It’s no secret that I’ve been a fan of Matt Derda for some time now. He’s a talented musician and songwriter, penning wonderful, heartfelt songs like “Life You Didn’t Know” and “Betsy Layne” (if you haven’t heard them, do yourself a favor and check them out!), and he also has a knack for improv, spinning, for example, off-the-cuff tales of the first time he heard the Star Crumbles in the trailer of that band’s Beyond the Music mockumentary. Regardless of medium, storytelling lies at the heart of all of Matt’s endeavors, so I wasn’t surprised at all when he launched Storymind, a company dedicated to bringing stories to life. To find out more, I dropped him a line…

Your website notes that good content requires a good story. What’s the story behind Storymind?

It’s a story that has been 20 years in the making, but I’ll try to tell a short version. When Igraduated high school, I started taking improv comedy classes and performing at the Smarty Pants Theater Company in Dayton, OH. Joey Greene was the founder of Smarty Pants and my instructor and John Woodruff was another cast member. I fell in love with improv comedy and our troupe performed all over the country and taught a ton of workshops to companies, schools, and nonprofits. All good things must come to an end and Joey started working in outdoor education in Kansas City. John and I took over Smarty Pants for a while before he moved to LA to work in film and I moved to Chicago to continue studying improv at Second City, Improv Olympic, and the Annoyance Theater.

Eventually, I realized I was never going to get onto Saturday Night Live, but my improv skills translated incredibly well to Marketing. I began a career doing ‘real work.’ I started doing Marketing at a nonprofit, then became an analyst at Pepsi. I moved into B2B (business to business) software after that and spent about 10 years in that industry.

Throughout my entire career I found that the skills I learned in improv, specifically from Joey, were what I used the most. More than anything I had learned in college or any other job. I continued to stay in touch with John and Joey and we always talked about starting a company back up again. I’ve always wanted to start my own company again and the timing was right. I realized that we are expert storytellers and there is a market for our skills to be leveraged in video and written content and we can teach workshops to help others develop these skills.

Hence, Storymind was born!

What’s your own experience with storytelling, and how does it inform what you’re doing with Storymind?

Improv is all about creating a story out of nothing as a group. In order to be good at improv, the group has to be made up of expert communicators. Similar to songwriting, the better you can communicate what you want to say, the more it will resonate with an audience. It’s all about eliciting an emotional response.

I found that these skills translated extremely well to the corporate world, especially in Marketing. I’ve spent a long time in the world of B2B software. That industry is notoriously bad at storytelling and creativity. All of the brands in that space typically look and sound the same. By using the skills I learned from improv, songwriter, and even as an independent musician on social media, I’ve been able to craft more compelling messaging as a marketer. Now, I’m looking to bring that skillset to other brands.

And what services does Storymind offer?

Basically, if you have a story you want to tell, we can help tell it. Our bread and butter is high quality video content such as customer testimonials, digital ads, social media content, educational series, etc. We can also help produce any type of written content, such as case studies, brand messaging, website content, blogs, ebooks, etc. We have a large network of creative professionals, video producers, graphic designers, marketing operations specialists, and demand generation experts that can handle any project. Companies can outsource a lot of their marketing work to Storymind.

In addition, we offer interactive workshops that teach you to harness your creativity, enhance cognitive flexibility, and foster a collaborative spirit in a safe and fun environment. This curriculum is a unique blend of experiential education and improv theater. Each workshop is tailored for the individual group and they drive us towards what they want to learn.

What kind of clients do you serve? Or, to put it another way, who would benefit from your services?

Most of our clients have been B2B software companies such as AWS, Google, and Alteryx. We’ve recently expanded to DTC (direct to consumer) brands and service providers as well. I’ll give a shoutout to one of our first DTC customers, ToxiPets by Chive Labs. They are an app that provides vet-verified toxicity on anything your pet may consume. We’re filming a digital advertisement for them right now and it will be launched in February. We’re basically putting together a Super Bowl commercial for them. Stay tuned for the premiere!

Wow! That’s awesome! In addition to creating content for your clients, Storymind also offers workshops on storytelling, effective communication, and team building. How might clients benefit from these workshops?

We’ve developed a style of workshops that is rooted in improvisational comedy and experiential education that was created by one of our founders, Joey Greene. The workshops teach you exercises that help your brain learn to think differently and more creatively. Your brain is like any other muscle and you need to work it out to keep it strong and defined. Through interactive exercises, participants also learn communication skills, effective team building, and problem solving. Also, they are fun. They are a safe place as well. Nobody has to actually perform improv. It’s all exercises and games that we used to prepare to improvise on the stage. We’re preparing you to be better at your job.

Your website also mentions that you offer creative ideation services. What does that mean?

We can act as a third party to help generate ideas or brainstorm. Our workshops are designed to help you think differently and expand outside your comfort zone. Sometimes companies need an outside perspective in order to effectively tell their story. We might not be the experts in their product, services, or industry and we can’t do their job for them. BUT we can teach them how to solve the problem in a new way and find creative solutions. We can take a fish out of water, we can make a fish feel uncomfortable, but we can’t teach a fish how to swim.

However, when we put it back in the water, it will have a new perspective.

It’s funny, when I was looking at your website, I misread “brand storytelling” as “band storytelling.” I guess music is always on my mind, but my first reaction was, “Cool! Matt’s working with bands!” My reading deficiencies aside, are there any services you can offer to bands and musicians?

We can tell band stories! As a musician myself, I’m happy to help bands or artists tell their stories. We can also film music videos or other promo content if they have a budget. We won’t turn down any money haha.

If artists are on a budget, we can use our resources to help as well. Through the software we use for our business, we have access to a lot of stock footage, templates, and filters that can create high quality music videos or promo content. I’ve done this for our “Life You Didn’t Know” video and for our friend Dino DiMuro’s “Circuitree” video.

Bands and artists: definitely feel free to reach out to Storymind.

I’m thinking about recent advances in generative AI technology, and I imagine a lot of people might be tempted to use it to generate marketing and publicity content. What do you think are the limitations of AI, and—by way of contrast—what are the benefits of working with a company like Storymind?

AI still doesn’t have the ability to replicate the human point of view…yet. Most of the AI platforms that people are using for content creation still produce outputs that are very obviously done by AI. Even platforms that create videos with AI can’t create realistic images, avatars, or voice over. They are great for creating content fast, but unlikely to establish an emotional connection with a human audience. You get what you pay for in that scenario. It’s kind of like when the synthesizer came out and people thought that every Joe Schmo would be able to create musical master pieces. You still had to understand how to make music in order to use a synthesizer. It became a tool that musicians could use, it didn’t replace actual musicians.

That said, you also noted in a recent blog post that people shouldn’t be afraid of AI—and that it can serve as a useful tool. Is AI a tool that Storymind employs, and if so, how?

Yes, everyone pretty much uses AI in some form. We mostly use it for brainstorming purposes or research. It makes those processes much faster. I see it as like Wikipedia. It’s perfect for making research faster, but you still need to look at the sources, you just find it quicker.

How do you see the company developing over the next few years? Or, to put it another way, what’s the story of Storymind’s future?

That’s a great question! Right now, we have pretty small attainable goals. Our focus right now is pipeline generation and awareness. We’re starting from scratch so nobody knows who we are. The work we are doing for a few customers is going to be great! I think that once we release those, it will help generate some more interest. I would love to one day be able to have our own studio where we could film, live stream, and conduct workshops. I’d love to have work and play become intermingled. The stuff I do with Storymind doesn’t feel like work and that is literally my dream. I just want to keep it going.

Thanks for taking the time to talk to me, Matt!