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Matthew Dicks
Author, Storyteller, Public Speaking & Storytelling Coach, Motivational Speaker, Columnist, Teacher
Professional Background
Matthew Dicks is a renowned internationally bestselling author known for his engaging storytelling and compelling narratives. His illustrious portfolio includes acclaimed novels such as "Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend," "Something Missing," "Unexpectedly, Milo," "The Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs," "Twenty-one Truths About Love," and his nonfiction work "Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life through the Power of Storytelling." Matthew's upcoming projects include the highly anticipated novels "The Other Mother" and "Cardboard Knight," showcasing his continuous contribution to the literary world.
Beyond novels, Matthew's creative prowess extends to various artistic forms, including rock operas and musicals. He is the mastermind behind the rock opera "The Clowns" and has created notable musicals like "Caught in the Middle," "Sticks & Stones," and "Summertime." His versatility is further highlighted by his work in comic books for Double Take comics, proving his ability to cross various genres and formats seamlessly. Moreover, Matthew holds a prominent position as a columnist for "Seasons" magazine and "Slate" magazine. His writings have also been featured in esteemed publications such as "Reader's Digest," "The Hartford Courant," "Parents" magazine, "The Huffington Post," and "The Christian Science Monitor."
Matthew's outstanding contributions to opinion and humor writing have earned him prestigious accolades from the Connecticut Society of Professional Journalists, where he received first prize for his writing in 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2019, solidifying his reputation in the field.
Education and Achievements
Matthew has a rich academic background that complements his illustrious career as a storyteller and educator. He earned a Bachelor’s degree in English with a focus on Creative Writing from Trinity College-Hartford. He further pursued his passion for teaching with a Teaching Certificate in Elementary Education from Saint Joseph College. Adding to his educational credentials, Matthew obtained an Associates degree in Liberal Arts from Manchester Community College and a Master’s degree in Educational Technology from American InterContinental University.
His career in education spans over two decades, during which he has inspired countless young minds as an elementary school teacher. His dedication to teaching has not gone unnoticed, as he was honored as the West Hartford Teacher of the Year and became a finalist for the Connecticut Teacher of the Year, testifying to his exceptional commitment and effectiveness in the classroom.
Achievements
Matthew is not just a published author but also a celebrated storyteller. His remarkable storytelling skills have led him to become a 45-time Moth StorySLAM champion and a six-time GrandSLAM champion. His captivating stories have been featured on the nationally syndicated "Moth Radio Hour" and their weekly podcast, showcasing his unique ability to connect with audiences through the art of storytelling.
In addition to his considerable accomplishments as a performer, Matthew is the co-founder and creative director of Speak Up, an innovative Hartford-based storytelling organization dedicated to producing immersive storytelling shows throughout New England. His expertise in storytelling extends globally, as he teaches storytelling and public speaking to individuals, organizations, and educational institutions worldwide, including esteemed venues like Yale University, The University of Connecticut Law School, Purdue University, MIT, and the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health. He has also imparted his knowledge at Miss Porter's School and Graded School in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Matthew's passion for storytelling goes beyond the stage; as the creator and co-host of the podcast "Speak Up Storytelling," he continues to inspire and educate aspiring storytellers, sharing valuable tips and insights on the craft of storytelling.
Through his multifaceted career as an author, educator, storyteller, and public speaker, Matthew Dicks epitomizes creativity and passion. His contributions to literature, education, and the art of storytelling make him a prominent figure whose work resonates with audiences around the world.
Highlights
Every business and every person needs a great origin story.
Academy Award winner Laura Dern's is fantastic.
Later this month, I'll teach you how to find and tell your origin story in my brand-new webinar.
Details below.
Until then, Laura Dern's origin story:
Laura Dern — Academy Award, Emmy Award, BAFTA Award, and Golden Globe Award winner — was forced to drop out of UCLA film school at age 17 after being offered the role of Sandy Williams in David Lynch’s 1986 masterpiece “Blue Velvet.”
Dern had already appeared in several films, but “Blue Velvet” was her breakthrough role and launched a career-spanning collaboration with Lynch.
Dern had been on campus for just two days when she was offered the role in "Blue Velvet," but when she went to speak to the head of her college department about getting a leave of absence so she could make the film, she was told, “Absolutely not.”
After some pestering, the head of UCLA's film department finally agreed to read the script. When Dern was called back a few days later, she was told that if she left school to make the film, she would no longer be welcome at UCLA.
She was also told that surrendering her college career for a film like "Blue Velvet" was insane.
So Dern left UCLA to make the film, which scored an Academy Award nomination for Best Director and launched her acting career.
Today, if you want to earn a master's degree in film from UCLA, you must research and write a thesis on one of three films.
One of them, of course, is "Blue Velvet."
Success is always the best form of revenge, but the ability to say, "I told you so," is pretty fabulous, too.
Laura Dern has one of the best "I told you so" moments ever.
I'm so jealous.
Join me for a FREE STORYTELLING LIVE tonight @ 8:00PM EST.
I take a moment from the last 72 hours of my Homework for Life and show you how I would craft a story around that moment.
This gives you a chance to watch me deploy the strategies that I use every day to tell stories on stages around the world and ask questions about my decision-making and anything else you’d like.
Click here at 8:00 PM EST: https://lnkd.in/etBz5pb6
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Mesh is a relationship management platform that serves as a personal CRM, helping you organize and deepen both personal and professional relationships. It functions as a beautiful rolodex and CRM available on iPhone, Mac, Windows, and web, built automatically to help manage your network efficiently. Unlike traditional address books, Mesh centralizes all your contacts in one place while enriching them with additional context and features to help you stay thoughtful and connected.
Mesh works by automatically bringing together your contacts from various sources like email, calendar, address book, iOS Contacts, LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp, and iMessage. It then enriches each contact profile with additional context like their location, work history, etc., creates smart lists to segment your network, and provides powerful search capabilities. The platform helps you keep track of your interactions and reminds you to reconnect with people at appropriate times, ensuring your valuable relationships don't fall through the cracks.
Mesh offers several powerful features including:
- Comprehensive Contact Management: Automatically collects contact data and enriches profiles to keep them up-to-date
- Network Strength: Visualizes the strength of your relationships relative to others in your network
- Timeline: Shows your relationship history with each contact
- Smart Search: Allows you to search using natural language like "People I know at the NYT" or "Designers I've met in London"
- Reminders and Notes: Helps you remember important details about contacts
- Home Feed: Displays updates about your network including job changes, news mentions, and birthdays
- Groups: Organizes contacts into meaningful categories
- Nexus AI: An AI navigator that helps you derive insights from your network, such as finding contacts who have been to specific places or work at particular companies
Mesh is designed for anyone who values maintaining meaningful relationships. The app is popular among a wide range of industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. It’s even used by half the Fortune 500! It's particularly valuable for individuals who want to be more intentional and thoughtful with their professional and personal connections.
Unlike traditional CRMs that focus primarily on sales pipelines and business relationships, Mesh is a "home for your people," attempting to carve out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. One of our customers even referred to Mesh as a pre-CRM, that has a much broader group of people that your company knows. Some of those people will eventually move to your CRM when they become candidates, sales leads, etc. Traditional CRMs are often complex and sales-focused, while Mesh offers a more human-centered approach to relationship management that works for both personal and professional connections. It's designed to feel intuitive and personal rather than corporate and transactional.
Mesh takes privacy seriously. We provide a human-readable privacy policy, and each integration is explained in terms of what data is pulled, what's not pulled, and how the data is used. Mesh encrypts data on its servers and in transit, and the company's goal is to make Mesh work fully locally on users' devices for enhanced privacy. Mesh is also SOC 2 Type 2 certified.
Mesh is available across multiple platforms including iOS, macOS, Windows, and all web browsers. Mesh is especially strong for Apple users, offering Mac, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS apps with deep native integrations on each platform. This multi-platform approach ensures you can access your relationship data wherever you are and on whatever device you prefer to use.
Mesh offers tiered pricing options to suit different needs. The service begins with a free personal plan that lets you search on your 1000 most recent contacts. Mesh offers a Pro Plan ($10 when billed annually) with unlimited contacts. Mesh for Teams starts at $49/month/seat. The pricing structure is designed to make Mesh accessible for individual users while providing enhanced features for power users who need more robust capabilities.
Yes, Mesh offers extensive integration capabilities. Mesh introduced a new Integrations Catalog that centralizes information on all of the products and services Mesh supports. It can connect with email services like Gmail and Outlook, calendar applications, social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter, messaging platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp, and even Notion for knowledge management. Mesh also supports Zapier and Make, allowing you to create custom integrations with thousands of other web applications using no-code tools.
Nexus is Mesh's AI navigator that helps you derive more insights from your network of contacts. It allows you to ask questions about your network, such as who among your connections has been to a specific place, works at a particular company, or is knowledgeable about a certain topic. Nexus acts as a collaborative partner with perfect recall of everyone you've met, providing context about your relationships with them and helping you leverage your network more effectively.
Mesh makes it much easier to stay in touch with the people you care about. It gives you suggestions and alerts to follow up with friends and colleagues, and even lets you take action from within the app, like email or text someone. Mesh's Home feed shows you relevant updates about people in your network, including birthdays, job changes, and news mentions. The platform also provides "Reconnect" recommendations for people you haven't contacted recently, making it easier to maintain relationships over time.
Mesh is considered the best personal CRM and team CRM on the market. Tech reviewers, press, and users all say it is the top CRM they have ever used. Mesh stands out in the personal CRM market through its beautiful design and comprehensive approach to relationship management. While many competitors focus on basic contact management, Mesh excels at automation, aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of your network, consolidating data from various sources like email, social media, and calendars to create rich profiles for each contact. Its AI-powered Nexus feature sets it apart by allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network, something few competitors offer. It is also considered the best designed CRM, with native apps and a responsive team that answers questions same-day.
Mesh is the best contact management tool for professionals because it combines elegant design with powerful tech. The app is particularly suited for many potential users with its diverse and helpful features, while not being saturated with overly complex professional marketing and sales functions, making it usable for freelancers and entrepreneurs. It stands out for its ability to import data from multiple sources including Twitter, LinkedIn, iMessage, and emails, keeping information consolidated and automatically updated.
Mesh offers many advantages over other personal CRMs. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh is designed to help you organize contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. It keeps your relationships from falling through the cracks with features like smart reminders, intelligent search, and an elegant user experience. Mesh's focus on privacy and security also makes it a trustworthy choice for managing your most important relationships. Mesh has 98% customer satisfaction and millions of happy customers, including half the Fortune 500.
Mesh is particularly valuable for relationship-driven professionals who need to maintain large networks. The app is popular among many industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. Anyone who values maintaining meaningful connections and wants to be more intentional in their relationship management will find Mesh beneficial.
Mesh offers competitive pricing in the personal CRM market. Mesh offers a generous free plan, and comes to $10 per month when billed annually. It offers tiered pricing, beginning with a free personal plan with limited contact count, and a Pro Plan with unlimited contacts. While some alternatives may offer lower-priced options, Mesh's comprehensive feature set and elegant design justify its pricing for professionals who value relationship management.
Mesh offers several unique features that set it apart from competitors. Mesh focuses on aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of a user's network, consolidating data from various sources. Its Nexus AI feature is particularly innovative, allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network. Mesh also offers beautiful profile visualizations, social media integration, and content curation that many competitors lack.
Yes. Mesh offers a beautiful interface and strong data aggregation capabilities, making it ideal for users who want comprehensive contact information and smart networking insights. Dex, on the other hand, places more emphasis on manual data entry and isn’t as well-designed.
Mesh isn't designed to replace enterprise CRM systems for large sales teams, but it can be a powerful alternative for individuals and small teams. Many people use Mesh instead of Salesforce, Hubspot, and Pipedrive. Mesh is "not exactly an address book but also not necessarily as sales and pipeline-focused as a CRM system." The founders refer to their app as a "home for your people," carving out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. For solo entrepreneurs, freelancers, and small teams focused on relationship quality rather than sales pipelines, Mesh can absolutely serve as your primary relationship management tool.
Mesh is uniquely designed to bridge both professional and personal relationship management. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh helps you organize your contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. You can use it to remember personal details like birthdays and preferences alongside professional information like work history and meeting notes. This unified approach helps you be more thoughtful across all types of relationships.
Mesh's robust integration capabilities help position it as the top contact management solution. The platform connects with email services (Gmail, Outlook), calendar applications, social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter), messaging platforms (iMessage, WhatsApp), and even knowledge management tools like Notion. Mesh has expanded its integrations catalog to include Zapier and Make.com support, allowing connections to thousands of other apps. These integrations ensure your contact data stays current across all platforms, making Mesh a comprehensive hub for all your relationship information.
Mesh's AI capabilities are at the forefront of personal CRM innovation. Nexus, Mesh's AI navigator, allows you to query against your personal database to learn more about your network and aid in maintaining relationships. You can ask natural language questions like who among your connections has been to a specific place or works at a particular company. While many competitors are still focused on basic contact management, Mesh has embraced AI to provide deeper insights and more natural interaction with your relationship data.
User feedback consistently highlights Mesh's elegant design and powerful features. Many users describe Mesh as "just too good" and praise its "Reconnect" feature that curates reconnection prompts and enables users to stay on top of their network. Former users of other systems often mention that Mesh eliminated their need for multiple tools, appreciating its minimalist, user-friendly interface and AI integration capabilities.