How to Tell Better Stories with Matthew McConaughey

I got a pretty cool special guest that's coming to join us today. I'm so honored. We'll be talking about the power of storytelling. If we can tell an elegant story that captivates people, what do we get? We get their attention, and you get people to take an action. And our guest today, I believe he's one of the best storytellers of all time. Can we all give it up for Mr. Matthew McConaughey? He's unfortunately having a little bit of Wi-Fi issues. What's up, man?

Everyone's heard stories of Wi-Fi. I'm off in a location with my son on on a set and I had it all set up, but electricary is getting the best of me.

I saw a video 2 days ago of you kicking a soccer ball into a little net. Was that real or was that 200 tries or did you just nail it?

Second try, Dean.

That was—

Second try. Oh my God. I probably wouldn't have made it if I knew how hard it was to make the shot.

Anyway, thank you for sharing that. Good seeing you. Hey, so today we're talking, gonna talk about storytelling a little. I think we just have fun, light conversation about it. But the first question I had was, we talked about it earlier, I love your stories. It's one of the reasons your book is so captivating. It's one of the reasons Road Trip is so captivating. Did storytelling start in your family? Was that something you grew up around or is it something that you fell in love with?

The dinner table was where the stories were told. And my dad was a great storyteller. My older brother is a tremendous storyteller. My other oldest, second oldest brother, is a very good storyteller. My mom was a pretty good storyteller. I was the youngest. I was looking to find the confidence to pick a silent moment between them talking and get one of my stories in. And I remember one night I felt I heard the gap in the conversation and I entered it with my story. And I got overexcited that I found that I had time. That I choked and I fumbled the story and I got in a rush and I anticipated the punchline and it wasn't good. And my family looked at me with no empathy and was like, "Bah bah bah bah bah," and just moved on. And I was like, "Damn it, I missed my chance." Well, I came back and I kept trying to get chances and finally started to have the poise and the confidence to tell stories at the table when I had my time. And tell them well and became a pretty good storyteller.

Stories transcend into business. It's part of your art. It's part of my art when I'm live on camera or I'm doing my thing. It's a part of influencing if you want to subtly influence someone you're doing business with or influence your kids. So if you grew up fighting for your space at the table for the storytelling, your dad was a great storyteller, your brother was a great storyteller. I love that. And I want to ask you to tell a couple of them if you don't mind, because I just love hearing them. But I was just thinking, because storytelling was such a part of you, have you ever had a movie role where they wrote a story for you and you knew you could tell it better? Maybe that's a weird question because I don't know how that works. I don't know if you get to ad-lib.

That's not a weird question. 100%. Look, let me go back to the first movie I ever did, Dazed and Confused. There was 3 lines in that movie. It ended up working 3 weeks. Why? Because I created a story for my man, for my character, Waters. Now, the story was based off of one beautifully written line. And most scripts have this with the character. There'll be one line that I go, "Who is that?" And so I wrote the scenes that I was put in to go— without lines written. I was telling his story. Someone who thinks that way, I know what they're buying in 7-Eleven. I know if they have some change in their pocket. I know when they're going home at night, what they're doing on the weekends. It tells you a world about, about a character. You know, I, I— Wolf of Wall Street was a hat, was a page. I extended that character's story into 4 pages. But let's remember, it's always coming from what the writer wrote in the first place. Of course, the writer wrote the seed of the idea. I'm expounding on it and riffing on it because it's about getting subjective, looking through the eye of the character. I think that's one of the key things about any storytelling, and that's my— basically my job as an actor, to look through the lens of the character I'm playing and how they see the world. So in writing and in storytelling, I think one of the keys is to play in your mind and in your heart each character as you're talking about them subjectively, not objectively. A lot of times all the writing I do will bring me right back to what was originally in the script. In A Time to Kill, the final summation, I worked on that final summation with the writer Akiva Goldsman for 4 months. We ended up— what I ended up saying in the courtroom was basically the first thing he wrote. And that'll happen sometimes.

I love that. You know, we, we talked about it. We had, we got to spend some time together working on your course, which was so much fun. What I love about a story, and it's a framework Tony and I've been teaching for decades, is that if you really want to get someone to take an action, to learn something, if you just hit them with the facts, you can overwhelm them. We've all been to presentations or a PowerPoint presentation and you're half asleep. And we've also had really motivational stories by people, but they don't lead anywhere. Right? And then you could be motivated, you could learn some stuff, but if you don't take an action in that moment, sometimes it's just good listening or good reading. And what I loved about Greenlights before we ever talked, before we ever had a conversation, and I love what you did in Road Trip, is we've been teaching this, like I said, for decades, is to get someone to do something, to learn, to change, you gotta have 3 elements. You gotta have a story, Then you got to teach them what you learned through that story, and then you got to ask them to do something towards that. And I'm not sure if you— you have your own ways. I love subjective, objective, the way you look at it. But as I listened to your stories before I knew you, I'm like, that's the ingredients. Like, the story's got me captivated. What the hell did he learn by being in Australia? Oh, I could start appreciating right now even though it sucks. Right? Like it had all the elements. In fact, one of my favorite, if you don't mind sharing, is I love the wrestling match in Mali. It had so many incredible elements in there, but I'd love for you to share that and then maybe we could break it down a little bit.

I had had a second dream. You know what kind of dream if you read Greenlights. And one of the elements in the dream was I was supposed to go to Africa. So one night while staying in a little motel hotel in Dublin, Ireland, I was listening to one of my favorite musicians, Ali Farka Touré. And I was like, oh, where's Ali from? I looked it up, Niafunke, Mali. I said, I'll go find him. That'll be my point on the map of which I'll chase. So I go to Mali. I have a one-way ticket, backpack, and I find him 4 days in. And then I end up going hiking into the Banjagarah, where these beautiful villages are spread out, you know, 10 to 15 miles apart from each other at the base of these cavernous canyons where the river runs. And we would hike from village to village each day. Well, one of these villages, Bintje Amatu— this is about day 15, long enough where I really felt like I felt at home. Now, I'd been there long enough where I had the rhythm of Africa and the rhythm of the hikes. I show up at this village after a 15-mile walk, and it's about sundown. And I lay down and I start stretching from the day and everything. And all of a sudden, I hear the village, the ambiance of the village coming close to me and getting loud. And it's about 40 people. And there's all this excitement. And it's in Bambata, the language. I don't know what it means, but you can tell there's an excitement over the village, and it's getting very near me. As that happens, I look up and through these people, villagers that encircled me, steps out this large man built like a tree trunk with a burlap sack wrapped around his waist. And he's got a very serious look on his face and he stands above me and looks down at me. The village is very excited. I don't know why. He points at me, points to his heart, and then points over to the left. And as he does that, the villagers start to scream. And I recognize this is some sort of challenge. And I already know that they like to wrestle in Mali. And, and I'm like, okay, I think this man is challenging me to a duel of wrestling. As my heart's starting to beat, going No way! My body's getting up to accept the challenge, and all of a sudden I notice I'm standing up in front of him and point to him, then I point to my heart, and then I make a move to the left to where he pointed to a large dirt pit. And the villagers go crazy, and I'm going, what are you doing? At the same time, I'm telling myself Don't do this, but you have to do it because at the very least it will be a great story. So I walked to the pit. The chief comes in now, about 100 villagers have surrounded on the outside, on the outskirts. The chief holds our hands up, introduces us, puts our hands down. The wrestler's name was Michelle. He gets down and he lodges his head into my collarbone and gets like a bull holding me by the waist. So I lodge my head into his collarbone, opposite collarbone, and hold his waist. And we're like two bulls facing each other now, right? Like this, in the middle of this dirt pit. And all of a sudden I hear this chief go, "Dak!" Which, when the villagers all start screaming, I find out that "dak" basically means "ding ding." It's on. Well, I start to think, you know, my leverage in my family as a wrestler was always my lower body, my, my legs and, and everything. And I start to think, I'll have to get in low because this guy's really big. Oh, well, as I'm down there circling, I noticed this guy's legs are like tree trunks. I'm like, this is not my advantage anymore. I don't think I can get him low. Well, we circle, we circle, we circle. He pins me, I flip him off, I pin him, I get him in a headlock, body slam. It's going on. There's no hitting, but there's heavy wrestling. Blood has been drawn, and all of a sudden the ref steps in and separates us from what was I don't know if it's over or what. I've got— I had a beard. My things, talismans in my beard, had been ripped off. So there's blood coming down my neck, my knees, my shins are bleeding, and I was covered in sweat, basically hyperventilating. And I'm looking around, going crazy. And I look at Michel, the guy I'm wrestling, and he's just stone-faced, barely a glisten of sweat on him, and he's just looking at me. And I'm like, oh shit. That's when the Chief goes, yeah, meaning round 2. So Michelle grabs my waist, lowers his head into my collarbone. I do the same. We're off. We twist, we flip, we go all over the place. It's a great match. And all of a sudden, Chief steps in, separates us, and the crowd comes in and starts and hoists me up and starts going Dauda, Dauda, which was the name I was going under, David, and Dauda is David in Bambara. And as I'm being lifted up going, wow, what's this all about? I see Michelle take off running, leaving. So I'm feeling like they'd anointed me as being victorious. This is when I learned a story that no, they don't measure in victory. Victory, wins or loss, they were lifting me up because I, quote unquote, handled Michel. Not won or lost, handled. And that I was getting the appreciation from the moment I accepted the challenge. That was the victory to them and for me. So that night, so Great. The next day, when I went to go walk the next 50 miles to the next village, waiting on the outskirts of the village was Michel. He held my hand and walked me 15 miles to the next village without saying a word, and then walked back on his own. I found out he had done that out of respect because white men named Dauda had accepted the chaplain. Which I also found out Michel, they, the villagers all thought that Michel would have white man named Dauda on his back in 10 seconds. Because Michel was not only champion wrestler of this village, Michel was champion wrestler of this village and 3 villages back. So they had said, "You did good, Dauda." The ending beautiful part of this story is I went back there unannounced 6 years later. Michel had 4 kids now. And a busted hip. He walked with a big limp. So there was not going to be another wrestling match. But the next day, 6 years later, when I went to walk to that next village, guess who was waiting for me with a limp behind the same tree he had waited for me 6 years prior to walk me 15 miles to the next village holding my hand? Michelle.

Wow. So when I hear a story like that, not to break down a beautiful story, but some people feel, hey, That sounds amazing, Matthew. Even if I had the same experience, I don't know if I could tell it that way. When I say story, teach, have somebody take an action, right? It's really a scene of your life. It's not the whole story. We didn't know about your first movie. We didn't know about the rejections you had or when you moved to Texas or your first child. Like, we just knew that one slice when you said, I had a dream, a specific dream, and I decided to go to Mali, right? It was a scene of your life. So when you repeat that story, have you been doing stories so long that that has become natural, or is there a little bit of a framework you think through?

The moment that even allowed that to become a story, the moment that would lead to me, if I go back tomorrow, that he would still see me, embrace and walk me 20 years later. The moment was when I was on my back and he challenged me and my heart started racing and my mind said no. And my body said, oh, we gotta. That was the moment. That's when the thing comes alive. It was a very scary decision. It also— I had the little thing in my head going like, oh, if you don't do this, you will regret finding out what would have happened. You know, I remember that yin yang in that moment. But the action of getting up and accepting that challenge led to all the extra beauty that leads into that beautiful story that makes it a story not about win and loss, about accepting challenges, that makes it about respect. And lifelong respect for one choice, no matter the outcome, that that would lead to the village hoisting me up. I had no idea that that would lead to him waiting for me the next day as I left to walk me 15 miles.

What hit me more than anything was the fear of not knowing. Like, I remember thinking, like, that is the thought I'm gonna have to myself when I'm in a challenging situation. I borrowed that from you since the the moment I heard it and you reinforced it when we got to spend time together. And now I realize you say that all the time and it's part, but I borrowed that from you. And right now there are so many things I'll start new and go, ah, I don't really need to do that at this phase of my life. But the fear of not knowing will kill me. I gotta do it. Yeah.

Amen. I mean, that's because there's no direct advice in that story. There's not one part of that story where I'm saying, "So this is what you should do." None of us, I think, really love to get direct advice. We want to find it. We want to hear— if they can— someone can hear that story and see the metaphor and put themselves, their own position there in their own life at the time, into the subjective place where I was and see themselves in a similar situation, then you, the individual, make your decision. To make the choice to take action or not to, for whatever that predicament may be, then you own that. I don't own that. You own that. No one owns that but you. That is an empowering feeling with all our decisions. And you, you know, you know, I started this off talking about raising our kids. We try to— I think we're all trying to do that, you know. I mean, I give advice all the time, but when I, when I do it well, I don't really give advice. I just say it in a way where they get to make the decision.

When I heard it today, I got like tears in my eyes when you talked about him waiting behind the same tree. And I thought, man, if you didn't take that action, you wouldn't have found that love. And that's his own kind of love. I love the fact that you walked for 15 miles without saying a word. Does the story have different meanings for you as you tell it?

It does. And you know, one of the themes that I've been trying to talk to my children about that this story exemplifies, our actions and our choices every day, What we do, what we choose to do, what we choose not to do, how we behave, how we treat others.

Wow.

And I have proof that things that I've done that didn't have any measurement at the time, I didn't see it, but, but I've gone places where people come to my defense because of how I treated them 30 years ago. And so I'm talking to my children about how you treat You know, what was one example? Like going to that concert, that, you know, that security guard lets you in. It's a long line of people. Thank him, because there's going to be a day where you're 20 people back in the line and he, that same security guard, is going, nope, that's it, no more coming in. And he may look back and go, hey, you, Levi, come here. You're building an army of allies. And so that turned out to be an example. I have a friend, I have an ally in Michelle. We're building allies, a chance to build an army behind us and allies. And look, we all have enemies out there, but boy, I don't think we can have enough allies behind us. So in ways like in our work or in relationships, our reputation can start to precede us. And that comes from choices that we've made in the past. If we were consistent with those, we're building that army of allies that are for us.

One last question I got. When you watch somebody who's a master storyteller like you, there's a lot of people who have stories they want to share and they might be thinking, "I don't think I could do it that way." What are a couple of things you could tell this amazing audience to improve their story?

Before thinking about how will it sound to the listener, stick with what you know. What's personal? Keep it personal, that you invite everyone else in, but be— but by how personal it is to you. When you see a good storyteller, they're not necessarily performing for you. You see them having an experience in the telling of the story. That experience that, that you— they're having, that's what pulls you in. Um, secondly, I would say Earn your pause. Earn your punchline. If you tell the story well, you earn that pause before you deliver the coup de grâce, before you deliver the punchline, before you deliver. And here's the moral of the story, and here's what happened. Earn that punchline. Don't be afraid of that pause because it gets quiet. Everyone goes, uh-oh, did he forget what he said? What he's going to say? No, I didn't forget what I was going to say. Or maybe I did, but Here's a pause, because every story needs an ebb and a flow. Data speaks to the brain, but it's not a great story. Stories go to the heart. Stories are like food. It's a way to get to the heart. And a story that just makes sense mathematically can be like, wow, that was great. Okay, I didn't feel anything, but that's great science. It's great data. You've got to speak the human side. You've got to let people see themselves in that position.

Position.

In marketing, you got to speak to the heart and don't be afraid. That's when I say stay personal, keep it personal, play the subject, be the subject, play that part.

So good. I'm taking notes like, keep it personal, earn your pause, earn your punchline. That is the best phrase I've heard. I've always had take elegant pauses or pause at at the right time. That describes— I hope everybody got that. You should put it in the chat. Earn your punchline. And I love the uncomfortable moment where you don't know, did he forget it? Is she going to share it? And then you hit it and it lands. So good. And, you know, the word that I wrote down as you were saying those things is— and I watch you do it— is being vulnerable as well. Right? If there's a part where you were vulnerable, don't skip over that part. Right? That's the juicy stuff.

Don't come into a scene feeling so secure and stable. What we like to see in a performance and in life is someone being off balance but finding their balance in the story that they tell, in the scene.

Oh, that's so good.

And that also lets people in and go, "Oh, yeah. I know I'll be off balance." Tell them that vulnerability, sharing that part where you're like, "Ah, and you won't believe what I did here." Being able to laugh at yourself while you're telling the story is very important too. If you can do it, then you're having the experience of the embarrassment or the anger or whatever, the sadness, whatever it is. Share that. I was telling the wrestling story earlier. I got the chills again when I was talking about getting up to accept the challenge from Michelle. I got the chills again. I was like, oh, because I went back there. And that— when we feel alive telling the story, People feel alive hearing it.

We've all been at a pivotal place in our life. Make a left or make a right. You're at a fork. You can't keep going straight. You got to go one way or another. One way is a little scary, one way is a little comfortable. And thank God I took the scary route. Just like when you moved to Texas and decided to shift movies. A scary route, right? I don't ever want to lose sight of how scared I was the day I was at that fork in the road and knew I couldn't leave my life the way it was. There was no way to go straight. I had to go one way or another. And you can get numb to the story. And it shares the principles, but it doesn't share the soul. So I just want to say thank you today. Thank you for taking the time. I know you're with your son. This was fantastic. So the internet was a little blurry, but we could hear you perfectly. And everybody's loving it. Matthew, thank you so much. We'll talk to you soon. Everybody, give it up for Matthew McConaughey.

Appreciate it, Dean. Thanks, all.

I hope you guys got as much as I did. I have so many sloppy notes. I've just been writing on all of the papers on my page here. They're on note cards. They're on a little piece here. I got some in my journal. But I'm going to fine-tune everything I learned today. Now, I know the internet wasn't the best, but how cool is it that he took an hour with us while he's away with his son trying to get a little time in as a dad? He took that space. For those of you new to our family, there's 3 other trainings with McConaughey, Inner Circles, over the last year that we've done together that are all 10 out of 10. They're unbelievable. And a bunch of you asked, so many of you have Matthew's course Road Trip, but if you'd like, it's probably one of the best-selling courses in the history of the world. It's an unbelievable course. And if you guys are interested, you can write this down, it's jointheroadtrip.com. Anyway, guys, thank you as part of our mastermind family. Those of you who are here today who have just joined in the last couple days, this is what we get to do every single month. But really, don't forget you have everything inside Mastermind. A new course every month, new training every month, a library of over 80 courses, library of over 100 inner circles. Anything you can ever think of is there. Training, Gigi, AI, and most of all, we just love having you part of the family. Thank you guys so much. I appreciate you. This is an amazing day. Thank you, Matthew McConaughey. Thank you, everybody.