Storytelling Frameworks & The Hero’s Journey

Overview

Hello, I'm Kerry guard and Welcome to Tea Time with tech marketing leaders.

Hi, today I have with me a very special guest. My daughter, Elizabeth, she's joining me on the sixth day to say hello to everybody. I also wanted to bring her on because we're gonna do a little history lesson. So there's a place in Massachusetts called Salem.

What's one of your favourite Halloween movies? about witches?

The musical Hocus Pocus.

Yeah, it's a good movie, isn't it?

Enjoyed it?

Yeah.

Well, it's based off of a place. That's real. Salem. And there's a story. Many stories about the Salem Witch Trials of a, a grim part of our history in America. It's actually in in European and UK history as well. Where women were to find as witches, and they were not treated very nicely. And in some cases, were killed because of it. I know. She's making faces right now. Pretty crazy.

Well, my guest today is actually someone who lives in Salem, and his wife grew up there. And so we had a really fantastic conversation about storytelling. And what a great place to be inspired by stories. Then, our history, and all the stories that come from that and how we learn from that.

Yeah, yeah, pretty crazy.

So with me today, on this episode is Matt Delman. Like I said, Matt lives in Salem, Massachusetts. And Matt is a content writer, and is a storyteller. He actually comes on the show, and just tells me a whole bunch of stories.

Which I love stories, right? Only we love storytelling. Don't we love when people tell stories?

Yeah.

Yeah. What do you love about books and storytelling? We have about reading the what words What about the words? I get to read them?

Yeah.

What did they tell you? Things?

What are your favourite books?

Harry Potter.

Speaking of witches and wizards? What do you love about the Harry Potter stories? What book are you reading right now? Which one?

Goblet of Fire

That's my favourite one. Actually. Are you enjoying it?

Yes.

Yes. The second? Oh, the second task? What was the second task? To get the person? Yeah, from under the water? Hmm. Yeah. Oh, that would have me on the edge of my seat.

Great storytelling is really when they could put you on the edge of your seat. You know, it's good storytelling. Matt currently got a new job, which is so cool and exciting. I'm so excited for him. He's a Director of Marketing at Tech Strong group. Go check it out. It's it's a great news outlet for for tech companies.

He was originally not originally, but before that he was at a company called Looking Glass and structure of product and content marketing. Again, this is where the content piece really comes in. And where our story sets is in this idea of storytelling, and b2b, you know, you can actually tell your story in a way that isn't self serving, that it's about really about your audience and their needs, putting the customer first and having a really great almost conversation and dialogue through the content you create with your audience. And I'm bringing them along and through by by talking about how to solve their problems. So it was really wonderful conversation I had with Matt and like I said, I think one of the he just he's a great storyteller. So yeah, just lean in and hang out. Come hang out with me and Matt.

Transcript

Kerry: Hello, Matthew, thank you for joining me on Tea Time with tech marketing leaders. Hi, Carrie. Happy to be here. Oh, so excited to have you before we jump into the heart of our conversation today. Tell me what's your story? What do you do and how did you get there?

Matt: So I am right now the direct Director of Product Marketing for Lookingglass cyber solutions, a small cybersecurity company based out of Virginia in the DC area, I can't hear. I know the kind of the running joke in marketing is that everyone always falls into it. And unfortunately, I am no different. In that respect, I started off majoring in journalism in undergrad because I thought I was going to go into investigative reporting and like work for the New York Times, at some point. Now, mind you, this was back in 2006. Right when the bottom started falling out of the newspaper business, it still hasn't stopped. No, I did, I did actually work in regional journalism for a couple of years before shifting over into working at a newswire oddly enough, that led me on a journey of about six years where I worked no for years for years where I did like pure editorial work versus working as working at an industry analyst work to that newswire worked at in at a investment newsletter for about six months. And then got into an into the industry analysts space, kind of targeting b2b tech companies, but not working in a b2b tech company quite yet. My first jump into an official marketing role was then six years ago in content marketing, and that was in a in the marketing technology space. From marketing technology, I went to customer marketing in a financial technology company. And then I got into product marketing three years ago in cybersecurity with a Israel with an Israel based company. Now. There are a lot of Israeli companies in the cybersecurity space, like a tonne. And you there will be there's a lot of marketers who either cut their teeth with it in Israeli companies, or have worked in Israeli companies, in some respect, and is a very interesting cultural experience. Let me frame it that way for an American. That continued in product marketing, I was last the joined Lookingglass in June of this year, right. But right before that, I was at another cybersecurity marketing, another cybersecurity vendor. And now I am here. And my journey thus far has managed to especially in cybersecurity blend, product marketing, and content creation and how to use my writing skills reasonably well.

Kerry: How did you so many questions? First of all, is the current company you're working on? Is that also an Israeli company?

Matt: No, no, no, this is global headquarters is in the DC area. So the company was founded back in 2009. In the DC area, it's kind of like how it came out of I believe, the story is the founders worked, worked in the government worked in government. And then when they left government founded the company. So yes, no, it is an American company. I've worked for this job and the one right before, we're both American based American companies.

Kerry: It's interesting because you're not the first person I talked to who had sort of quote unquote, your your quote here of cutting their teeth in an Israeli company, as it comes to cyber and you said, it's a very interesting culture, in terms of something to work with, can you just give us some flavour there and help us understand what culture means to you in relation to what we understand.

Matt: So it's more of a it's very much a communication style difference. So America, Americans have a very particular way of talking when they're in a when they're in a corporate setting. You know, it's much more about there's a lot about framing and about making sure that you're being cognizant of whether you're going to unintentionally upset the other or not, you know, there's kind of some of my favourite genres of internet discourse is how do you politely say, fu in accordance? Love all this? There's like a laundry list of different things that you can that you say. And like the translation to what it actually means. You know, like, I don't believe I understand this. It's like, why are you such an idiot? Means what you kind of you talk around that? When you're an American, correct. It's very much like this. Like, we know what it we know what it means. But you can't come out, right, but you can't come right out and say it. Israelis don't care. They tell you to your face, that you're stupid. those exact words, it's now mind you, I appreciate that, personally, but it's very much for someone who isn't used to that, or who doesn't appreciate that particular communication style, working in an Israeli company can be very, very jarring. Because you're not used to that sort of that sort of like, direct, unfiltered perspective. It's, it's very much kind of how they are culturally, like they're not. Like, as I said, it's like, if they, if they will tell you, you're wrong, or be very aggressive. One of the interesting things is that the most respect I ever want, some of the most respect I ever got from the Israeli CTO at that company, was he was like, I don't remember exactly what it was, but he was pushing on me to do something. And I wasn't going to be able to get to it. I finally I finally yelled at him. And he was like, Oh, okay. moved on. Didn't there's a relationship and it's like, okay, then. So this is how we are. It's very interact, they don't take, I don't want to say it's very direct. And it's very much this idea of I want to see toughness, because that's not necessarily what it is. But it's I did a lot of theatre for a lot of years. And when you're in like, the rush of the show, and like running, running on the backstage and like the the pace of all of the changes and all the things you'd have to do, you don't have time to ask people politely for things, right. It's very much cutting off the polite asking.

Kerry: But it sounds like they're from a culture of not taking it personally, either.

Matt: Yeah, it's like, if you yell at them, they will take it personally. They'll be like, Okay,

Kerry: one, as you are. Get a lot done.

Matt: Yeah, you know, it's, it's, but that's again, it's very jarring.

Kerry: Yeah. It certainly can be I can see how jarring that would be. But I also see the plus side, like I said, of, you know, not having I don't want to say it's a dance necessarily of like how we interact with one another. But there's this level of overthinking that has to go into your interactions here versus just saying things off the cuff. It's, it's very different that way. But I don't know that any that either way is necessarily right. It's just a different cultural background. I love what you're saying to have. If that's okay with you, then they'd be great company, great companies to work for. And there's plenty of them out there. So sky's the limit in terms of how you went from journalism, to product marketing, can you did you just happen to find a job opportunity and jump on in or did you make the conscious decision that this is what you wanted to do? What was the transition there?

Matt: So journalism to Product Marketing had several steps in between. So with journalism, I started off, I transitioned out into pure editorial to start with and then from the pure editorial were like actually, outrageous editing things. I made the decision, I had made the conscious decision at that point to try to get into content marketing, because I wanted to be writing again and making money off of my own and being paid to be a writer and the most or the easiest, or a given value of easiest way of doing that was to go into content marketing. From content marketing, then to customer marketing some I actually We had a conversation with a Director of Product Management at the FinTech that I was at for about for just under a year. And she had actually mentioned that product marketing might be a good option for me. So, after the job with the FinTech ended, I happened to I like applied to a bunch of different content marketing and product marketing roles, some customer marketing roles. So I was doing customer marketing, supporting Customer Success teams at the fintech. So I had some experience with that. And then really, where I ended up landing was, the Israeli company had just lost their content marketing person. So they brought me in, to own content, but also to work on product marketing, you know, my tighter, my tighter title was Product Marketing Manager, I was doing a lot with content marketing, as well, and kind of like the dual role. Now, I then kind of did the product marketing, Alliance certification classes, for Product Marketing, they've had to learn more about the different product marketing functions, and different tasks in there kind of fell in love with them more strategic aspect of Product Marketing, because the benefit and drawback of content marketing is that it is very, very, very subjective. Like you can be the best writer in the world. But if your boss thinks that you aren't getting it, they're not going to be able there. There are situations where you can have a VP who wants content a very specific way and will not treat any other operator any other options as good. Because if you don't follow what they want, they don't want you

Kerry: can you give an example of like, what, what that might be in terms of them being very particular.

Matt: So this is an interesting one. Because it involves so these the example that I want to give involves me speaking, Ill former employers, and I don't really want to do that.

Kerry: names, names, just,

Matt: I understand no names, but it's even speaking about it obliquely. So let me give you an example. Let me give you actually an example from fiction. It's an easier example. Sure. The the Twilight novels from ages ago, I know, there's my I know, this is kind of dating me, but it's the it's one of the best examples in the world. The Twilight novels when they released did l sold a lot sold a lot of copies. The reason why it sold a lot of copies is because it resonated with what the target audience wanted. Now, people who were not the target audience looked at this and went, What are you talking about? She's a terrible writer. I heard so many conversations during the time and read so many think pieces about how, you know, Stephenie Meyer is a terrible law is a terrible author. She's a terrible writer, she described its Edwards eyes as what was it? Like grey? I forget the specific word, but like grey multiple times in the same sentence, and then in like the same paragraph, or how many different ways can you say this? The point is, the point that I make all the time is that it resonated with the audience. It was very vague took they made the subjective choice that the book was good. Now, other people will look at that and say, No, this is terrible. This is terrible. I don't know why you like this. It's awful. But they're judging it against a different metric. And when it comes to blog posts, and white papers, it you can have two people look at the exact same piece of copy. One will love it and one will hate it. For completely valid reasons on either side of the fence. Like let's, let's use a corporate example. So if you if I write a piece a blog post that is all in all in second person, like your organisation, your enterprise Eyes your information your Cisco, you know that will resonate with one company because you are talking to the reader but another company and another style wants you to write completely in third person completely dispassionately like the organisation, that enterprise, right? And they're both right. But if you're a writer who prefers to write in that, in the perspective of where you're talking to the reader, like a lot of marketing technology companies do, then you translate that over to, then you try to write in that style in like industry analysts, where they're more I guess formal, is the better, like completely third person, they will look at your copy that is friendlier and approachable and more conversational and say that you did a terrible job, and that you're a terrible writer.

Kerry: So right, yeah, so it depends on coming back to your audience. Right. So who are you writing for? Whether you're writing for more analytical, I'm gonna say dry. But that more analytical piece, that white paper versus that more down to earth I'm trying to connect with you piece is two different audiences. And so if the analytical person is reading it, is reading the more down to earth piece they're going to Yes, I, I see what you're saying it does matter. Coming back to one of my questions for you. It around, you said something around content, marketing versus customer marketing, it sounds like that's a really great example of sort of that transition of just taking something from content to writing to your customer.

Matt: Yeah, and it's more focus of where we are content marketing is more about your lead funnel, and bringing in new prospects and everything. customer marketing, you are explicitly talking to people who have already purchased your solution, and you are trying to drive, advocacy, retention, build, build out customer reference programmes, that sort of thing. It you are using a lot of the same skills, but on a dip, but on the post sale side of but on the post sale side of the relationship, as opposed to the pre sale side of the relationship.

Kerry: Which again, if your writing is totally different, because you're going to write to an audience on your customer side who knows a bit more about your product, who knows a bit more of what you're talking about, you can be a bit more clear and direct versus people who've never heard of you, where you do want to connect with them and you wanted still be articulate, but you need to talk to them in a way like they have no idea what you're talking about. Exactly. Oh, I really want to dig into this more because it's blends beautifully into more of a conversation around storytelling. Before I get there. Matthew, can you just talk about one challenge you're currently facing? Because we're all human? And marketing is hard. And we're in q4. So what challenge you got? That's keeping you up at night. And that's hard.

Matt: How to differentiate ourselves in a relatively crowded market. I mean, we cybersecurity in general, like every space in cyber is extremely crowded. I mean, you've got we're a small company. So of course, we're competing against companies that have millions upon millions of dollars in marketing budget and can flood the market with copy and perspectives and speaking engagements, and kind of own the conversation. Essentially, my methodology from that perspective is really what I like to call it either, and I changed the name here, it's either the mike tyson method or the Evander Holyfield method, depending on or, I mean, these are the boxers that I remember from like the 80s and 90s. Or it could be I don't know, pick an MMA star, but essentially, but it's the idea of as a smaller company, sometimes you have to be sometimes you have to create space for yourself. And one of the more effective ways to do that if you have the backing for how to do that is to find something that you disagree with and that a large vendor is saying and then stake out the alternate position, essentially. So I nicknamed it after boxers because the joke is that Mike Tyson said everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. Oh, yeah, this is kind of it's the pejorative is the punch him in the face method. I like using the referee. I like referencing boxers because it's a It's, it's more entertaining to me.

Kerry: I, I love what you're saying, though around finding something that you disagree with, not necessarily that's wrong, it could be right in their own space, again, going back to what you're talking about who's reading it. And then creating opportunities that tell innovation happens, right? When somebody when something's presented to you as a roadblock, and as it can't happen, it's those innovators who say, Well, why not. And so I love that. I, ah, in terms of our conversation today, around content and writing and storytelling in particular, can you shine some light for us, you've talked a lot about writing, but you define what storytelling means to you.

Matt: So storytelling, to me is really about finding the levers to pull in your audience to create a to create the response that you want to create, whatever that is. So the dictionary definition of a story is a telling is a telling through which the listener is informed or educated. So the parts of that are, it has to be a telling. Now telling doesn't have to be written down. It can be a podcast, like they're listening to with us. It can be a video, it can be a, you know, a live speaking engagement. But the important thing is that there is a teller. The second part is that there's a listener or reader, some kind of audience. And the third part is that the reader or audience is entertained or informed by what they heard. Now, there's a couple of different theories of storytelling depending on who you're talking to. And depending on what context you're in, from the fiction perspective, there's the here there's Joseph Campbell's hero's journey. There's the Save the cat framework, there's beat sheets, there's the three act, structure 3x structure and save the cat. And story beats come from film, come from screenwriting, I believe the hero's journey, is one of the ones that actually plays out in Star Wars in the original trilogy, plays out very well throughout those. And that's actually something that George Lucas has spoken about before. He applies Campbell's Hero's Journey framework to Luke Skywalker, and to his story, and it maps really neatly into that. Now, those understanding those fictional frameworks actually helps me figure out how to tell stories in b2b as well, because the the thing that people forget, is that humans don't change just because they go to work. They're still humans. So the, there might be slightly different expectations of what they're consuming, because in my head more toward the perspective of being informed versus entertained. However, the same principles still apply the exact same principles still apply the hero's journey still apply, the story beats still apply, save the cat three act structure, it all still applies. It's just serving a different purpose, essentially. And I have wanted to write stories since I was nine. So I've got a few pieces of fiction that are completely in shambles right now. Not really sharing with anyone, because I'm not happy with them. But that's neither here nor there. The point is, that's still the what that's still kind of how, how I structure things, how I think about things. It's like, what is the story that I'm telling who's the who's the hero who, who's the protagonist, who's the antagonist, the protagonist, in this case is typically going to be your customer. The antagonist is going to be what they are challenged by, and they have been you basically are helping them overcome these challenges. Now, you understand how those challenges come to be but Doing your buyer personas. And you still have to use usually insights from the buyer personas like you're creating, really, it's the same theory of you're creating a fictional character, the difference is that you're framing out how to engage with real people and how to move them through the journey to resolving their problem. And, and going back to the state of, you know, they've solved the problem or on the road to solving the problem. Yeah.

Kerry: I have a big storyteller fan, I actually, and if you could see behind me, but these are photographs that I did in college, which are books, and I recreated what this page was saying through photography of actually crinkling the book and then using light to retell that story. So one of them is what actually is the best one, because it's, sometimes you just can't hold back the river. And so I'm literally tied the book back. So stories are also very near and dear to my heart. And I do think I love what you're saying in terms of coming back to the audience. And one of the things you said early on, I think it's really interesting before I sort of pull apart, so many things that you said, one of the first thing you said was entertained versus informed. And in b2b, can it be both? Or do you really need to stay sort of if they're at work, they want to be informed? And that's where they need to be. So it can be both? It can be both?

So it can be both? It can be both? Yes, it can and should be both. But it comes down to what's the purpose? What is the purpose of the piece that you're creating? Now, when I'm writing a piece about, you know, professional about the professionalisation of ransomware gangs, you know, is that something where you, that's something where I want to inform what beyond I want to inform the audience of a trend that we're seeing, but at the same time, I don't want them to be bored? As they're reading? You know, but it's a different perspective. Ultimately.

Kerry: Yes, it's, it's not just about the data. This happened, and this happened and this happen. It's the journey of how of of almost like ransomware gangs, being the protagonist, the antagonist of that, and how it's affected the protagonist and sort of bringing that story through. It can be this journey, this hero's journey, essentially, told, yeah, no, I love that. And I think it's important because to your point, when we leave work, when we leave home, we come to work, we're still we're still humans. And correct me if I'm wrong. I don't know if you've heard this before, as well. But as humans, we generally remember stories more than we remember data.

Matt: Yeah, you are, you are always going to remember a story that affected you, as opposed to remembering the data points. Now, the data points, if you include them in a presentation, this is something that has always made me laugh. The way to appear smart in a presentation is to include charts, charts, and data points. Now, it's one of these tricks where if you include data, and you include charts, you seem smarter. I don't know why I don't understand why. I actually couldn't do understand why it works. But it's still entertaining. To me. It's like you want to you want to you want to seem smarter, include data points. It's got

Kerry: to be in charts, data points have to be in like in like in a table in a in like in a chart.

Matt: Like if you include a chart in your presentation, you're going to seem smarter now than just the date like then just a number, like a number. Like I don't know how valid still is it just a couple of years old, but I remember loving how interesting that was like I find that very interesting. And the other the other thing that I also love is there's this there was or has been still is not sure, push toward shorter and shorter blog posts. And a couple of years back there was a research study done by this one content marketing agency or content marketing company. I don't remember who did it. But they found that your shorter blog posts, yes, they're going to get read more often. But your longer blog posts are going to be shapes shared more, because they're more often to be viewed as a resource. So and also, there's some thinking, I don't know how true it is, given how Google keeps futzing around with their search algorithm, that the longer pieces are more likely to rank higher in search than the short. I don't know how true that still is. But I like to think it is,

Kerry: yeah, it is still true. Especially when you can wait, especially depending on how the post is structured. That's for another time. But I love what you're saying. Because I, I'm thinking about how I choose my own. So I have a newsletter that goes out every week. And I think about how I choose the posts that go into that. And I and I have sort of my go to news outlets have information, right? And I go to those same outlets every week. And it's a long list. So I sort of short check. But I always pick the longer over shorter posts, because it feels more meaningful. If I'm delivering something to my audience, I want them to feel like they opened something of importance and relevance, rather than just a soundbite. And so absolutely,

Matt: I mean, it's a single point of data here. But it's interesting how my own brain wrapped around that. I still can't get over like if you're if your data well, it makes sense. If your data is in a chart, you're telling a story, you're throwing a trend, you're it's not a single data point living on its own. It's, it lives within a body of something versus just this single entity. And so going back to storytelling, that actually makes a lot of sense to me. And I agree with you as to why that would hold more importance. Because on its own, it doesn't mean anything necessarily. Yeah. Let's pull apart this. You mentioned three types of storytelling, essentially, of the hero's journey. And then you have a we'll break them down into two just to make it a bit simple. You have the hero's journey, and then you have ways that TV and movies tell stories by that save the cat three after the story beats. Is that right? Yeah, I think those are from screen.

Kerry: Um, it sounds like you gravitate more towards the hero's journey, is that accurate?

Matt: I actually the one method that I didn't mention is actually the snowflake method. And that actually borrows from this guy, Randy increments and where basically what you're doing is you are building out, you are building out successively larger and larger pieces of the story. Like you start with your pitch sentence. And then you turn that sentence into a paragraph. And then you turn that paragraph into, then you turn each sentence of that paragraph into its own paragraph, and you keep getting bigger and bigger success of step two, until it's essentially and he borrows the concepts from software design, which is what he did. For years, it's this idea of you're building out a fractal, you're building out a snowflake, you start from one point and then you build outward and make it bigger and bigger. So that sort of helps me organise how I think about things and kind of building things out. Because I typically have a concept, like a single concept like a single sentence that I want to talk about that I know I want to talk about. And then I have to think through how that how that shapes out. Like what are the what are the main points that go underneath it? What is the supporting data that goes underneath it? How am I framing this out? Over the long term?

Kerry: That's really cool. Because it depends on again, going back to your audience, and like the moment you're in, right, of whether it's the elevator pitch, or whether it's that long piece of content we were talking about, right? Like you're, you know, to take something so small, and be able to build it to something really comprehensive. I want to say quickly that I mean, does it do you feel like it? Once you do it a couple times you sort of get this rhythm of being it, it feels pretty straightforward, but that could just be how my brain works. So it's worked for me about everybody.

Matt: It's fairly straightforward, but either way it takes a bow a week. Okay. Yeah, build something. Cohesive power fast. Yeah,

Kerry: that's still pretty fast about a piece of content in a week. Um, yeah. So my point was, is that it sounds like you're taking something from just being a central single entity, not just in length, but also in multi almost multimedia. Is that? Is that how you think about this? Sort of?

Matt: Yes, yeah, the entire point is like, you're then supposed to be able to sprinkle it out into multiple different formats. When you have the story, and then that unifying document helps you, then you're able to come back to that, and refer back to it as you progress into other forms.

Kerry: Like, they could think about, am I content this way, I love this. Ah, and it's so actionable. And I'm so grateful for that, in terms of storytelling, and how you think about it, in this format, just just pull the string back through for me, Matthew, in regards to the audience, like you have this concept, but how do you use this format to speak to whoever it is, I was on the other end? And for you, is it normally informative? Do you add a little bit of entertainment flavour in there for your audience? Like it does? Do you how do you

Matt: differ pins on it depends on who I'm writing for, to be honest with you, because a lot of what I do is ghost writing. And you have to kind of frame things out into to align with your corporate brand voice as well. From that perspective, so part of it comes down to in as you're creating the story, you're not creating the story in a vacuum. Or looking back at kind of, presumably you've done your persona research, and you understand your audience, and you're picking the story, in terms of what's realistically going to resonate with the people that you're talking to, with your audience. And throughout this creation, you refer back to those personas to that customer set to that customer understanding that you've cultivated to make sure that it's going to resonate, I mean, in some respects, you won't know whether it resonates or not until you actually launch it. But in others, you should at least have a decent idea that you're answering a question, or actually discussing something that is going to align with one of the challenges that you identified is core to your audience.

Kerry: I mean, everything was back to who you're speaking to. So the last thing you did say you did say that it matter, you're going to figure it out at launch. And going back to your personas matters. Do you get back to your persona at every point, like when you write the initial concept? And then does that tie back to my audience? And then you write out that first paragraph? does that tie back to my persona?

Matt: Not necessarily from? Yeah, I mean, it's like you refer back to it, but it's like, you'll refer back to it at not at necessarily every step, but you will, but it's definitely with the pitch. And then when then you can proceed through the framework. And then once you gotten to the piece, you can refer back to your persona and kind of check, check yourself against that, because that's a lot of work. If you try to check yourself at every single step that's not really scalable, or any sort of indicative of getting anything done in any way. But no, you refer back once you finish the outline, and then once you like you check at the end of the outline, like will this actually make sense? Or do I think it's gonna make sense. And then you write the piece, and you send it through your review processes. And then you always kind of try to keep that in the back of your head. That really as marketers, we need to be understanding the market. We need to be understanding our cost our prospective customers, and kind of really be the people who are helping push that forward, push that communication forward.

Kerry: I just want to come back to this last thing, because I think we touched on it. But I think it's so important to making this whole thing matter. And you just said it, but just to reframe it when you're talking about the hero journey, and the way that you tell the story of the protagonist as the brand. You're not the hero.

Matt: No, you are not the hero of the story. If you're any if you're anything you're Gandalf the Grey. In this analogy, you are the wise counsellor, and the hero's journey. Essentially your Gantt your Gandalf your Obi Wan you are the guide who helps the hero along their journey the hero is your customer.

Kerry: Absolutely the hero right there. Heroes customer everyone you heard it here first and the If you didn't learn, we're doubling down on it, because it's just so key to storytelling and, and helping your brand be successful. And now you all learned a new framework, at least I did on how to approach your content. I'm so going to take this new system of concept to power to sentence to paragraph to multiple paragraphs, and it's going to be glorious. I'm looking forward to it, Matthew. So thank you for sharing that with us. I'm so grateful for this conversation. Before we close out, you are more than a marketer, you had an amazing story about how you found marketing or marketing value. But we'd love to learn more about who you are. So three quick questions for you when we close out here. Are you ready? First question for you. Have you picked up any new hobbies in the last few years, given the change of the world?

Matt: I've actually been exercising more than I ever have in my life. In the past couple of years. They do about two hours a day now. Wow.

Kerry: That's a commitment. Yeah,

Matt: I got 20 pound weights for my birthday, which is in about a week. And that was my birthday present. That was what I asked for. So

Kerry: yeah, yeah, that's amazing. That's

Matt: 830 is working out at home. That's, you know, that's what I asked for. Apparently.

Kerry: Lego workout equipment, you know, you, whatever you. Oh, good. It's all good. I love it. And while you're at your desk to like the right there, so while you're talking, yeah, make it happen. It's great. Maybe you've been with your team recently. Maybe you're travelling and you're all going to be together soon. Whatever the case may be, the world is opening up again. People are coming together again, if you could be with your team, in the same room, brainstorming what song would be playing overhead

Matt: is a tough one. Very tough. I mean, my personal favourite, I've really gotten into this band Marianas Trench recently. But there's gonna be a weird one but sure. One of my favourite songs is black buddy by Ram Jam. And

Kerry: okay, so last question for you, Matthew. If you could travelled anywhere in the world with or without your kids and family without all of the long lines and you know, COVID restrictions, where would you go and why a

Matt: couple of places, probably the the first one would be France, but not any of the touristy areas. Um, I love mediaeval history. And there was this period in the 12th century called the Albigensian crusade, where the is basically compet. The, this Christian sect called the Cath ORS had like this stronghold in let's say, south eastern France, and the Catholic Church was very angry because the Catholic Church doesn't like competition. So um, the Cathars were driven out, but there's still a whole bunch of castles that were that the Cathars were. They're like, had owned. And also I want to see like kind of the the struggles of the Knights Templar, whatever still exist.

Kerry: I love history as well. And we actually just celebrated which I learned a lot about the fifth of November here in the UK, which is fascinating story about Guy Fawkes. It's interesting because people don't know which side of history to be honest. or which side of history people were on those days.

Matt: I learned about Guy Fawkes because of the movie V for Vendetta, remember, remember? Yeah? Who knew that was based off of a true story?

Kerry: Because, you know, there you go, storytelling. Alright. Matthew, thank you so much for joining. I'm so grateful for this conversation. Appreciate you.

Matt: Thank you. Awesome.

Outro

That was my conversation, Matt Delmon. If you would like to learn more about how he conducts stories and talks about very complex companies in a way that feels very compelling, please head on over to his LinkedIn link. It's in the show notes definitely check out tech strong group as well. Thank you for listening. If you found this episode helpful, please like subscribe and share.