Practical Storytelling for Families: Preserving Legacy One Day at a Time with Matthew Dicks, Author of Storyworthy

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Stories are about thoughts and feelings more than anything else.
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The problem in the world is so often people are carrying these sacks of stories that are difficult to tell or they're worried nobody wants to hear them.
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When you're vulnerable, it opens up a space for their vulnerability to sort of fill as well.
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Marjorie Finley was born in Memphis in 1928.
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She loved to sing.
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And in 1950, at 22, she won a talent competition that let her tour the country as an opera singer.
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That was her dream.
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She'd often bring her two daughters along because she was a mom first.
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One of her daughters, Andrea, loved traveling with her and watching her perform.
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As time went on, Marjorie chose a quieter life with her family in Pennsylvania.
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And when Andrea had children of her own, Marjorie found her next great love, being her grandmother.
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She had a deep connection with one granddaughter in particular.
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Marjorie wasn't wealthy by wealth management standards, but she passed on something else: a love of music and a love of performing.
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Her granddaughter adored her.
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She wanted to sing like her grandmother.
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She wanted to perform like her grandmother.
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Marjorie passed away in 2003 when her granddaughter was just 13 years old.
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But legacy isn't that simple, and Marjorie's story doesn't end there.
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Her granddaughter picked up some of those dreams and became one of the most successful musicians in music history.
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You know her as Taylor Swift.
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Marjorie never saw a stadium or heard a song reach a hundred million people, but she shared something that mattered enough to her granddaughter that Taylor wrote a song about her.
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It's called Marjorie.
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And if you haven't heard it, go listen.
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It's one of my favorite legacy songs.
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We'll never know which part of ourselves will carry the next generations forward.
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This is one of my favorite legacy stories, partly because I love Taylor Swift's music and partly because of how I got to this version of it.
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I worked on it with today's guest, Matthew Dix.
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Matthew's been helping me and Total Family tell our own story.
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He understands legacy, and he lives this work every day with his own family.
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I'm excited to have him on, and we have a pretty exciting announcement to make at the end of this podcast.
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Without further ado, Matthew Dix.
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Matthew Dix, welcome to Visionary Advisor.
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Thank you very much for having me.
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I appreciate it.
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We have known each other now for between a year and two years.
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Yeah, it's gonna say a little while, a couple years, probably.
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Yeah.
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I reached out to you because I heard you on a podcast.
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Your one story captivated me.
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And then I told it to my five-year-old.
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Obviously, I was way worse at telling him, and I broke the rule of not telling other people's stories right away, which I came clean about.
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But he was then captivated by it.
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And then I read Story Sell and I read Story Worthy, and you've helped us a ton at Total Family.
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You are the story person in my life.
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You're very kind.
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What was the story?
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I I don't recall which story you heard first.
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It was The Spoon of Power.
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Ah, yes.
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Yeah.
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It's like my satisfaction of the Rolling Stones.
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Like when you're like, I got all I got 130 of these, and they're like, Yeah, tell the spoon story.
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I feel like Mick Jagger like having to roll out the the fan favorite so often.
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Yeah.
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Well, we have a special announcement at the end of this podcast, but I have been wanting to have you on anyway, because storytelling is so important to what families are doing in your books, in your various books, not sp you also write novels, which I have not read.
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But we'll get to it.
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I'm sure they're I'm sure they're amazing.
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But stories are so important.
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And I think about some of the tips that you give your readers that could really help families articulate their own journey, their own history, because the way that you tell something.
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Now I'm like listening through the lens of Matthew Dix, but I'm hearing people tell average material, amazing story, amazing material, average story, thinking like Matt needs to help them.
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Well, I'm happy to hear they're telling stories because I think part of the problem, or at least the first problem, is that they're just not sort of holding on to and telling stories to begin with.
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So I always say I'd rather hear a story told poorly than no story at all.
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So I'm thrilled to hear that people are telling them and you know what you're doing and you know, what Total Family is working on helps preserve those stories in an extraordinary way.
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But yeah, if you tell them better, people will certainly listen to them more and I think more importantly, remember them better.
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Yeah.
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I think about the stat of half the country not being able to name their grandparents and basically one in ten people being able to name their great-grandparents.
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You know, we were talking about that in one of our fundraising processes, and I got your help because one of your tips is is to turn numbers into something, right?
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How how do you say that when you say like translate numbers into something?
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Uh, well, I say it a bunch of ways, but typically I say if you're just presenting data in its raw form, you're probably failing.
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Like ultimately, if we can turn a number into an image and an emotion in the minds of someone, and if we want to lean it in the direction that we hope, you know, it causes them to care about it in the same way we care about it, that's great too.
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But if we're just presenting a number for number's sake, you can just imagine how many numbers you've forgotten over the course of your life, the amount of data you have let go of.
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But if someone actually made you see the number and some representation in your mind and made you think and feel about it, you're more likely to remember it.
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And that's going to be great for you.
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I remember in with that stat, you told me like, so that means, Alex, that half the room of the people you're talking to are going to be forgotten.
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Right.
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You need to make sure they all know that.
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Right.
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And I thought that was a really cool way to think about it.
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So let's just jump in with maybe people thinking their family doesn't have any cool stories.
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And, you know, your idea of finding stories in everyday life.
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Well, I certainly hope a family doesn't think they don't have any stories to tell.
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I think what happens with a family is oftentimes they say, Oh, we got two good family stories.
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And I think, really?
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You have three kids.
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They're both, let's say, you know, they're all over 20.
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So that's 60 years of childhood that you've gone through, and you got two good stories out of 60 years of childhood, that's a little crazy.
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Right.
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So, you know, as you know, I'm obsessed with the idea of holding on to life in as meaningful a way as possible.
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I I genuinely think I'm the happiest person I've ever met in my life.
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And I think it's because I am holding on to my days as if they have value, so that when I look back to yesterday or 10 years ago, I see more than most people see in terms of the road that I've led.
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And so the more we attempt to hold on to our days by giving ourselves pause and reflecting on the day and saying, what happened today that made this day different than any other day, or what made me feel something or think something.
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And if we can hold on to that, we're gonna be uh much richer in terms of the amount of stories we have to tell.
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You say in in your book, no wonder time feels like it's flying by.
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We look back on our year and we can only remember like 12 days or 30 days, or even if you remember half the days, no wonder it feels like it's flying by.
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Right.
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Right?
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You just you just look back at the week and you're like, oh, well, I don't know what happened.
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You call this homework for life.
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And I think I was doing it wrong originally.
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That the prompt is if I had to tell one story about today, what would it be?
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Yeah, I used to think, and I still do, sort of someone kidnaps my family and doesn't give them back until I tell a story about something that happened on this day, even if nothing seemingly story worthy took place, what would I choose from the day that was the most story worthy moment of all the non-story worthy moments that might have happened, what would that story be?
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You know, and I think probably Alex, I was doing it wrong in the beginning.
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When I gave myself this assignment at first back in 2012, if we go back there and look at my initial homework for life entries, which is really just a spreadsheet, right?
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It's yeah, it's a single column.
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We're not creating, we're not writing stories here, we're just capturing moments, five or six sentences.
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If I look, I was getting about 1.1 moment per day.
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That's how many I was capturing.
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Today I'm capturing almost eight moments per day, not because my life is more interesting, but because back then I was looking for stories, like genuine stories.
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Now I just look for moments of meaning that I don't want to lose, recognizing that most of them won't actually amount to a story, but they will amount to my legacy.
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They'll amount to the things I want to remember.
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And I also have learned that we don't discount or disregard moments because we're not sure if they have value, because it costs nothing to fill in, you know, a single line of an Excel spreadsheet.
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And quite often we're in the middle of a story and we don't recognize it.
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And we'll never recognize it if we don't actually record the moments that are taking place that will ultimately culminate in a story.
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You are now a retired elementary school teacher, now you're a full-time storytelling consultant, author, best-selling speaker, dad, all this stuff, right?
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Patriots fan.
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But the kids just have so much rich material.
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Like I've been doing this probably since since we met, since I read your book.
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I'm terrified to miss a day of homework for life.
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I've learned both that if I say to myself, oh, I'm gonna remember that one of the boys said that.
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I'm not, I'm not gonna remember what they said.
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And because I do it on the spreadsheet, I just have gotten in the habit of just like writing it down as quickly as I possibly can.
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And then also I've experienced the joy of just looking back at some of my moments.
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And one of the ones I was looking at to prep the podcast, my son came up to me like three months ago.
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I never would have remembered this, but we were doing yard work, and I asked him to move a bunch of trees like over to this area in our backyard, and he came back up to me and said, Good news, bad news.
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And I said, Well, I had never heard him say this.
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He's five.
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He said, Good news, I move the trees where you ask.
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Bad news is Benson and I both have to poop.
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And so I'm like, All right, and so we run inside, and neither of them can really do the bathroom like fully by themselves.
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So it's like no one else is home.
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My wife has a baby.
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But that like moment, good news, bad news, is something that I now have.
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Who knows if it's something that we'll use in a story or but homework for life has really been a uh a really special, really special gift.
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And it's it's something that I would encourage any families to do.
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Even and this is true of like your parents say crazy things.
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And like people are I one of my homework for life was this lady like losing it on me, and I was pulling into a grocery store and I took like a slightly wide turn, and I just see her in the in the car, like verbally screaming F bombs, like, what the F are you doing?
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And I remember thinking, man, the world is in a weird place.
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Right.
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Yeah, you know, because like clearly my turn wasn't what my turn was like the 14th thing that had set her off.
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Just weird stuff like that.
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It's given me stuff like that that I can look look back on.
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Yeah.
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And I and I stress the idea that we should not be judging or deciding whether it's story worthy to write it down.
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You know, everything from a memory that suddenly reoccurs to you to, you know, actually two days ago, my friend Chris, he's been my friend for three years.
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He retired from teaching.
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And as he was retiring before me, I didn't really know him that well.
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He worked in another school.
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I was just vaguely aware of him.
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I went to him and said, Hey, I want you to be my friend.
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I said, Do you play golf?
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He said, No.
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I said, I'm gonna teach you how to play golf.
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And then I said, Do you know about storytelling and storytelling shows?
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He said, I don't know what you're talking about.
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I said, I'm gonna start bringing you to Boston and New York.
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He is now that guy who goes to the most number of shows with me in my life.
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Just because three years ago I said, I want you to be my friend.
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So he texted me yesterday and said, Hey, I haven't seen you in two weeks.
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Is it weird to say I miss you and I can't wait to see you again?
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I was like, that's the sweetest thing a 57-year-old man has ever texted in my life, right?
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Yeah.
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And that text message was copied and pasted into my homework for life.
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Now, some people might say, but Matt, it's already a text message.
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You have it, but I'm curating my life.
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I'm pulling out the things of meaning so I know where they are and where I can look at them when I need them.
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So whatever it is, small or big, you grab it, you hold on to it, you write it down.
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That's a great point.
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I mean, even in our software, what we have this like milestone feature that's related to kind of the history of a family.
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And some people will say, like, we have all these pictures on our iPhone.
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But I think about that, like the pictures in our grandparents' attics.
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Yeah.
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That no one ever looks through.
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They just sort of get past and passed until one day someone's just like, I guess we just get rid of this.
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Versus it would be more valuable just to have like two pictures that your grandmother knew that your grandmother said, This one's really important to me, and this one's really important to me.
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And here's why.
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That is more valuable than 3,000 pictures in a in a box or 10, 100,000 on an iPhone.
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Uh, I'm not opposed to photos.
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People have told me this before, too.
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But you know, two things I say.
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One is go look at photos 10 years ago and tell me if you remember the day at all by looking at the photo of you standing next to the zebra or the birthday cake.
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Like you don't really remember the day.
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And the other thing is, stories are about thoughts and feelings more than anything else.
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Like we see things in life all the time and we hear people talk all the time.
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Those are like elements of a story, but not the most important parts of the story.
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Our homework for life should be reflective of the fact that when Chris told me he missed me, I thought it was the sweetest thing a 55-year-old guy had ever said to me.
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Yeah.
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Like that thought and feeling and that joy of having a grown-ass man willing to say he missed me, that feeling was what made it important, not the fact that there's a text message on my phone now.
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So yeah, we got to hold on to the moments and the context because the context will be lost soon.
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Those photos in your attic of your grandmother, all it has is maybe a date.
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It might like say 1955, you know, beach, but you don't actually know what took place that day.
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You just know what bathing suit she was wearing.
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And that's pretty meaningless in the grand scheme of things.
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Yeah.
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Okay.
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So two things about Chris.
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First is do you recommend asking people to be your friend?
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Do you think more people need to do this?
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We're at a time of isolation and loneliness, and people really struggling and and a lot of people feeling like they don't have any friends.
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So that's question one.
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Question two is when you tell stories, you always use names.
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You always talk about, I would say the vast majority of people are like, my wife, my kids, the they're not saying the the proper now.
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Is that the term?
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Proper no proper noun.
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Yeah, yeah, proper noun.
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It's all it's good to have a teacher around, honestly.
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But you use the name of your wife, of your children, of your friends.
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Can you answer the friend question and then tell us about the name strategy?
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Yeah.
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So the friend question is a new obsession of mine.
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You have to slow me down at some point and get me to stop talking about it.
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I was interviewed by a loneliness researcher about six months ago because she thought I was one of the more connected people in the world that who she knew.
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And she suspected I had strategies that were helping me be connected.
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And I told her, I don't think I do.
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And after three hours, she listed nine things that I do that most people don't do, including something I do all the time, which is I meet someone who I find interesting and want to spend more time with.
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And I rapidly tell them, oftentimes earlier than you could imagine, I say, listen, I want us to be friends.
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My goal is a couple things.
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One, I want to cut through the chaff, that like nonsense that takes place to become a friend.
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But I also know that to the outside observer, watching a guy say, Hey, I want to be your friend looks really weird.
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But when someone actually says that to you, hey, I want to be your friend, you know, you can ask the people who I've done this to you.
00:17:17.359 --> 00:17:20.720
And I have a lot of friends who I have straightforward said, I want to be your friend.
00:17:20.960 --> 00:17:29.519
They say it is such a happy moment of like unique acceptance that you don't get in this world once you're, you know, older than seven.
00:17:29.680 --> 00:17:33.119
When you're seven years old and you're on the playground and you say, Hey, will you be my friend?
00:17:33.359 --> 00:17:38.000
I'm 56, 55, I'm 55, and I still say, Will you be my friend?
00:17:38.160 --> 00:17:39.680
So, yes, I highly advise it.
00:17:39.759 --> 00:17:46.559
I, you know, I'm doing an actually a workshop, uh, an eight-week workshop on loneliness teaching strategies that I teach to film my life with people.
00:17:46.640 --> 00:17:52.319
And that's one of them is literally tell people I want to be your friend, and then find some commonality.
00:17:52.400 --> 00:17:53.119
Like I did with Chris.
00:17:53.200 --> 00:17:54.079
I said, Do you play golf?
00:17:54.240 --> 00:17:54.640
He said, No.
00:17:54.720 --> 00:17:56.000
I said, Do you want to?
00:17:56.240 --> 00:17:57.279
And then storytelling.
00:17:57.359 --> 00:18:02.079
And if he had said neither one of those things, I said I would have said, Do you like to go to breakfast early in the morning?
00:18:02.240 --> 00:18:04.319
You know, do you like to read novels?
00:18:04.559 --> 00:18:06.319
Do you want, do you are you a writer?
00:18:06.480 --> 00:18:08.480
You know, do you want to bowl?
00:18:08.640 --> 00:18:09.920
I like to bowl weirdly.
00:18:10.000 --> 00:18:11.839
I'm terrible at it, but I think it's funny as hell.
00:18:12.000 --> 00:18:12.640
I play poker.
00:18:12.720 --> 00:18:14.880
Would you like to join my monthly poker game?
00:18:14.960 --> 00:18:18.240
You know, I just find something to bring them into my life in a meaningful way.
00:18:18.400 --> 00:18:19.759
So I think it's really important.
00:18:20.079 --> 00:18:20.799
Really cool.
00:18:21.039 --> 00:18:21.599
Love that.
00:18:22.000 --> 00:18:23.680
And then tell us about the names.
00:18:23.920 --> 00:18:25.200
So the names are interesting.
00:18:25.279 --> 00:18:26.559
I love a proper noun.
00:18:26.720 --> 00:18:28.000
I name people all the time.
00:18:28.240 --> 00:18:29.440
Here's what happens, I think.
00:18:29.599 --> 00:18:37.839
If I had said my friend sent me a text message, you know, telling me he missed me, I think that creates a certain image in the minds of the audience.
00:18:38.000 --> 00:18:44.640
But if I say my friend Chris, oddly we all have in our mind what like a Chris looks like.
00:18:44.880 --> 00:18:51.200
And until that platonic version of Chris is replaced by the real Chris, that stands in for us as Chris.
00:18:51.359 --> 00:18:55.200
Like I think you can actually see Chris more clearly when I give him a name.
00:18:55.279 --> 00:19:00.319
And the goal of a storyteller is to create the most vivid image in your mind possible.
00:19:00.480 --> 00:19:08.240
So naming people, when I say my son's name is Charlie and he's 14, everyone has an image of what a 14-year-old Charlie looks like.
00:19:08.400 --> 00:19:11.920
Not correct, but I'm kind of not interested in correct.
00:19:12.000 --> 00:19:17.200
I'm interested in the vividness of the image that I can place in your mind, right?
00:19:17.359 --> 00:19:19.200
I'm not I'm not obsessed with that.
00:19:19.519 --> 00:19:35.680
You talk about that with like a um if a story takes place in a kitchen, you know, you'll sort of phrase the kitchen in a way so that someone can put their image of the kitchen in there and you only are specific to the extent that it's relevant to the story.
00:19:35.839 --> 00:19:39.519
Otherwise, their kitchen image is fine, right?
00:19:39.920 --> 00:19:40.480
Absolutely.
00:19:40.559 --> 00:19:40.799
Yeah.
00:19:40.960 --> 00:19:51.359
The stories get bogged down in the idea that people have to describe things when description is the last thing you ever want to do in a story because it's the least interesting thing that can be said.
00:19:51.599 --> 00:19:53.759
And so you you said it perfectly.
00:19:54.000 --> 00:19:59.759
I tell you, I'm standing in a kitchen with a bowl of strawberries in my hand, and you see something.
00:20:00.079 --> 00:20:08.559
You probably see me in your kitchen or your parents' kitchen or a kitchen you see on television every week, but all of those are incredibly vivid in your mind.
00:20:08.640 --> 00:20:09.519
You've got all the details.
00:20:09.599 --> 00:20:13.359
If I said, hey, is the is a refrigerator or laminate or stainless steel?
00:20:13.440 --> 00:20:15.759
You know, is it a single sink or a double sink?
00:20:15.839 --> 00:20:18.480
You can tell me all of those things just by me saying kitchen.
00:20:18.640 --> 00:20:24.319
And as long as the particularities of the kitchen aren't relevant to the story, I'll let you use your kitchen because that's what I want.
00:20:24.559 --> 00:20:35.440
One of the reasons I feel like our relationship works so well is that you are one of a handful of people who just gives me very, very candid feedback.
00:20:35.680 --> 00:20:44.160
I remember the first thing, one of the first things I sent you, you were like, I gotta be honest, Alex, this is one of the worst PowerPoint slides I've ever seen.
00:20:44.400 --> 00:20:46.559
That was just a breath of fresh air for me.
00:20:46.720 --> 00:20:48.960
Uh, but but you helped me with this story.
00:20:49.039 --> 00:20:51.200
And I thought about it when you said you're standing in the kitchen.
00:20:51.279 --> 00:20:54.880
So you say a lot of stories should start with place and action.
00:20:55.119 --> 00:20:55.359
Yeah.
00:20:55.599 --> 00:20:59.359
So in in that case, you're standing in the kitchen holding strawberries.
00:20:59.599 --> 00:21:07.359
In the case of mine, I was making dinner in the kitchen when I heard a loud bang in the basement.
00:21:07.839 --> 00:21:12.400
For anyone that is maybe thinking, Alex hosts a podcast.
00:21:12.480 --> 00:21:13.599
He's a great storyteller.
00:21:13.759 --> 00:21:16.160
Or Matt writes books on stories.
00:21:16.640 --> 00:21:18.240
I am not a great storyteller.
00:21:18.480 --> 00:21:22.000
Just reading your books and working together a little bit.
00:21:22.160 --> 00:21:27.920
I go talk at like wealth advisor conferences and and our clients ask me to come speak and do stuff like that.
00:21:28.240 --> 00:21:31.759
But I had a woman come up to me who saw me speak in Boston.
00:21:31.920 --> 00:21:39.440
She came up to me a year and a half later and said, Hey, how's the TV in your basement?
00:21:41.119 --> 00:21:44.400
And that's kind of like the punchline of that story I told.
00:21:44.480 --> 00:21:45.519
I couldn't believe it.
00:21:46.079 --> 00:21:50.720
And so talk to us about starting with action and place.
00:21:51.039 --> 00:21:52.960
Is that like a universal rule?
00:21:53.839 --> 00:21:59.039
I start almost every story I tell with location and action.
00:21:59.279 --> 00:21:59.680
For a bunch.
00:22:00.240 --> 00:22:02.880
Of reasons, it immediately triggers the imagination.
00:22:03.119 --> 00:22:06.480
A location will immediately cause people to see an image in their mind.
00:22:06.559 --> 00:22:09.680
And as soon as they see an image in their mind, they are captivated.
00:22:09.759 --> 00:22:24.319
Actually, what really happens scientifically is as soon as the brain recognizes that a story is being told, it releases five chemicals that improve attention, memory, motivation, actually reduces pain if you're suffering from pain and dwarfings get released.
00:22:24.400 --> 00:22:24.960
All of that.
00:22:25.119 --> 00:22:32.400
So if you start your story by saying, My name is Alex Kirby, you know, I'm 32 years old, I got two kids, the brain does not recognize that a story.
00:22:32.480 --> 00:22:35.680
That brain recognizes that that is like something they have to escape.
00:22:35.839 --> 00:22:36.960
Like this sounds terrible.
00:22:37.440 --> 00:22:48.559
But if you say I'm sizzling salmon in a pan when I hear a bang in the basement and I know my boys are down there, now I know I'm in a story and I'm propelled in.
00:22:48.640 --> 00:22:52.000
The brain releases all those chemicals that cause me to want to hear more.
00:22:52.240 --> 00:22:52.559
Yeah.
00:22:52.720 --> 00:22:59.920
So starting that way gets people's attention, especially if you want to talk to people like kids who often don't want to hear stories.
00:23:00.000 --> 00:23:02.720
It's not that they don't want to hear your stories, you just don't tell them very well.
00:23:02.960 --> 00:23:06.799
You know that because your kids are more than happy to watch movies and television.
00:23:06.960 --> 00:23:11.200
That's because those stories are being told well by professionals who understand the strategies.
00:23:11.359 --> 00:23:17.200
You adopt the same strategies and you can be as effective as Marvel can be at holding your kids' attention.
00:23:17.440 --> 00:23:18.160
I love it.
00:23:18.319 --> 00:23:19.680
Okay, so location and action.
00:23:19.759 --> 00:23:24.160
We won't go too deep on that, but I I do want to talk about the five-second moment.
00:23:24.480 --> 00:23:31.599
Tell us about your idea of the five-second moment, the transformation, the change.
00:23:32.319 --> 00:23:36.880
So, in order to tell a good story, you have to fundamentally understand what a story is.
00:23:36.960 --> 00:23:38.400
And most people don't.
00:23:38.640 --> 00:23:46.720
They think something has happened to me over the course of time, and therefore I will report on that thing and I will have then told you a story.
00:23:46.880 --> 00:23:49.839
That's just reporting on your life, and no one ever wants to hear it.
00:23:50.000 --> 00:23:50.240
Right.
00:23:50.400 --> 00:23:57.279
The worst versions of these are vacation stories, what you had for a dream last night, you know, what you ate at dinner.
00:23:57.440 --> 00:23:58.880
These are all terrible things.
00:23:59.440 --> 00:24:03.279
Stories are about moments of transformation or realization.
00:24:03.440 --> 00:24:09.359
Either I am differently fundamentally as a person now, or more commonly, I think something different.
00:24:09.519 --> 00:24:20.400
I call them five-second moments because I think a story can take place over a long period of time, but ultimately it comes down to a singular moment of change, and those moments tend to be instantaneous.
00:24:20.640 --> 00:24:35.920
It takes a lot of lead up to the moment where you actually suddenly have a new view of the world or yourself or someone else or whoever, but that's what you're looking for is these moments that mean something to you, even if you're not sure what they mean initially.
00:24:36.079 --> 00:24:39.440
Like part of the storytelling process is what does this mean?
00:24:39.519 --> 00:24:43.599
You know, my wife told me yesterday, my son Charlie has a girlfriend.
00:24:43.759 --> 00:24:45.200
And uh, you know, he's 14.
00:24:45.279 --> 00:24:46.400
So what does that really mean?
00:24:46.559 --> 00:24:47.359
I kind of don't know.
00:24:47.440 --> 00:24:49.680
They go to the mall together, they hang out together.
00:24:49.839 --> 00:24:54.799
Yesterday, when my wife went to pick Charlie up from his girlfriend's house, they were holding hands.
00:24:54.880 --> 00:24:58.400
And it was the first time we have seen Charlie, and I didn't get to see it.
00:24:58.559 --> 00:25:01.680
My wife saw Charlie holding the hand of a girl, right?
00:25:01.920 --> 00:25:08.000
She told me that while I was on my exercise bike watching one of the alien movies, right?
00:25:08.160 --> 00:25:09.839
She said, pause it, I have something to tell you.
00:25:10.000 --> 00:25:12.079
And I said, Boy, that was a contrast, right?
00:25:12.240 --> 00:25:14.160
Now, that's a five-second moment.
00:25:14.240 --> 00:25:15.839
I actually can't tell you what it means yet.
00:25:16.079 --> 00:25:20.400
I don't, I can't tell you the story because I haven't wrestled with what that means to me.
00:25:20.559 --> 00:25:26.319
I think it has something to do with it took me a lot longer to hold a girl's hand than it has taken my son, right?
00:25:26.400 --> 00:25:33.039
And I'm like weirdly envious of my son for like being cooler than I have ever been, maybe in my life.
00:25:33.200 --> 00:25:34.160
That might be the story.
00:25:34.240 --> 00:25:37.920
I'm not quite sure, but I recognize, well, I'm having a moment now.
00:25:38.079 --> 00:25:38.880
I gotta hold on to it.
00:25:38.960 --> 00:25:39.839
That's what we're looking for.
00:25:40.079 --> 00:25:41.519
It's like how you perceive him.
00:25:41.599 --> 00:25:46.880
Is that like the moment where you sort of understand that he's grown up in a certain way?
00:25:47.039 --> 00:25:48.000
Or I don't know.
00:25:48.079 --> 00:25:49.839
That that's a cool version of it.
00:25:50.000 --> 00:25:54.160
I think you say in one of one of your books, like this idea will just ruin movies.
00:25:54.640 --> 00:25:57.920
And within the last year, I watched Kramer versus Kramer.
00:25:58.079 --> 00:26:03.440
You know, for the divorce kid movie, it's hot, it's in the top five, you know, divorced kid movies.
00:26:03.680 --> 00:26:15.839
And the one of the scenes where after Meryl Streep leaves and Dustin Hoffman is trying to make breakfast for his son, he's just botching it, he burns the pancakes, he ruins it, they get into a huge fight.
00:26:16.000 --> 00:26:23.599
I'm gonna get like choked up talking about it because like I was raised by, you know, my mom was involved in my life, but I spend most of the time with my dad towards the end of the movie.
00:26:23.839 --> 00:26:27.839
After she's gone, and now he's sort of gone through his transformation.
00:26:28.000 --> 00:26:34.400
You know, they come in and he just like perfectly executes breakfast with the perfect pancakes and they're doing it together.
00:26:34.480 --> 00:26:42.000
And the and like the kid, I think in the opening scene gets burned, and and it's like this beautiful five-second moment.
00:26:42.160 --> 00:26:49.200
And so I've come to realize that like if I can't find that in a film, maybe it's not doing what it's supposed to.
00:26:49.279 --> 00:26:50.799
I'm sure it's in there in most of them.
00:26:50.960 --> 00:26:54.960
Yeah, the five-second moment idea is really, really simple and and cool.
00:26:55.200 --> 00:26:59.920
One thing to notice about that movie, too, is the idea that sometimes we don't know where in a story, right?
00:27:00.000 --> 00:27:07.599
So if you ask the Dustman Hoffman character when he's burning the pancakes the first time, it's probably a moment of burning pancakes and failing to make pancakes.
00:27:07.680 --> 00:27:09.039
That's all it is for him at that moment.
00:27:09.119 --> 00:27:09.440
Yeah, right.
00:27:09.599 --> 00:27:13.359
He writes it down, though, in his homework for life, hopefully, is the day I burn the pancakes.
00:27:13.519 --> 00:27:20.160
A year later, he executes the perfect breakfast and it occurs to him at that moment, boy, I've really come a long way.
00:27:20.240 --> 00:27:21.519
Now he has a story to tell.
00:27:21.680 --> 00:27:37.920
But if we forget about the burning of the pancakes, that's how we live our lives most of the time, is we just live it moment by moment by moment instead of trying to put together meaning over the course of our life, which is what we need to do to have the stories to tell, to feel great about our lives, to see the evolution that we undergo.
00:27:38.079 --> 00:27:40.640
There's no evolution if you don't know where you once were.
00:27:40.799 --> 00:27:45.440
You know, a butterfly is not impressed by itself unless it knows it was once a caterpillar.
00:27:45.599 --> 00:27:49.119
We often forget that we were caterpillars and we're just sort of like living in the moment.
00:27:49.279 --> 00:27:57.119
People talk about the importance of living in the moment, and I believe in living in the moment, but not to the exclusion of holding on to the past.
00:27:57.519 --> 00:27:57.920
Yeah.
00:27:58.160 --> 00:28:00.480
Don't forget where you've been in some way.
00:28:00.559 --> 00:28:02.799
I I think that's true of like when families talk.
00:28:03.039 --> 00:28:08.480
Sometimes I feel like families are making more progress than they realize, but they don't have any markers in the background.
00:28:08.720 --> 00:28:09.440
Absolutely.
00:28:09.599 --> 00:28:10.640
Oh, all the time.
00:28:10.799 --> 00:28:11.039
Yeah.
00:28:11.359 --> 00:28:14.079
I wish I had a better relationship with my sister.
00:28:14.640 --> 00:28:19.920
Fast forward five years, you have a better relationship with your sister, but now you've forgotten that you did it.
00:28:20.160 --> 00:28:20.480
Right.
00:28:20.640 --> 00:28:21.200
Yes.
00:28:21.519 --> 00:28:27.759
Or more tragically, as a teacher, I can tell you this I could see the growth of a student over time.
00:28:28.079 --> 00:28:37.440
But parents, because they're living in the moment, they don't see their child ever growing because every day is a return to the struggle of my kid has a hard time in math.
00:28:37.599 --> 00:28:44.079
And, you know, as a teacher, I can mark because I'm doing assessments on a daily basis, I can mark the progress and see where the kids come from.
00:28:44.240 --> 00:28:54.480
But in their minds, my kid's bad at math, and they've never sort of noticed the progress because as parents, we're sort of not routinely assessing our child on their progress in life.
00:28:54.720 --> 00:28:58.720
And so being able to look back with accuracy and say, well, you know what?
00:28:58.799 --> 00:29:05.119
He used to not be able to add, and now he's struggling with long division, which means he can add, right?
00:29:05.440 --> 00:29:06.079
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:29:06.319 --> 00:29:06.640
Sure.
00:29:06.799 --> 00:29:07.759
That's a great point.
00:29:08.000 --> 00:29:08.319
All right.
00:29:08.400 --> 00:29:15.359
So this next thing I want to talk about is the funniest thing I think we're going to talk about on this entire podcast.
00:29:15.440 --> 00:29:16.640
It's so funny, Matt.
00:29:16.720 --> 00:29:18.799
And it's what not to do.
00:29:19.039 --> 00:29:19.359
Yeah.
00:29:19.599 --> 00:29:21.279
When you're telling stories.
00:29:22.480 --> 00:29:23.759
Good job setting it up.
00:29:23.920 --> 00:29:24.079
Yes.
00:29:24.480 --> 00:29:24.799
Thank you.
00:29:24.960 --> 00:29:25.759
Tell us about that.
00:29:26.000 --> 00:29:37.039
Uh, well, what you don't want to do is preamble stories, you know, which is the idea of this is the funniest thing you're going to hear today, which guarantees it won't be because surprises uh humor is predicated on surprise.
00:29:37.119 --> 00:29:39.119
So now you've ruined the surprise, you know.
00:29:39.279 --> 00:29:46.640
Uh, you don't want to say things like, This is the story about how your mother and I had our first kiss, right?
00:29:46.799 --> 00:29:48.240
Because you just kind of told the story.
00:29:48.400 --> 00:29:48.480
Right.
00:29:48.720 --> 00:29:49.759
That's the story, right?
00:29:50.000 --> 00:29:52.079
Uh now you just have to provide details.
00:29:52.160 --> 00:29:53.519
And at that point, nobody cares.
00:29:53.680 --> 00:29:59.599
What stories are best when there is suspense and surprise because that's how life is, right?
00:29:59.680 --> 00:30:04.960
We are constantly surprised in ways that we immediately forget because the surprise is over.
00:30:05.039 --> 00:30:07.680
But every change is surprising.
00:30:07.759 --> 00:30:15.039
When Alicia told me that Charlie was holding his girlfriend's hand yesterday, that was incredibly surprising to me.
00:30:15.200 --> 00:30:22.160
But the trick is to remember that was incredibly surprising because now the next day it almost feels like just a fact.
00:30:22.319 --> 00:30:25.440
Storytellers recognize it wasn't just a fact.
00:30:25.599 --> 00:30:27.680
There was a moment when I was surprised, right?
00:30:27.839 --> 00:30:30.880
And so in order to preserve surprise, we have to avoid preambles.
00:30:31.119 --> 00:30:37.519
I don't tell you this is the moment when my son finally sort of leveled up his girlfriend to the next level, right?
00:30:37.599 --> 00:30:39.440
Yeah, that would be a bad way to say it.
00:30:39.680 --> 00:30:41.599
So we avoid preambles like those.
00:30:41.680 --> 00:30:44.240
The one I hate the most is guess what, right?
00:30:44.400 --> 00:30:49.599
I tell people the appropriate response to guess what is no, thank you and walk away.
00:30:49.759 --> 00:30:50.000
Right.
00:30:50.160 --> 00:30:55.519
Guess what is just the desperate attempt to grab attention from a world that won't give people attention.
00:30:55.680 --> 00:31:03.519
But the best way to get attention is to start your story with location and action and release the chemicals that will force them to be motivated to pay attention to you.
00:31:03.839 --> 00:31:14.240
I always tell my my wife, like, I'm not when I'm speaking at these events, it it isn't like like a TED Talk type audience, or it isn't like uh the most amazing speakers.
00:31:14.319 --> 00:31:18.079
I'm not following Martin Luther King Jr., their business presentations.
00:31:18.319 --> 00:31:22.720
And so a lot of people are doing what you sort of basically say that they shouldn't do.
00:31:22.960 --> 00:31:31.680
When I go in and start with action and location, I observe the room looking up from their phone, looking up from their.
00:31:32.480 --> 00:31:36.400
They've been down, you know, heads down, doing whatever for hours now.
00:31:36.720 --> 00:31:46.559
And then there is something that happens, and it's cool to see it happening around the room without saying this is the funniest thing you're going to ever hear.
00:31:46.720 --> 00:31:48.319
Guess what I'm about to tell you?
00:31:48.480 --> 00:31:54.559
It's just like let them get caught in, let them get bought in by just action and location.
00:31:54.640 --> 00:31:57.599
Now, you also talk about stakes.
00:31:57.920 --> 00:31:59.839
What are stakes in a story?
00:32:00.160 --> 00:32:05.200
Stakes are sort of what is at peril or what is wanted in a story?
00:32:05.359 --> 00:32:06.079
What do we need?
00:32:06.240 --> 00:32:07.200
What are we hoping for?
00:32:07.279 --> 00:32:09.200
What are we rooting for or against?
00:32:09.440 --> 00:32:25.440
You know, at the beginning of a story, we should feel like the journey that we're going on, you know, is predicated on oh, the storyteller wants something, needs something, is trying to overcome something, is running from something.
00:32:25.599 --> 00:32:30.240
You know, we should have the idea that this is not just a report on a life.
00:32:30.400 --> 00:32:32.480
Let me tell you what I had for dinner, right?
00:32:32.640 --> 00:32:39.279
Instead, it is my girlfriend is coming over to my apartment and it's the first time I'm ever cooking her dinner.
00:32:39.359 --> 00:32:40.400
That's a stake, right?
00:32:40.480 --> 00:32:43.599
Now we wonder will the dinner turn out okay?
00:32:43.759 --> 00:32:44.640
Will she like the dinner?
00:32:44.799 --> 00:32:46.559
Is this going to be a good date or a bad date?
00:32:46.640 --> 00:32:47.680
That's a stake.
00:32:47.839 --> 00:32:50.960
Just saying I'm cooking dinner and it turned out great.
00:32:51.039 --> 00:32:53.680
And it, my girlfriend who came over later, really loved it.
00:32:53.759 --> 00:32:57.279
That's a miserable version of the story because it doesn't contain any stakes.
00:32:57.359 --> 00:32:59.519
It's just reporting on the things that happened.
00:32:59.759 --> 00:33:00.160
Yeah.
00:33:00.400 --> 00:33:00.720
Yeah.
00:33:00.799 --> 00:33:09.200
I remember I remember you uh us talking about using the present tense when there is suspense and stakes.
00:33:09.279 --> 00:33:19.920
So if you go back to the version of the story where you're like, well, let me tell you how my parents had their first kiss and they met and they got married, the story is already told.
00:33:20.079 --> 00:33:20.559
Yes.
00:33:20.799 --> 00:33:30.960
As opposed to talking about a guy walking into a bar and seeing someone over across the room, or or or however you want to tell that.
00:33:31.279 --> 00:33:44.000
When families think about telling the history of these stories, is there anything that we should be thinking of specifically related to family history with some of this stuff?
00:33:44.319 --> 00:33:49.839
So you mean telling the story of sort of your predecessors, like you telling the story of your parents?
00:33:50.160 --> 00:33:50.720
Yeah, yeah.
00:33:50.799 --> 00:34:03.519
Like if I'm telling the story of my grandfather immigrating to the United States, of the first business they opened, of how they met their grandmother, of you know, that type of stuff.
00:34:03.680 --> 00:34:08.880
Any thoughts on how to do that in a way that is a little more compelling for people?
00:34:09.119 --> 00:34:09.440
Yeah.
00:34:09.840 --> 00:34:23.280
So if you're telling a story about someone who's not you, which is perfectly fine to do, what I tell people to do is use the second person, which means you're going to still control the lens of the camera of the story.
00:34:23.440 --> 00:34:25.360
So I would say it's something like this.
00:34:25.519 --> 00:34:30.079
I would say, I want you to see the door to the kitchen in my childhood home.
00:34:30.159 --> 00:34:31.119
It's a wooden door.
00:34:31.280 --> 00:34:32.960
It's sort of down two steps.
00:34:33.119 --> 00:34:34.400
It leads out to the garage.
00:34:34.480 --> 00:34:35.199
It's closed.
00:34:35.360 --> 00:34:36.480
It's a red door.
00:34:36.719 --> 00:34:38.639
Now I want you to see it open.
00:34:38.880 --> 00:34:42.719
I want you to see it open, and I want you to see my father walk through the door.
00:34:42.800 --> 00:34:45.039
He's a cowboy in every sense of the word.
00:34:45.280 --> 00:34:48.960
Cowboy hat, big mustache, jeans, and boots.
00:34:49.119 --> 00:34:51.440
But what I want you to look at is his hands.
00:34:52.079 --> 00:34:59.679
And his hands are something that you would never expect to see in this moment as he's coming into the kitchen.
00:34:59.920 --> 00:35:02.000
He's holding leather reins.
00:35:02.639 --> 00:35:07.519
The reins that typically go around a horse when you're leading a horse.
00:35:08.639 --> 00:35:10.239
But he's coming into the kitchen.
00:35:10.480 --> 00:35:13.280
The problem is he is leading a horse.
00:35:14.079 --> 00:35:24.639
My father has decided that this is the moment when he's going to bring a horse into our kitchen because he thinks it will be funny.
00:35:25.199 --> 00:35:33.599
Now I want you to see the head of the horse pass into the kitchen first, looking around, because a horse does not know what a kitchen looks like.
00:35:33.679 --> 00:35:34.960
And they're smart animals.
00:35:35.119 --> 00:35:36.880
So the first thing the horse does is pause.
00:35:37.039 --> 00:35:41.440
So I want you to see its wide eyes staring at the room it's about to enter.
00:35:41.519 --> 00:35:42.719
So you I could keep going.
00:35:42.880 --> 00:35:45.920
But in that case, I'm telling the story from the you perspective.
00:35:46.000 --> 00:35:51.280
So I did things like I focused the lens on the hands with the reins, I focused on the eyes of the horse.
00:35:51.440 --> 00:35:53.679
I give you a clear picture of the red door.
00:35:53.920 --> 00:36:10.239
I could have just said, you know, my father once brought a horse into the kitchen, and I was sort of a young kid at the time, but I recognized that was probably the end of the marriage based upon the response my mother had to this, you know, what my father thought would be an amusing idea.
00:36:10.400 --> 00:36:11.599
But that's not the way to tell it.
00:36:11.679 --> 00:36:14.800
So second person, so you control the lens.
00:36:15.039 --> 00:36:16.320
Yeah, okay, that's great.
00:36:16.480 --> 00:36:25.280
I we were just doing, I mean, I think the thing that's cool is with these family stories, is you can, there's gonna be people who tell the story better.
00:36:25.760 --> 00:36:26.079
Right.
00:36:26.320 --> 00:36:33.920
And there's the story can kind of get tweaked and improved uh over time, just like great stories have a way of doing it.
00:36:34.000 --> 00:36:52.480
I'm thinking of like how now to redo the story of how my grandfather of my grandfather, I'm picturing him now sitting in the kitchen hearing the news that at the time that this woman that he loved, my grandmother, got hit by a car in New York City and how scared he was.
00:36:52.880 --> 00:37:02.400
And then to further hear the news that the person that hit her is now bringing her flowers every day and courting her in the hospital.
00:37:02.639 --> 00:37:08.800
Now he's terrified in two different ways about this woman that he he maybe one day hopes to marry.
00:37:09.039 --> 00:37:10.559
But really, really cool.
00:37:10.719 --> 00:37:14.000
I know you said it's okay to tell like other people's stories in that sense.
00:37:14.239 --> 00:37:18.639
Obviously, we're not advocating of stealing stories, right?
00:37:18.880 --> 00:37:28.079
So tell us about authenticity and how you bring some of that up and some of your experiences in being vulnerable.
00:37:28.239 --> 00:37:33.280
Because I sort of perceive you as one of the most open people that I know.
00:37:33.440 --> 00:37:45.039
When you have when you have things happening in your life, I'm almost sometimes like taken aback by how open and and vulnerable you are with what you share.
00:37:45.519 --> 00:37:51.280
While it's okay to tell other people's stories, they'll never be as effective as your own because they lack vulnerability.
00:37:51.440 --> 00:37:54.159
I tell you the story of my father bringing the horse into the kitchen.
00:37:54.320 --> 00:37:59.840
There's nothing vulnerable about that until I get to myself and I talk about as a little boy what I was thinking at the time.
00:37:59.920 --> 00:38:03.599
Then maybe I could, but that's really becomes a story about me at that point, right?
00:38:03.920 --> 00:38:14.079
But when we tell stories about ourselves and we're willing to be vulnerable, meaning we share things that maybe others are not so ready to share, what happens is a couple things.
00:38:14.239 --> 00:38:16.880
People feel deeply connected to you very quickly.
00:38:17.039 --> 00:38:20.880
You know, I say that relationships move at the speed of vulnerability.
00:38:21.199 --> 00:38:21.920
I love that.
00:38:22.159 --> 00:38:26.400
The more vulnerable you are, the quicker you are, the closer people will feel to you.
00:38:26.559 --> 00:38:28.239
And I think there's a lot of value in that.
00:38:28.480 --> 00:38:35.760
But the other thing that happens is that when you're vulnerable, it opens up a space for their vulnerability to sort of fill as well.
00:38:35.920 --> 00:38:48.000
And so, you know, I'm the bearer of more secrets than you could ever imagine, both from strangers and friends, because they know that I'm comfortable with vulnerability because I share so openly of myself.
00:38:48.239 --> 00:39:04.000
The problem in the world is so often people are carrying these sacks of, you know, stories that are difficult to tell, or they're worried nobody wants to hear them, or they don't want to sound like a sad sack telling their, you know, difficult story about their life.
00:39:04.159 --> 00:39:10.480
And that's all tragic because we should just acknowledge that, you know, speaking your truth, there's nothing wrong with it.
00:39:10.719 --> 00:39:20.159
And so when I'm open and vulnerable, people suddenly feel that it's safe for me to be the person that they can, you know, tell their story to.
00:39:20.239 --> 00:39:21.920
And that's a great honor most of the time.
00:39:22.079 --> 00:39:34.320
Sometimes it's weird, especially if it's a stranger and they but you just you you put up with the weirdness so that when your friend is having a problem and they don't know who to turn to, I am so often the person people turn to.
00:39:34.559 --> 00:39:42.400
Not because I have wisdom, you know, or intelligence, but just because they say I can tell Matt because he tells me these things.
00:39:42.480 --> 00:39:44.960
So now I can tell him these things.
00:39:45.360 --> 00:39:46.239
Yeah, it's amazing.
00:39:46.320 --> 00:39:51.679
It's sort of like the opposite of social media where people are like, how's everything going?
00:39:51.840 --> 00:39:54.559
It's like, well, you know, it's actually perfect.
00:39:54.800 --> 00:39:58.079
Nothing could be better, and we have no hardships.
00:39:58.320 --> 00:40:09.920
We had Robin Fivush on the podcast, and she was talking about how the narratives that families kind of speak about can shape, can really shape how it's processed in later generations.
00:40:10.079 --> 00:40:29.280
So if you're like, we had everything and we lost it, or we came from nothing and we achieved everything, and she described this oscillating narrative that is like way more healthy, which is like we had good times, some bad stuff happens, we get through it, more bad stuff happens, we get through it.
00:40:29.440 --> 00:40:35.840
And to to like have people kind of experience that, we went through a miscarriage, my wife and I.
00:40:36.239 --> 00:40:41.840
And when we would tell people, they would then tell us that they had a miscarriage.
00:40:42.000 --> 00:40:42.320
Right.
00:40:42.639 --> 00:40:42.880
Yeah.
00:40:43.039 --> 00:40:47.360
And it would be like people we knew well that never never told us.
00:40:47.679 --> 00:40:48.480
Same thing for us.
00:40:48.800 --> 00:40:50.079
We had a miscarriage as well.
00:40:50.239 --> 00:40:54.239
You tell someone you had a miscarriage and suddenly you discover just about everyone had a miscarriage.
00:40:54.880 --> 00:40:56.320
We just don't talk about it.
00:40:56.639 --> 00:41:01.599
Yeah, yeah, no, it's the the vulnerability piece is it's very helpful to people.
00:41:01.760 --> 00:41:21.599
And when you say give them space to share some of that stuff, I was sitting with my friend who's a physician a couple of days ago, and he was just saying, like, really struggling with my son plays baseball, and like when I try to talk to him about baseball, he just like shuts me down, and it's just really hard on me, and I don't really know how to.
00:41:21.760 --> 00:41:32.400
And it just opened up this like fantastic conversation of I started thinking about like when my father would speak to me after sports and in all this, it just like opened it up.
00:41:32.639 --> 00:41:33.119
Yeah.
00:41:33.440 --> 00:41:39.039
As soon as you do that, you'll discover how much people are holding back, you know.
00:41:39.440 --> 00:41:47.599
My son, 14, Charlie, gives me permission to talk about this, but he had a mental illness, sorry, a mental health crisis, we'll say he's fine.
00:41:48.239 --> 00:41:52.000
Uh, but he had a real serious mental health crisis last year.
00:41:52.320 --> 00:42:02.960
And um, we were pretty open about it with the permission of Charlie, because he thinks that people should talk more about it because no one had ever spoken to him about feeling the way he felt.
00:42:03.039 --> 00:42:05.199
And so he was confused and scared.
00:42:05.440 --> 00:42:17.599
And as soon as Alicia and I told people what was going on with Charlie, it turns out that about half our friends had been through a similar thing with one of their children, and not a single one had ever told us.
00:42:17.760 --> 00:42:20.800
You know, and when I asked the closer ones, like, why didn't you ever tell me?
00:42:20.960 --> 00:42:32.559
You know, they said, well, it was either we didn't think you'd want to hear it, or we thought that like telling people would cause like reputational damage to our child or to our family.
00:42:32.719 --> 00:42:50.400
Instead of what it really did was just made your family like a normal family comprised of human beings who from time to time have mental health crises, you know, and the best way to get past it is to actually normalize it so that when your kid is struggling, they can openly speak about it, which is what Charlie wants to do these days.
00:42:50.559 --> 00:42:59.280
He wants to begin speaking in schools about what you should do when you feel a certain way, even if the people around you have never spoken about it before.
00:42:59.519 --> 00:43:10.400
The more we are willing to be vulnerable, I think the world around us gets a little better because people can openly share the things that need to be shared and that they probably wish they could share, but don't feel like they can.
00:43:10.719 --> 00:43:15.519
Well, that's a good, maybe this is a good time to go into what we were going to say here at the end.
00:43:15.760 --> 00:43:24.960
I remember sitting with a number of advisors who asked me, do you have anything that we can share with families?
00:43:25.440 --> 00:43:31.519
Because this podcast is really geared towards the advisor audience.
00:43:31.760 --> 00:43:35.840
And, you know, we believe advisors are the keepers of legacy.
00:43:36.079 --> 00:43:39.440
We believe that they're one step removed from this.
00:43:39.519 --> 00:43:54.320
They've already built up so much trust with these families that the idea of talking about someone's values and history and and encouraging them to do these behaviors is a natural extension of where I think wealth management is going.
00:43:54.400 --> 00:43:59.599
And we have more and more advisors coming with us each day, but we didn't really have an answer.
00:44:00.239 --> 00:44:01.119
For families.
00:44:01.280 --> 00:44:09.599
You know, when you and I met, maybe like a year and a half or two years ago, I remember just thinking, like, man, I love the way this guy tells stories.
00:44:09.679 --> 00:44:12.960
And then I remember you went and got like all this different stuff.
00:44:13.119 --> 00:44:13.840
We were on video.
00:44:13.920 --> 00:44:17.039
You were like, here's a book I made when my kids were eight.
00:44:17.360 --> 00:44:20.719
Here's this thing I wrote when my we went on vacation.
00:44:20.880 --> 00:44:24.480
Here's this collage that I made when we did this thing, right?
00:44:24.639 --> 00:44:24.960
Yeah.
00:44:25.119 --> 00:44:32.639
And there's an authenticity that I'm looking for with anyone that is around our company that, like, you know, I have legacy on my hat.
00:44:32.800 --> 00:44:42.320
If you don't really love this stuff, if you're not living in some way, shape, or form, if I never wrote legacy letters, it would fall short with everyone, right?
00:44:42.480 --> 00:44:44.400
And then we have another mutual friend.
00:44:44.559 --> 00:44:45.840
Her name is Medley.
00:44:46.079 --> 00:44:48.880
Medley kind of did the same thing.
00:44:49.119 --> 00:44:52.719
Well, like as soon as she saw our stuff, she's like, Oh, hey, I wrote three legacy letters.
00:44:52.800 --> 00:44:55.679
One to my mom, one to my dad, and one to my oldest child.
00:44:55.840 --> 00:44:57.519
It's like, wow, all right.
00:44:57.599 --> 00:45:03.920
That was like, you know, there's like I I met you like 12 hours ago, and she really leaned into this.
00:45:04.000 --> 00:45:10.079
And it occurred to me at some point, we need two people to help the families.
00:45:10.320 --> 00:45:20.800
And so with this, we are announcing our worth keeping podcast hosted by Matthew Dix and Medley Steeleonabus.
00:45:21.119 --> 00:45:22.239
Medley and Matt.
00:45:22.559 --> 00:45:24.320
You just recorded your first episode.
00:45:24.480 --> 00:45:30.320
It's gonna air some, I don't want to get the time wrong, but it's gonna be out by the time people hear this.
00:45:30.559 --> 00:45:40.159
Tell us about why you agreed to do this podcast and why you think it's important for families to think about legacy like this.
00:45:40.559 --> 00:45:45.519
Well, I'm thrilled to be doing it, and you're right that Medley's the perfect person.
00:45:45.679 --> 00:45:52.400
You know, I am a person who is obsessed with holding on to the moment and holding on to the memory, and Medley has that same belief.
00:45:52.639 --> 00:45:55.119
I've spent a lot of time working with hospice workers.
00:45:55.199 --> 00:45:59.920
I wrote a book called Some Days Today, which is sort of about productivity and getting stuff done.
00:46:00.000 --> 00:46:03.280
And so I went and interviewed hospice workers while writing that book.
00:46:03.360 --> 00:46:10.800
And what they said to me was that one of the greatest regrets people have at the end of their lives is they don't feel like they've lived a full enough life.
00:46:11.039 --> 00:46:16.400
And what I told these hospice workers is I think they probably did, but they can't actually remember any of it.
00:46:16.559 --> 00:46:28.000
And so at the end of your life, ideally, what you want to do is look back on a long road filled with memories and experiences and triumphs and tragedies and all of those things.
00:46:28.079 --> 00:46:32.239
You want to feel that full life, which I think most people do lead and simply forget.
00:46:32.400 --> 00:46:43.360
So, you know, Medley and I, in Worth Keeping, our goal is to provide anyone really, families ideally, but if you're a hermit, I still think you should be holding on to your life.
00:46:43.519 --> 00:47:00.480
You know, provide whoever wants to listen strategies that they can use immediately that can begin preserving the legacy that you have, encouraging storytelling in your family so that the more stories you tell around the dinner table, the more likely that legacy is going to live on.
00:47:00.719 --> 00:47:09.119
You know, our goal is you're done listening to the episode and you have at least one great idea that you can execute quickly and immediately.
00:47:09.280 --> 00:47:15.840
You know, I'm very interested in actionable strategies that can be implemented within an hour after you're hearing them.
00:47:15.920 --> 00:47:19.760
I think otherwise it's kind of useless, most of the things that people say.
00:47:20.079 --> 00:47:37.360
And so we're hoping to give people an endless array of strategies that they can use on a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly basis, like Total Family is with their platform, to afford people the opportunity to hold on to their life, share with their family members, and preserve it for the years to come.
00:47:37.679 --> 00:47:49.119
Yeah, I mean, I think the current strategy for this legacy work is wait until you're 85 and then try to write down everything that you could possibly think of.
00:47:49.280 --> 00:47:50.880
That's the current strategy.
00:47:51.679 --> 00:47:59.679
You and I, in our own different ways, I are believers that this work can be done over your entire life.
00:47:59.840 --> 00:48:01.519
You do have to make room for it.
00:48:01.679 --> 00:48:06.000
I like you and Medley because you're both working parents in your spouse's work.
00:48:06.159 --> 00:48:08.960
You have two kids, Medley has three kids, you're very busy.
00:48:09.119 --> 00:48:18.159
And any of the strategies that I hear about families that are like, you know, go on this retreat for five days and pay all this money and do all these things.
00:48:18.239 --> 00:48:21.840
It's like most people don't have the money, most people don't have the time.
00:48:22.079 --> 00:48:24.719
We have to assume that people are really busy.
00:48:24.880 --> 00:48:32.400
And you two just finding ways to to bring this to life for people in a very real way was super appealing to us.
00:48:32.480 --> 00:48:37.519
So we're we're very excited to hear where you and Medley take it.
00:48:37.760 --> 00:48:45.199
And for families to have two people talking to them directly about the importance of this and kind of bringing it to life.
00:48:45.440 --> 00:48:46.719
Yeah, we love it too.
00:48:46.880 --> 00:48:49.280
We hope it's, you know, we also want it to be entertaining.
00:48:49.519 --> 00:48:51.920
So you're gonna get to hear stories about our families.
00:48:52.000 --> 00:48:54.800
And then, like you said, we're busy.
00:48:54.960 --> 00:49:01.599
So every strategy that we bring to the table is gonna be inexpensive or free and quick and easy.
00:49:01.760 --> 00:49:10.000
And a lot of times I provide strategies that your children can engage in rather than you, so that kids begin to learn the importance of legacy as well.
00:49:10.079 --> 00:49:12.079
There's nothing better than putting your kids to work for you.
00:49:12.400 --> 00:49:30.719
Do you have one like tidbit activity, actionable storytelling thing that our listeners right now could take and implement in their own life or in their home or with their kids or something that might be fun right as they're finishing up this podcast?
00:49:31.119 --> 00:49:34.559
So here's one that I just did recently.
00:49:34.719 --> 00:49:39.679
You know, if you're using AI at all, you know that you can connect AI to your email.
00:49:40.000 --> 00:49:43.760
My daughter is a cinephile beyond imagination.
00:49:43.920 --> 00:49:45.039
She's obsessed with film.
00:49:45.119 --> 00:49:51.199
She's she has autism, and one of the superpowers of autism is you get uniquely focused on a single topic, and hers is film.
00:49:51.280 --> 00:49:53.679
She's gonna go to film school, she wants to make films.
00:49:53.840 --> 00:50:00.320
And she and I have been seeing movies for a very long time, or since she was about 12 when she decided she loved film.
00:50:00.480 --> 00:50:09.760
And because I buy all my tickets online through AMC, the local theater, I get an email every time I buy a ticket telling me the movie that's coming.
00:50:10.000 --> 00:50:21.599
And so, as a treat to her, I told AI to scour my email and create a database of every movie that we have seen since she began going to the movies with me at the age of 12.
00:50:21.920 --> 00:50:22.800
Such a good idea.
00:50:23.039 --> 00:50:28.480
And it produced this beautiful database of all the movies with the dates.
00:50:28.639 --> 00:50:32.079
And then I went back and said, I don't remember what some of these movies are about.
00:50:32.239 --> 00:50:38.559
So could you also create a field on the spreadsheet that summarized the movie very quickly in case we don't remember actually what the movie was?
00:50:38.800 --> 00:50:42.159
And so it's created this database that she doesn't know exists yet.
00:50:42.320 --> 00:50:49.039
And I'm gonna spring it on her at some point, either when she's feeling low, you know, she's having a bad day.
00:50:49.199 --> 00:50:54.719
I love waiting and holding things like that, or maybe even as a Christmas gift, I could have it produced in some beautiful way.
00:50:54.960 --> 00:50:57.280
Go to an Etsy shop, say, here's a spreadsheet.
00:50:57.360 --> 00:51:05.679
Can you create a visual representation of it that I could frame and put on a wall, like all the movies up to the age of, you know, she's gonna create the game.
00:51:06.079 --> 00:51:07.360
But that was no effort.
00:51:07.519 --> 00:51:09.199
Like, you know, that cost nothing.
00:51:09.360 --> 00:51:12.960
Connect AI to your email and tell it to do the work for you.
00:51:13.199 --> 00:51:23.679
You know, it probably took me five minutes to prompt AI to produce what now sits on my desktop that I can't wait to show to my daughter.
00:51:23.840 --> 00:51:27.920
So whatever it is that you're doing, that maybe you can have AI dig into your email.
00:51:28.079 --> 00:51:29.360
We also go to Broadway shows.
00:51:29.440 --> 00:51:32.000
So I've already done it for all the Broadway shows that we've seen.
00:51:32.159 --> 00:51:37.440
Uh again, I don't know what I'm gonna do with it yet, but I've got this amazing spreadsheet of all the shows that we've seen.
00:51:37.519 --> 00:51:38.400
We see a lot of them.
00:51:38.559 --> 00:51:53.920
So whatever it is for you, if you have Little League and like Little League populates your calendar every year, you know, or sends you an email reminder of every game, you know, whatever it is, AI can sort of dig into your past through your calendar, your email, and find things that you have forgotten.
00:51:54.000 --> 00:51:55.840
And that can be kind of a wonderful thing.
00:51:56.159 --> 00:51:57.440
Oh man, you showed me that.
00:51:57.519 --> 00:52:05.519
So I know that it's, you know, speaking of authenticity, I know that it's real, but I didn't know that you were withholding this from Clara.
00:52:05.760 --> 00:52:16.239
Oh, well, that's just that's a bonus strategy for you, Alex, which is the moment you have something of value to someone in your life, the worst thing you can do is immediately give it to them.
00:52:16.480 --> 00:52:17.519
Timing is everything.
00:52:17.679 --> 00:52:26.559
I have so many things that I either want to tell my wife or give to my wife that I'm not gonna give her today because she woke up happy and healthy and feeling great about the day.
00:52:26.639 --> 00:52:27.679
She doesn't need it today.
00:52:27.840 --> 00:52:30.880
You know, the funniest one was my daughter's name is Clara.
00:52:30.960 --> 00:52:34.719
When my wife proposed the name Clara to me as a possibility, I hated it.
00:52:34.800 --> 00:52:36.639
I said, That's an old lady name.
00:52:36.880 --> 00:52:38.559
And she said, Well, you think about it.
00:52:38.719 --> 00:52:40.639
She knows like you can't argue me into a point.
00:52:40.719 --> 00:52:42.239
You gotta let me get to it myself.
00:52:42.400 --> 00:52:47.119
Like three months later, I woke up in the morning and somehow I fell in love with the name Clara instantly.
00:52:47.280 --> 00:52:48.559
I was like, I love that name.
00:52:48.719 --> 00:52:49.360
She's right.
00:52:49.519 --> 00:52:51.199
It took me two months to tell her.
00:52:51.280 --> 00:52:55.840
I waited until she called me one day and said, Matt, I just had the worst day at school ever.
00:52:56.000 --> 00:53:00.559
And I said, Before you tell me about it, let me tell you what I woke up feeling this morning.
00:53:00.719 --> 00:53:00.880
Right?
00:53:01.039 --> 00:53:02.559
Some people say that's manipulative.
00:53:02.719 --> 00:53:03.760
I say it's love.
00:53:03.920 --> 00:53:11.199
It is me recognizing when my wife needs something and I give it to her at the moment she needs it, not the moment I want to give it.
00:53:11.519 --> 00:53:12.639
Oh, it's so good.
00:53:12.880 --> 00:53:16.800
Matthew Dix, author of Story Worthy and Story Sell.
00:53:16.880 --> 00:53:17.599
Thank you so much.
00:53:17.760 --> 00:53:20.880
And we'll we'll hear you on uh Worth Keeping Podcast.
00:53:21.039 --> 00:53:21.840
I look forward to it.
00:53:21.920 --> 00:53:22.719
Thanks for having me here.
00:53:22.800 --> 00:53:23.920
Appreciate it.
00:53:26.159 --> 00:53:28.239
That's it for Visionary Advisor.
00:53:28.400 --> 00:53:33.679
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00:53:33.920 --> 00:53:40.239
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