
AI is right. It’s wonderful for certain things. You know, AI writes most of my business emails now, except for the first two paragraphs. And I was actually at a storytelling show a couple of weeks ago and a woman in the audience said, I get all your emails. And I thought at first, no, she’s going to tell me I sent too many emails. Cause I think we really do. And she said, the thing I love about your emails is the first two paragraphs forced me to read your emails. And what we do, my business partner is he has AI write the email.

Jeffro (15:57.702)
Right.

Matthew Dicks (16:24.974)
And then he sends it to me and says, can you put the story on the top? And in a paragraph or two, I always write a story, personal story about myself or about the people I’m working with or a customer or a client, something like that. But it’s a story. And that story pulls people through the email and brings them to the sales pitch, the new, you know, the new thing I have to offer. But she said, without those first two paragraphs, I’d never read anything that you send me. Cause it does feel, she says, like,

it’s written not by you after the first couple paragraphs, which is true, but the first couple of paragraphs get her through it and that’s great. So that’s what we have to do. We have to use AI to do the boring dumb work, but the creative work, the storytelling that still has to come from us at all times.

Jeffro (16:59.494)
Mm -hmm.

Jeffro (17:09.382)
Yeah. And I like the term well -told story because people get bored if the story is not told well. And you see this on social media too. A lot of times someone will post a video, doesn’t do very well, but then they talk to a coach who’s actually good at this. They redo it, same exact content, just maybe tweak the opening or a couple of things, post it again, it gets, you know, goes viral or something. And that’s simply because they made it a story that we can connect with immediately and we want to listen to. And that’s powerful.

Matthew Dicks (17:37.262)
Yeah, yeah, because the tension span is a terrible thing. Like the first, the first 10 seconds of a story, the first, you know, maybe 30 seconds of a story, they’re the most critical part of a story. You know, I say that a story is like taking someone on a plane ride from one place to another. But the problem is if your plane is empty because you didn’t put anybody on the plane in the first 10 to 30 seconds, then you’re flying to nowhere. You can land in a beautiful place, but there’s no one on the plane with you. So that’s why it’s essential that you land those first few sentences or that.

Jeffro (17:57.19)
You

Matthew Dicks (18:06.126)
opening image, whatever you’re trying to accomplish, you have to do it immediately in order to have a full plane of people to take somewhere.

Jeffro (18:15.238)
Right. So we, I think as business owners, we assume that this storytelling, all we’re talking about content creation is for acquiring new customers and that can be part of it. But what about using storytelling to enhance existing customer engagement or improve the overall customer experience?

Matthew Dicks (18:31.982)
Yeah, I think it’s the same, to be honest. I think whether we’re seeking out a customer and we want them to click on our website or visit our business or something like that, you know, if I am, let’s say a florist and I, there’s a florist that I use in town, same florist that I always use and I have a relationship with them, but theoretically or, or, you know, assuming they want to establish a better relationship with me, they don’t want me to go wandering, right? They want me to stay as their customer for all time.

So what they should be doing, they’re not doing it, but I think they probably should be, is around every significant sort of flower holiday, you know, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, I don’t know when else flowers come out, but whenever they do, or maybe every four months, I should be getting an email from them, not too often, but often enough that I’m reminded of who my florist is and telling me a story. And ideally, if I was working for this company, I would say, let’s find stories about people who are using flowers in unique and interesting ways.

or let’s find the story of the person who bought the flowers on Valentine’s Day so he could propose to his future wife and let’s tell that story through an email and then say they chose our florist for this important thing. And if they did that every, I don’t know, three to four months or they landed it on certain holidays or certain moments, if they knew when my birthday was, if they knew when my wife’s birthday was and they sent me a reminder a week before saying, hey, you know what the last person did?

when it was their wife’s birthday, here’s what they did, tell a great story about it. I’m absolutely buying flowers from them. So that’s the way we stay connected to people is by continuing to show how the product, the service, the business is relevant and can continue to be relevant in their lives by collecting those stories and then deploying them carefully, judiciously, you know, and hopefully strategically in terms of timing them in a way that will really hit people’s hearts and minds.

Jeffro (20:24.198)
Well, and to do this effectively, like you said, you have to do this consistently. You’ve got to make it part of your process to be collecting these stories from customers, to be creating this content, videos, images that you’re posting, the emails that go out. And to a certain degree, your business has to be not a media publishing business, but kind of, you know, one arm of it has to be that in order to keep the train moving forward. do you have any thoughts on that? Like, is that going to continue?

Matthew Dicks (20:52.558)
Well, you know, I think that when it comes to your customers, for sure, all you need to do is sort of follow up with them in a meaningful way. You know, if it’s the florist, you know, an email that says, Hey, what’d you do with those flowers? How did it go? Do you want to be part of our story? Do you want to tell us a story about how, you know, how those flowers impacted someone’s day? And maybe if you get 1 % of your customers sending you a story, you have an enormous number of stories now to choose from. Right. So.

Jeffro (21:00.486)
Mm -hmm.

Matthew Dicks (21:20.238)
finding those customers who want to do that. And then your people too. You know, I worked for an insurance company and they were struggling. It’s actually the insurance company that gives free healthcare to children in Connecticut. But there’s a lot of sort of adults who don’t trust government well enough to allow these people to come into their homes and say, here’s free healthcare for your children. They don’t trust it. And so they had to find ways to earn the trust of these people.

And so what this company did after I worked with them is on Fridays, every Friday afternoon from three to four, all the salespeople got together for cheese and crackers and you know, whatever. And they told stories. The whole goal was to get them all together and tell stories about what had happened over the course of the week. What worked, what got me into the door, what got someone over the hump. So what they’re doing essentially is just leveraging the content that already exists. Cause.

In that case, what happens is you’re a salesperson and you have a bunch of go -to stories of, you know, your pitches that you’re going to land with people, depending on sort of what pushback you get. But if you have everybody’s stories, if you have your stories, plus that guy’s stories and that lady’s stories and their experience as well, then you can sort of use all of those in your work. So leveraging the content of your employees is huge. So just asking your employees to, to make sure that if something happens.

that you think is noteworthy and story worthy, whether it happens on the factory floor or it happens while you’re interacting with a customer, or it happens while you’re crossing the parking lot from your car into the building. If you’ve got a story, come and tell me it. We might be able to do nothing with it, right? But we might be able to do a lot with it, but you have to encourage people to speak and tell those stories. It’s free content. It doesn’t cost you anything to ask people to say, tell us the stories that are happening in your life.

Jeffro (23:02.086)
Yeah.

Jeffro (23:08.518)
Yeah, and I imagine the more you do that, the more you get attuned to those stories and start looking for them and picking them up on them a lot more quickly and getting a sense of, this might work and this won’t, right?

Matthew Dicks (23:19.854)
Yes, it’s, you know, the best storytellers in the world tend to be the people who have the most stories to tell. And the people who have the most stories to tell are the people who are the most attuned to their lives. Meaning what I like to say is storytellers are self -centered in a positive way. Meaning we actually afford ourselves some time to think about ourselves. Cause most human beings spend almost all their time thinking about their children, their spouses, their customers, their clients, their neighbors, their family, their parents.

Jeffro (23:40.23)
Mm -hmm.

Matthew Dicks (23:47.918)
Rarely does someone actually sit down and say, let me just think about me for a while. Like what my day was like, who am I? Why am I the way I am? Real storytellers, we spend enormous amounts of time doing that, which I think is a very productive thing, both in terms of being a healthy human being, but also having a multitude of stories to tell. You know, there’s never a time when I don’t have a story that I can tell. I actually have a company who calls me, they call me metaphor man, cause they’ll, they’ll say, well, we’ve added a,

a boring feature to our otherwise boring platform and now we need a way to sell it. Can you give us a metaphor to help describe what this does? And I tell them all the time, I’m not a metaphor man. I’m just taking a story from my life and I’m extracting myself from the story and just giving it over to you. Right? So a metaphor for me is just Matt’s life minus Matt becomes the metaphor that they’re using. And I tell them all the time, if you would just be storytellers, you wouldn’t have to call me and ask me for metaphors. And

and pay me for an hour for what amounts to be like 17 minutes of work because I just give you three stories from my life. You choose one and now you’re off and running. But I see this company marketing its products using my life stories minus me. And that’s all it is. So the more attuned you are to the stories of your life, the more you’re going to be able to tell those stories in the moments you need the most.

Jeffro (25:03.43)
Right, that makes it relatable because other people maybe have gotten something similar. So…

Matthew Dicks (25:07.566)
Right. It’s why I drew them on the Cheerios metaphor right away. I was like, well, my children drop Cheerios on the floor all the time, but I could give you a dozen other things that are on my kitchen floor or kitchen floor stories that I could come up with mostly because I’m constantly and relentlessly looking for stories. So I see it in my life faster than most people, but I’m not special. It’s not like that. My brain functions better than someone else. It’s just, it’s a thing that I’ve decided is really important to do.

Jeffro (25:11.238)
Mm -hmm.

Jeffro (25:32.422)
Right. It’s like when you start looking for green cars on the highway, you’re going to find a lot more. Right. So one more question. This is a little more practical, I guess, from a lot of business owner mentalities. How do you measure the impact of your storytelling efforts? Obviously, the easy answer is, you get more customers. But on the one hand, OK, maybe I posted a good video. I got likes on it. Is it converting to customers? How many stories do I need to post?

Matthew Dicks (25:36.27)
Exactly. Yes, exactly.

Jeffro (26:01.318)
before it starts turning to customers. So what kind of metrics should we be looking at from a business perspective?

Matthew Dicks (26:07.086)
Yeah, that’s tricky. I mean, ultimately what we’re trying to do through storytelling is get people to believe, trust, and think about our company, our products, or our services in a certain way. And will that convert to sales? I will say yes over time, but in terms of how many stories you need to tell, it really depends on the human being that you’re dealing with in a lot of ways, right? I am an elementary school teacher.

And for some of my students, I can tell them something once and they got it forever. And I can tell another kid the same thing a million times and he still doesn’t have it. And that’s essentially how human beings are. So what we want to do is just to continuously, continuously, relentlessly tell stories so that the mindset of our products are set over time. If you think about Coca -Cola, Coca -Cola is constantly telling us stories about its product and how it associates with.

our country and our belief system and how we feel about our friends and how we feel about sports, all of these things. Coke is not able to sort of quantify that in a, well, we’ve told 96 stories in the first quarter and it has resulted in this many sales. But what it’s resulted in is when I say Coca -Cola, it gives people a feeling about what that product is. People understand what that means, right? If I say Apple, we understand what Apple.

means in terms of a product and in terms of a service, we understand what their aesthetic and what their belief system is and it’s through storytelling. So it’s going to be difficult to quantify, but what we can acknowledge is that storytelling causes people to think, feel and believe in the ways that we want them to feel if we do it often enough. So I would say don’t give up on it because you don’t see an increase in sales in the first quarter because what you’re

ultimately doing is just creating good faith and understanding and empathy and connection to your company so that eventually you might not be a soda drinker at all. But when you’re at a party and the only thing in the thermos or in the cooler is soda and you’re trying to figure out which one to grab, you’ll probably grab a Coke if you feel that way about a Coke, even if you’re not a soda drinker. So that’s what we’re looking to do.

Jeffro (28:31.43)
Right. So each little story is a deposit. It’s not like here’s one, they’re not individual things. It’s you’re building up a portfolio, essentially. You’re convincing the world or persuading or manipulating the world into understanding who you are, what you do and why they should want to work with you. So thank you, Matthew, for joining me today. We’re at the end of our time, unfortunately, but I love talking about this. It’s very interesting stuff and I hope people kind of grasp this.

Matthew Dicks (28:50.606)
Yes.

Jeffro (29:00.198)
you know, take it to heart and start applying it to the messages that they’re putting out to their clients and prospective customers. For you guys listening, check out the links in the show notes to connect with Matt, get a copy of his latest books, stories sell. And last question for you, what is the best use of business storytelling that you’ve ever seen?

Matthew Dicks (29:20.622)
that’s a great question. The best use of business storytelling that I’ve ever seen. Well, I guess it’s a commercial called Dear Brother. It’s actually a YouTube. It’s a YouTube video called Dear Brother. Just Google the phrase Dear Brother. It’s for Johnny Walker. And it’s not a product I actually use, but it’s a tremendous and amazing 90 second video that once you’ve done what once you’re done watching it, you can never forget it.

And so I think that’s probably my favorite use of storytelling in business is the Dear Brother Johnny Walker commercial.

Jeffro (30:00.486)
All right, well, I’m gonna have to go Google that right now and watch it as soon as we finish here. Thanks again for being here, Matt. Thanks to all of you for listening. Go tell more stories and I’ll see you back here for the next episode. Take care.

Matthew Dicks (30:09.838)
Thanks so much.