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Stories that Stick - Matt Mosich · Wired For More - ADHD & Self Mastery

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Hey everyone, Ian May here with the Wired for More ADHD and Self Mastery podcast.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: I have my good friend Matt Mosic.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: I had a joke with him about mispronouncing his name.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: It is the worst feeling in the world to mispronounce somebody's name after you've known them for a long time, after you've said their name more than a few times.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: I understand that more than most, which is why I've tried to get better about asking people how they pronounce it, because people look at my last name and they go, Maybe.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: But needless to say, Matt Mozich, I appreciate you for being on the line.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: For the people who don't know you, you and I met some time ago when we were actually in a sales community.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: I think at the time it was called Eight Straight, and then it became the holistic sales co, and then it became nothing at all that they don't exist anymore.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: We won't call them out by name, the leaders of those communities.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh not that they're paying any attention.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: They're great people.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: They are great people.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: Working on really important projects that have nothing to do with the ways that we've engaged.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: But one of the things that I really appreciate, Matt, especially as I continue to try to build my presence online, on stages, keynote speaking, workshops, the work that you do to help leaders develop their presence on stages, I think is really powerful.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: So for those who don't know you, would love for you to just do a quick background on how you came into that field, what your history is with speaking, public speaking, and even just some of the lessons that you've learned to get you here.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: When I was eight, my dad threw me up on stage in front of 400 people with 30 minutes notice.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: It was every bit as terrifying as that sounds.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: I would be uh I'm ishing bricks if I were to do that again today.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: But I didn't have much of a choice.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: I walked up on that stage, they handed me a little eight and a half by 11.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: I read it out loud.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: I go to scurry off stage and I'm thinking, like, okay, let's just get over with this.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then everyone just floods me with praise.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: They tell me how confidently I spoke and how I was, you know, looking out into the crowd and all these things.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm sitting there and I'm like, I'm a good public speaker.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: And how true is that?
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's really hard to say.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: But what was really important about that, uh, I've started to connect some dots recently.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: Ian, have you ever read the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell?
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: I have, yeah.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's a good one.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: It is.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: And what that gave me context on was that was my outlier moment.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: It was a moment not where I like I don't think I was truly skilled, and I still think I am like, I'm I'm good, I'm not great, I've got a long way to go.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: But what it did do was it made me less resilien resistant to raising my hand than the rest of my class.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I kept on getting reps when other people were shying away.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: What was interesting about that moment is it ultimately led me to Toastmasters.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: I remember when I was 21, I heard about it and I was like, you gotta be kidding me.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: There's a place where people go and speak in public.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I am down.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: And it was there where it shifted.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: It shifted from I still am going to be focused on public speaking, but I am going to lean into this fully because it's really about communication.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: I uh I got this like highly touted internship at Merrill Lynch, uh, 1% acceptance.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: I remember going into our office to meet the other interns, and it's like Harvard, Yale, Stanford, me, SDSU.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, what the heck's going on here?
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember sitting in on my interview, and they asked me the question of anything more that you want to share?
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: And what did I talk to them about?
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: I talked to them about bodybuilding, I talked to them about nutrition, I talked to them about reading, I talked to them about all these things that I had actually prepared in my Toastmaster's class for the tell me more about yourself question because I wanted to show them that I was curious and driven and what whatever it else might be it, not that I was like, you know, I didn't need to tell them those things.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: So it was in that moment where I was like, I'm gonna lean in on public speaking because it's gonna be the hardest place for me to get better at this craft that is going to support the rest of my life.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: And now I do a little bit of both.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: Well, for one, I think you and I interviewed very similarly in, hey, let me just show you what it looks like when I obsess about something.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: And treating your hyper obsession as its own validation.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I actually think for anybody who does interviewing, it's actually a really good question to ask.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, what was the last thing that you obsessed about?
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: Or what are you actively obsessing about?
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I almost don't want to work with somebody who's not obsessing in some way.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like they're usually not fun people to work alongside.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: I being being the personality hire that I was, I was responsible for a lot of the personality higher interview questions.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: But that was one of my favorites.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: Is like, tell me about a recent obsession that you have and help me get excited about something you're excited about.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like if you can't be excited about the thing that literally lights you up the most right now, how are you going to even pretend to be excited for software development lifecycle, yeah, finance, yeah, any of those things.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: Show me you can get excited.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and we can teach you how to get excited about this if you can get excited about that.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, hold hold my attention for a second.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you can't hold my attention for the thing that's lighting you up the most, how can you hold my attention for anything else?
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: Literally anything else.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: I I think, I mean, that by itself.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'm probably gonna have to go sit and wrestle with that.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: What am I obsessing about right now?
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: What is it that I'm doing that I'm gonna invite somebody into that they're gonna be like, they're just excited to see me excited, and vice versa.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: So Matt, you you have there's some pretty big linchpin moments.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: You you brought up this idea of okay, I was forced to sink or swim at eight years old, right?
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: Being thrown in the literal deep end of public speaking.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: You are told you knock it out of the park.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: But it built up an identity of I'm a good speaker, and therefore I'm reinforcing the I'm a good speaker belief by finding reasons and ways to continue to be a good speaker.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: I actually had the opposite experience.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: So I second grade, so probably seven or eight years old, very similar, got up in front of my church congregation, had this singing part.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: I had the the earlier that day that I was told that I had to do this solo.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: I had it all memorized already, had all of my lines memorized.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: But in the moment in which I was supposed to do this solo, I froze, completely blanked.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: Had the pee, irritable bowel syndrome, had this big nervous anxiety experience.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: But so what's interesting is that for me, obsessing about the stage was like this act of reclamation.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna need, I need to go reclaim this thing because it's carrying this heavy weight over me.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm gonna go now obsess about different ways that I can go speak and go engage people.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's interesting.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: Around the same time, my neighbor was a class valedictorian.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: So around second or third grade, after this like horrific, horrific event of public embarrassment, I see her speaking at her at her high school commencement.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, that's gonna be me someday.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I obsessed about that.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: Obsessed to work backwards from what are the ways that I can be that person?
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, well, you can be class president.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: No, I'm not very popular.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: There's no way that's gonna happen.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: Class valedictorian.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: That actually felt easier to me, being a class valedictorian in order to speak at my high school commencement than being voted as class president.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: There's so many things there.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: One I want to nod to is like, I want to commend you for what I think was a much harder route to becoming a successful speaker in that, like overcoming the pain.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: I have noticed myself do that in different areas of my life, but I feel like there were a lot of times, especially as a kid, where I would just shy away from it because I could.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: And you leaned into it.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I think on the other end of it, and there's a lane I can think of in my own life where I was where the power of specific goals.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: You had a really specific goal that you were moving towards.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: Talk about something that just creates a path to getting there.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: When things are not specific, they're really hard.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: When things are specific, at least you know what you have to do.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: I think, I mean, both of those were are what I'm hearing within what you're saying.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think to that point, ambiguity is what keeps your dreams dreams.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's the part of when people look at goals, they get really obsessed about particular outcomes and not being able to say, how can I work backwards to increase the likelihood of that outcome?
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I think even like again, we're far adrift from from public speaking, but in all reality, of what does it look like with goals for public speaking?
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, are you are you raising your hand?
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: And this is in my kind of faith circles, are you raising your hand to pray over people?
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's public speaking.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's opportunity to hear yourself talk.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: I think what's beautiful about podcasting in mics is that I actually am hearing myself talk all day, every day.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: And what's interesting about that is that has forced me to learn in every situation, hear yourself talk.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: Live it out.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: What is the smallest, most incremental version of that thing that you can just go do right now?
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: So then you can say, I'm a public speaker.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like, okay, it's a public podcast that I do in the privacy of my own of my own house, and you know, with a bunch of makeshift lights.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: But hey, I'm a public speaker.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: And like how you talk about yourself matters in that moment.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, what you're speaking to, and I appreciate you pulling it out and making it specific, is a when I work with people, public speaking is a really interesting term because it is more specific than communication.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: Communication is like a broad term, but public speaking is more specific at the same time.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: Becoming a better public speaker or even public speaking means different things to different people.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's really just another way of saying, like, where am I communicating under pressure?
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: And how do I want to get better in that environment?
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: And where that's important and relevant is like where work ends up starting with people is this idea of taking this vague thing and making it specific.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, you want to become a public speaker.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: What does becoming a public speaker mean to you?
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, do you want to do keynotes?
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want to do workshops?
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want to get better in your sales environment?
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: And then, okay, well, how are you currently operating in that environment?
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: What are you currently doing to get better in that environment?
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like the more we define what communication or public speaking means to you, the more that we can create a specific measurable path to making small consistent action that actually gets you there too.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I love that.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: I think because so many things even come up for me of what do you mean by public speaking?
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: What do you mean by being a speaker?
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: There's a thousand different ways to do that.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: What is your goal when you're giving or speaking?
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: Is it to be emotive?
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: Is it to be influential?
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: Is it to be just getting your point across?
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: Or of a seminar?
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: Do you just need to be understood versus do you need to be felt?
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: Does the person sitting across from you need to emote so deeply?
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, how you talk, the way you speak, your cadence, your posture, your composure, those are going to be different skills for the outcome that you're trying to draw.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: But so you've you've seen this, you've done this, you sort of live this out to an extent.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: When did you get to a point where you go from being an amateur speaker, if you want to call it that, right?
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: The Toastmasters, it's really just like, hey, you're getting confidence hearing your voice in a public audience.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: Going from that to turning it into a profession and to skill acquisition, when when did that transition start happening?
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: Where you're starting to actually collect real data on what makes Matt Mosic a good speaker in the context that you had.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: The first keynote I delivered was also the first large-scale audience that I had spoken to outside of Toastmasters.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: Not counting 400 people at eight and like some other.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: It basically was Toastmasters.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: I got a keynote, I'm at this conference.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's interesting because marketing yourself as a communication and speaking coach comes with a certain amount of authority with it.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: Where I think there's a certain amount of authority with just like the marketing of it.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then there was some real skill that developed in in Toastmasters.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: And what I'm getting at is like, not many people ask me for any credentials.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: So here I am walking into this conference.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: I've talked my way into it.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'm the one of the closing keynote speakers on the last day, which means I have two full days to watch people go.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because I was like, I am not gonna, I am not at the level of these people.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: And there were so many ways where that came up.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: And and the reason I was able to see it is because I had built so much depth of experience and context where I could see the things they were doing and that I wasn't doing.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: I had a memorized script, so I'm sitting there seeing all these things, and I can't really adapt.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm kind of just forced to sit in my my my solace of like, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then I delivered it and it was okay.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: I delivered that talk, it was okay.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I I did get some some like interesting comments a couple years later from people who were like, I really remember the story you said, and this and that.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I think I was a little harder on myself than I than it actually showed up.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: But why that was the moment is both A, I just gave a keynote, which a lot of people don't do.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: So there's already the weight behind having done that.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's also this awakening to there's Toastmasters, and then there's real speaking.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: And boy, you gotta grow up if you're gonna keep on marketing yourself as a speaking coach.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: So that was it.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: Well, especially given the fact that, okay, you're in flight.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: So, like you said, hey, I already have this already rehearsed.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: This is already so scripted out that no, there actually isn't a lot of room for me to make changes now.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: And just being able to take the lumps, right?
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: Knowing, hey, this is the best that I can do in this moment.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: I think that by itself speaks out a huge amount to the skill that you truly do have, and why actually you're probably the best coach for many people is you're able to say, hey, today this is the best that we're gonna be able to have you do, and that's good.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna celebrate that.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna lead to the next thing.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: And it doesn't make you any less competent, capable, significant, or insignificant.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's the part where more people care about that of, hey, I know exactly where my flaws are, even in my own coaching, and not just my own coaching, but in owning a coaching business.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I see that so much that people will feel the shame of I'm supposed to be better at the thing that I coach.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: And there's actually this beautiful humility that comes along with I'm actually completely self-aware on where I'm not doing well, owning and operating a coaching business, coaching the very thing that I personally struggle with.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I think more people actually care about that.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like, hey, are you a perfect speaker?
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: No, hey, here's the flaws.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: And in fact, I might give the first half of my presentation or my speech, and then the second half of it is going to be pointing out everywhere where I messed up.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I think, I mean, that that's all yours.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: You you take that for what.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: But I think what's been interesting for me in my own space and in a large part, yes, coaching, but also running and operating a business, where I teach executives, where I teach founders, where I'm coaching sales reps, is that oftentimes they are looking at, hey, how did you run this sales call?
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, how you ran this sales call is a reflection of whether I think I should I want to work with you or not.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: How did how did my nervous system feel when you spoke, when you talked?
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, I want to recreate that.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: Help help me build whatever that thing is.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: And if I'm just kind of like, nah man, I'm an eagle, I just fly by the seat of my pants.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, no, that's not helpful to anyone.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, actually, no, here are the concrete skills that I've built.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: Here's my pre-call ritual, here's the thing that I do that helps increase the likelihood that I'm showing up in the best way possible with the current skills that I have within the current ecosystem of all of it.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, okay, perfect.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: You have a standard operating procedure, you have a skill list, you have a work back plan for the goals that are in front of them.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe you personally can't act on all of those yourself, but here's how I can over the next six months increase that for you, for the goals that you have and the values and mission that you want to go drive.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: There's beauty in that.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: So, Matt, in terms of where you typically start with somebody, right?
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like, usually the people who are coming to you, they've already probably got 50 to 100 different times that they've been speaking, or at least not a small number, where it's like you're helping them become the elite.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: Like, where do you where do you help somebody who already actually has a good number of talks in in their portfolio?
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's interesting because we started our conversation, I think some of it was before the recording, talking about the performance side of it and the mindset side of it.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's not to say I don't talk to people about that, but it's not the bulk of what I end up talking to people about.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: As you're alluding to whether it's I've spoken 50 to 100 times, and it depends on again, what do you define as public speaking, what what are the environments, these sorts of things, there is a certain mental library or level of acceptance that like I can get on in this moment, I'm gonna be okay.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: Can we help ourselves?
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: But where a lot of the work, especially when it comes to stages, is you know, earlier we we were talking about your story and how your story of speaking was built in a failure, a failure that turned into a goal that turned into a success.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: Though I had success as a speaker and that gave me reps, where I had a lot of failure was in this idea of storytelling.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: My most vivid high school memory was 17 years old.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: I was not one of the popular kids.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: Boy, did I want to be.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm sitting at this campfire where I just so happened to be at a a popular kid pool party, and people are sharing stories, everyone's kind of like looking at each other, and I'm and I jump in with a story.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: And 30 seconds later, I realize everyone stopped paying attention and looked away from me.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I just cut out in the middle of my sentence.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: That night as I was driving home, I have this thought of like, if only I were a storyteller, like then everything would be better, and then I'd be okay.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that was the thing that took me over a decade to overcome.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where I work with a lot of people.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's like people know their subject matter, they know what they are there to talk about, but so does Google.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: Chat GPT, Cloud, whatever you want to use, you can go to it to get whatever information it is that you're going to be talking about, but you cannot go to it and bring your real life experience to that moment.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: So, how do you stand out from every other speaker, uh, from every other presenter, from every other communicator, is by sharing things that only you can share, by sharing stories that you have lived.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: Depending on the context of where work begins, whether it's like create it, restructuring a talk so that story can fit within it, it's finding the stories that are real and authentic to you and actually testing the environments so you're used to telling them.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: I've noticed with a lot of people, they are phenomenal storytellers if it's just like me and Ian talking to each other.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: But if you throw on the lens of like prospect meeting or public speaking, then all of a sudden it goes into this mode of like value, value, value.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: I just got to tell you all the information.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: So often the work starts with understanding the messages, the stories that only you can share, and then helping you to actually get out and share them, which is a lot harder than it sounds.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: So I think one part of what you're talking about is working with somebody and just having the awareness to be able to say, hey, you already have a predisposition to what you think people are thinking when you start bringing up any story, right?
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: You have a predisposition or your nervous system has an expectation for how people are going to respond.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: And whether you realize it or not, that's showing up when you decide to share a story, when you decide to bring up some part of your past that if you haven't done this work, if you haven't built up these rituals and these routines and this awareness, your posture, your body language is reflecting a bunch of teenage kids who are kind of bullying and belittling your story.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: And you're showing up with that.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: Even though it's like, hey, that was 30 years ago.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like there's there's that like part of us that wants to say, like, dude, harden up, like, grow up.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: You're not still on the playground.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: Part of you still is.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: Part of you still is trying to exp like heal and grow out of it.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, go ahead, jump in.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: No, you're good.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to add one thing to what you were saying, which is there's both the pattern recognition of I've done this before and like it did work out, whatever it may be.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: There is also the no one else does it.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: We know that storytelling is important.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: We know that it's how humans communicated for 100,000 years.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: We know we love them.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we listen to how many movies do people watch nowadays.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, Netflix is huge for a reason.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: But when we're at work, when we see someone else on stage, when we are in a conversation, we don't see people sharing those stories.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: So we assume that we're not then supposed to.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: So there's this other layer of like no one else really does it.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I feel like an anomaly if I do it.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um that that aspect of just kind of feeling like you're I'm the only one that needs to do this work.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: Therefore, that must mean I'm an imposter.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: That must mean I don't belong.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_01: That must mean I I don't deserve whatever whatever opportunities I'm being given.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: And even reflecting that, that usually keeps you from being able to pull some of the best stories that you've had.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: That keeps you from being able to represent them.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I think there is beauty in working with somebody who is able to ask you questions that brings out some of the best stories.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: And when you're sitting by yourself alone in your room, it can be hard to reflect on those things.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: It sounds like one of the beautiful things of your coaching is that you do help people pull meaningful stories out for the audience that they're targeting, for the scenario in which they're targeting.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: So you're like, hey, tell me about these people who are going to show up.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: Who what are the things that they worry about?
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: What keeps them up at night?
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: Why are they losing sleep over this thing?
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: And to your point, like, hey, my story about being a second grader standing up on stage in front of my church isn't going to resonate with the fintech company that I'm leading their fiscal year planning kickoff in December.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: True story.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, know your audience.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: Who are you trying to influence?
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I think one of the things that's helped me more recently is I actually lead from my failures first because then I already start to lose this need to have to appear like I have it all together.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, hey, if I'm leaving with some of my biggest messes, my biggest mistakes, my biggest flaws, my biggest moments of failure, like that actually I've learned more from that.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: And those stories actually resonate more deeply with the person who's like, hey, I'm actually afraid I'm mucking all this up as we speak.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, what would it look like to fail forward, to fail successfully, to make this not a failure?
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: How do we do that?
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: But so I think that's a part of analyzing your audience, knowing who you're speaking to, why you're speaking to them.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: So many people just speak and then they're just like, word vomit, word vomit, word vomit.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I don't know what I just said.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: I was in a fugue state.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: I blacked out.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: But but to that point of when you start becoming a professional, you go through your life with a fine-tooth comb and just keep track of all of it.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: I have to assume, Matt, you probably journal quite a bit these days.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: So, like, that's probably a good ritual of yours for tracking stories, remembering moments, and like, okay, you test them out in small audiences in order to then decide, okay, like that's that story really resonates with me or with my audience.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: How do you help your clients build that skill, build that ritual of not just storytelling, but story remembering?
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how do you even help them pull some of those stories that they have?
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: It depends.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: It depends on where that person is in their storytelling journey and the level of commitment there is to finding and building these stories.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: Is it we are strategically adding stories to a keynote, or is it we are building a storytelling habit?
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: Talk a little bit about both.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: If it's we are building stories strategically, there are a few that I like to always have.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: One of them just being your origin story.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: Why do you do what you do?
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: Why are you up there on stage?
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like really understanding the the nature of the origin.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: I have a ton of them.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: My public speaking origin is the eight-year-old.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: My communication origin is the 21-year-old uh Merrill Lynch internship, my LinkedIn origin, like there's all these other origin stories.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: You find the why behind it.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's a a great one to start with and build the muscle of like, how do you then tell a story?
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: And people really connect with that.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: People love to understand the reason behind it.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: And like your point earlier about what are you obsessing about, it gives you a great opportunity to show them your obsession and build a little bit of a confidence factor of like, oh, this is important.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: So there are some targeted questions to just build some foundational stories.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: That is something that you can do.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: On the other side, I want to build a storytelling habit.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: There are two practices that I do on a daily basis that are essential for the fact that I have hundreds of stories that I can share.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the fundamental issues I had when I felt like I wasn't a storyteller, was I don't have a story to tell.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: How do you find stories is you just mine your life.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: I do two things.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: One of them is proactive and one of them is reactive.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: The proactive one I cannot take credit for.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: Matthew Dix, most prolific storyteller, arguably, in the world, uh, he wrote the book Storyworthy, which is phenomenal.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: But he introduces this practice called homework for life.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: Homework for life is a daily practice, Excel file, two columns.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: Date, what was my most story worthy moment of the day?
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: Or phrase another way, because story worthy gives a lot of pressure to it, is you can say, gun to my head, if I had to share a moment from today, what would I share?
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it just becomes this log of present day moments, things that you just don't want to forget.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: Does everyone become a story?
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: Some of them are just memories that are cool to have, but one out of 10, two out of 10 end up becoming stories that you might share.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: What that does is both get you in the habit of recognizing I have stories to share, and it builds a consistent daily process of finding them.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: The other layer was actually where I got my start in storytelling, and it totally happened by accident.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: Back to H Street.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: I did not know when we joined that community that an optional, an optional part of the process, which optional to someone like me and probably someone like you is not optional, was to post on LinkedIn once a day.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: I was posting once a week.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, how in the heck am I gonna post once a day?
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: For a week, I'm going about it in this like haphazard manner, throwing just anything I can out.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm sitting there at the gym, I'm on a bench, I'm in between sets, and I'm looking around and I'm like, no one else isn't wearing headphones.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: And and there was a reason that I wasn't wearing headphones.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know what came over me, but I pulled out my phone, I wrote stories-realizations working out without headphones.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: And that became a moment I then went and shared.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: What happened after that day is I built a muscle.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: I have an idea, I write it down.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't looked at that log recently.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's something over 13,000 words now.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: And it's constantly just mining for moments, things in my past, ideas, really, whatever it may be.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: I have an idea, I don't forget it.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: So proactive, homework for life, reactive, just story bank, but both are absolutely essential.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: I I mean, I couldn't put a dollar value on how important those practices are for me.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think I love that that perspective of listen like a thief is is language that I heard from somebody of like you just constantly be in observance.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: And especially somebody like me who's very inattentive.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a space cadet, I'm a total space cadet.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: I have ADHD type one and type two, type two being the inattentive.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: But what's beautiful about that inattention is it usually means that I'm actually paying attention to a lot of things all at once.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: And the beauty of being more present is what would it look like to catalog a couple of these things?
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_01: How do I make a ritual of this?
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_01: How do I help celebrate this new process, this new pattern, and simplify it, right?
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: Like to your point of simplify your data collection process.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: So it might just be like a quick little voice note, like today's date, blah, blah, blah thing.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_01: And then immediately use whatever tools that you need to to recover it.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_01: For me, some of it is actually just hearing myself say the thing.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_01: If I hear myself say it out loud, I've already cemented it a thousand times better than the brief thought that kind of came and went and never did anything with.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_01: So even just hearing myself say out loud, oh hey, story thought.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: I've fist bumped and high-fived three to five people every day that I've gone to the gym for five years straight.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: There's a reason why going to the gym isn't hard for me.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: Because I'm celebrated every time I walk in.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: But the way that I'm now celebrated when I walk in the gym is because I've had this many people.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: I've celebrated first.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: There's a story.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's a story.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: There's a story.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so those are the those interesting cues and clues like you're talking about of the more present you are, the more aware you are to just be absorbing and collecting and and and to some extent, journaling, cataloging, the more you realize like there are stories happening all around you that you are co-creating, co-participating in.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not always having these like perfect analogies.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: That's kind of what we can get stuck in is having an analogy for everything, and everything is always analogous for B2B cells and AI.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's a LinkedIn choke.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh everyone's groaning, which is great.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: But but that idea, though, that you can just be observing and finding moments, stories in the mundane, in these brief glimpses.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: What is the story behind everyone else is locked in with their headphones in, and I'm the only one that's not?
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: What else is there?
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: What came up for me?
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what was the story I was telling myself?
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_01: What's happening in the other people around me?
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_01: Making up stories, even for what it is that's going on in their life, and like, what would it look like to have that dialogue and give that space?
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: Honestly, I think that's probably the biggest action item for even for me and anybody who's listening is being able to create that ritual of just collecting as many stories as you can.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like you said, gun to your head.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: What is the the story point for the day?
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: And then letting it be.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_01: Like not having to then turn it into a hundred or three hundred-word content post for this platform, but just creating a bank of it.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_01: Matt, brother, for the sake of keeping us on track for time, appreciate you so much for having this conversation.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_01: Really love hearing your voice and like seeing more videos with your messaging, your content, your stories that you put out there.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_01: I have been benefited by it.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: What's been beautiful is you and I have now been doing this for three years, since eight straight.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I think both of us have seen the benefits of posting daily, creating these story banks that I committed to maxing out my connection requests every week since August of that year of 2023.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: And that consistent action, I've grown my following by 1% weekly every week for three years straight.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the part to your point of like it's compounding growth, it's compounding benefits, it's compounding every time you continue to build these skills and rehearsals.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I think so many more people can just start small.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_01: Start by just collecting a couple of stories and working from there.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I like the other part that you said.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_01: The second action item for me is having an origin story for each of the different entry points.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_01: So having an origin story for why you do what you do, having an origin story for me, it's a marital origin origin story.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_01: Like telling, like you should have that one figured out if you want your wife to be happy with you.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_01: Know how to tell your love story.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: There's my action item.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's your that's your action item.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah, no, your wife told me that you need that as an action item.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_01: So this is actually an intervention.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_01: But there's something to be said about like you, the why you do what you do, origin story, your obsession or origin story, your love origin story.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_01: For me, there's a faith origin story that I have.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_01: Like, those are all these key pivotal moments that I truly say these define me.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_01: Like I think about these things, and I feel the essence of who I am as a person is completely integrated into it.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: And if you don't know how to sit in silence to pull that story out, sit across from somebody like Matt who helps you feel that level of confidence that you're maybe myself as well.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_01: Appreciate that to be able to pull that story out.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_01: But Matt, appreciate you, brother.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_01: I will link all of the places to find you, LinkedIn, website.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, if you're interested in coaching, if you want to book Matt as a speaker, you are uh having a conference for speakers of speakers.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_01: Matt is your guy.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_01: Appreciate you so much.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: Appreciate you too, my friend.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: This has been wonderful.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_01: Bye now.