Matthew Dicks
Storyworthy author; Moth storyteller (as introduced on Capital Allocators)
aka Matt Dicks, Matt Dix
“It's so funny. The opening of every story is the key to unlocking the story. So I'm always like, what's the first sentence?”
“It's probably the most important decision a storyteller makes. I spend 75% of my time deciding on where to begin and what that first few lines are gonna be.”
“The simplest answer to that is start with location in action. Every story you tell for the rest of your life, you should start with where was I? And what was I doing?”
“I start at the end, before I begin saying anything. I know what my ending is first. If you don't, you're getting in a car and you don't have a destination, you will make bad choices.”
“Yeah, it's a bad word. You should get rid of that word and think of it as a performance. Because no one ever wakes up in the morning hoping to see a presentation. But they do wake up every morning hoping to see a performance.”
Matthew Dicks
One-line summary: Storyworthy author. Tracked for transferable pitch craft: start-at-the-end, first-sentence unlock, location-in-action, performance-not-presentation. Not investment advice.
What they're known for
Capital Allocators summer-series guest (this airing 2026-08-24; host says the interview is from 2025). Introduced as a retired middle-school teacher and author of Storyworthy. AssemblyAI also labeled him “Matt Dix” in the host intro — same person (alias). He describes Moth stage work and later teaching storytelling to businesses; treat those as his account of his path, not as a client roster we verified.
Why they matter to career
Same two-parter as donald-miller. Dicks’ extractable craft is structural: pick the ending first, spend most of the work on the first sentence, start in location-and-action, treat a pitch as a performance rather than a slide deck. Do not file his business-consulting anecdotes as investment advice.
Said
Speaker-attributed claims extracted from diarized sources. Each bullet mirrors one entry in quotes: frontmatter — keep them in sync.
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On storytelling-craft-for-pitching:
"It's so funny. The opening of every story is the key to unlocking the story. So I'm always like, what's the first sentence?" — 2026-08-24-podcast-capital-allocators-best-of-storytelling-matthew-dicks (2026-08-24)
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On storytelling-craft-for-pitching:
"It's probably the most important decision a storyteller makes. I spend 75% of my time deciding on where to begin and what that first few lines are gonna be." — 2026-08-24-podcast-capital-allocators-best-of-storytelling-matthew-dicks (2026-08-24)
-
On storytelling-craft-for-pitching:
"The simplest answer to that is start with location in action. Every story you tell for the rest of your life, you should start with where was I? And what was I doing?" — 2026-08-24-podcast-capital-allocators-best-of-storytelling-matthew-dicks (2026-08-24)
-
On storytelling-craft-for-pitching:
"I start at the end, before I begin saying anything. I know what my ending is first. If you don't, you're getting in a car and you don't have a destination, you will make bad choices." — 2026-08-24-podcast-capital-allocators-best-of-storytelling-matthew-dicks (2026-08-24)
-
On storytelling-craft-for-pitching:
"Yeah, it's a bad word. You should get rid of that word and think of it as a performance. Because no one ever wakes up in the morning hoping to see a presentation. But they do wake up every morning hoping to see a performance." — 2026-08-24-podcast-capital-allocators-best-of-storytelling-matthew-dicks (2026-08-24)