Backstage w/ Matt Stone

Matt’s back after time away for a family loss, and he returns with something useful: a dead-simple framework for building a story on the fly. He’s skeptical of the elaborate storytelling models making the rounds on LinkedIn — the Pixar method, the hero’s journey — because nobody actually constructs a story in real time out of those. What he reaches for instead comes from an unexpected place: ten y...

Matt’s been thinking about the distraction economy — the way modern work fragments your attention before a single idea can fully form. The Microsoft data is brutal (knowledge workers interrupted roughly every two minutes all day), and it’s the enemy of the thing Matt cares most about: a deeply developed story. He reaches for a metaphor from his years in Japan — great ramen broth isn’t fast. Someon...

Subtitle: Matt resets Backstage around its real purpose — and shares the storytelling shift that made a bored panel remember him for the rest of the day Description: Backstage is changing, and Matt’s being upfront about why: he changed the name before he changed the show, and now it’s time for the style to catch up. Going forward this is a sharper daily dose for founders, entrepreneurs, and leader...

The CN Tower turns 50 today — it opened to the public on June 26, 1976 — and Matt can’t stop thinking about what makes a tower iconic: the way one structure becomes shorthand for an entire city, from Toronto to Seattle’s Space Needle to the Eiffel Tower in Paris. It’s his new metaphor for the operator-to-icon journey. Becoming an icon means raising a tower rooted deep in your base — your brand, yo...

In 1886, a teenage cellist touring Brazil was pushed onto a podium nobody else could hold: a hostile crowd, a walked-out conductor, and a full performance of Aida with no rehearsal. He led the whole thing from memory. His name was Arturo Toscanini, and that accidental night, which the history books place somewhere in late June, launched one of the longest, greatest conducting careers ever. Matt’s...

Matt’s long-form founder interviews have always been the aspirational top of the Bigger Stage — proof of what’s possible after years of building something real. Now he’s adding the layer he’d always planned to: a sharper, more useful YouTube track aimed upstream, helping experienced professionals launch themselves as their own company and sell their story, their why , to win clients on their own t...

On June 23, 1868, the first typewriter patent was granted — but the machine that eventually put QWERTY in everyone’s hands almost didn’t get made at scale. The company that pulled it off wasn’t a printer or a publisher. It was a firearms manufacturer in trouble. Matt digs into how Remington, struggling after the Civil War dried up its business, reinvented itself around the typewriter, and why the...

It’s Monday, June 22nd — 92 days to fall, the World Cup is quietly turning NYC and Northern NJ into a parking lot, and Matt is back behind the mic with a confession: summer is a recession. Not the scary kind — the calendar kind. Fewer appointments, more out-of-offices, the slow exhale most businesses feel once the kids are out of school. And the smartest move in a recession, as a fellow named Fran...

On this June 12th edition of Backstage Friday, Matt checks in from a week of genuine momentum: the Untold Stories Tour is taking shape with a Denver venue locked in, a new Manhattan networking group that feels more like family than business cards, and a client breakthrough that reminded him just how much a great interview can unlock. But the heart of this episode is a reading from David Kalinowski...

Matt bought bananas this morning, which got him thinking about 1876. But that’s just the warm-up. This week on Backstage Friday, Matt pulls back the curtain on one of the most consistent patterns he’s seeing with clients: the gap between AI-generated messaging and the real thing — and why the difference is less about the tool and more about what you feed it. Spoiler: deep broth beats instant every...

Matt’s been sitting on something — and this episode is where it comes out. A new offer, a handful of cities, and a concept called Untold Stories: the next evolution of The Bigger Stage is starting to take shape, and listeners are getting the first look before anyone else. In this week’s Backstage, Matt also gets into why writing a single LinkedIn post by hand felt like going to the gym, what a Sha...

It’s been a week — the kind that’s equal parts exhausting and exhilarating — and Matt is back Backstage to fill you in. He digs into a paradigm shift around LinkedIn and social media (turns out treating the feed like a room full of people beats posting and running), teases a Hollywood project bridging entertainment, business, and leadership development, and reflects on why holding up a mirror to s...

Thirty-eight days until summer, and welcome to Backstage’s new Friday cadence. Matt’s breaking in a new format like new shoes, seeing what works best. This week started with a networking event with trades owners in southeastern Pennsylvania—flooring, painting, roofing companies. The vibe: more competition, people getting more bids and hanging on longer, not pulling the trigger as quickly. General...

Title: 51, Grateful, and Balancing Confidence with Humility Subtitle: On birthday reflections, upcoming celebrity guests, structured interviews as the secret to books and courses, and showing up meaningfully Description: Forty-five days until summer, and Matt’s celebrating his birthday today—51 years old, grateful to be healthy with so many wonderful people in his life. He shares the same birth da...

After six months of daily episodes, Matt is making a change. This pod is shifting to a weekly Friday cadence — a backstage-style check-in built for summarizing the week’s learnings, previewing what’s next, and pulling listeners deeper into the journey. The daily format helped build the stage. Now the stage is set, and it’s a different game. In this midweek bonus, Matt also unveils Iconic Conversat...

Fifty-four days until summer, and Matt’s got a feeling they’re going straight from late winter into the Hades era of heat. Welcome to Backstage—he likes the art, hopes you do too, sticking with it for a while. After sharing trivia about the yellow fever vaccine (1932—back when vaccines were seen as positive), Charles de Gaulle resigning (1969), and A Chorus Line closing after 6,137 performances (1...

Fifty-eight days until summer, still chilly, and it feels like they’re going straight from late winter into summer with something brutal in between. Welcome to Backstage—the podcast is officially rebranded. Cadence still TBD, aspirationally five days a week but thinking three for consistency. Things are changing, lots more activity. Planning a very exclusive, very cool invite-only dinner concept,...

Title: 21 Years Since the First YouTube Video Subtitle: On burgeoning friendships, the ground shifting faster than ever, and bridging where technology meets human creativity Description: Fifty-nine days until summer, and Matt’s pondering frequency—maybe three days a week instead of five. Let him know what you think. Last night he had dinner with David Kalinowski (author of The Sacrifice Paradox ),...

Fifty degrees and chilly in NYC, and Matt went underdressed to last night’s fantastic networking event—froze afterward grabbing a slice with a friend, but good times. After sharing trivia about the first White House Easter egg roll (1878—still creepy with the bunny), Jacques Cousteau’s diving apparatus patent (1952), and the Blues Brothers’ first SNL appearance (1978), he dives into what’s shiftin...

Down to a lovely 77 degrees after almost 90 yesterday (65 days until summer), and Matt’s happy about it. Last night’s nonprofit event was packed with sweating professionals in jackets—met two women from Colombia working for a nonprofit, a writer, all kinds of interesting people. Not a community he’s heavily involved in, but he felt part of it instantly. Good for the soul. After sharing trivia abou...

Eighty-nine degrees in NYC today (66 days until summer but it already feels like it’s here), and Matt’s looking forward to almost 90-degree weather for now. After sharing trivia about Isaac Newton being knighted (1705), a magnitude 7.0 earthquake in Eureka (1899), and Annie Oakley hitting 100 clay targets in a row (1922), he dives into yesterday’s exhaustion—the kind he didn’t fully appreciate unt...

Happy tax day in America, 86 degrees in northern New Jersey, and Matt’s exhausted but inspired after standing up the new website for thebiggerstage.com yesterday. After sharing trivia about the American School for the Deaf (1817), the last day U.S. silver coins circulated in Canada (1870), and the Titanic actually sinking in the early morning hours of this day (1912), he dives into what happened i...

Mid-80s today (almost 90 the next two days), and Matt’s excited to be a little too warm after months of cold. After sharing trivia about Noah Webster’s dictionary (1828), cornflakes being patented (1896), and the Titanic hitting the iceberg (1912—124 years ago and people are still fascinated), he reflects on why that story resonates: we’re all on a boat together, and in the end, status didn’t matt...

Sixty-nine days until summer, still feeling winter-ish at night (upper 30s, lower 40s), but a glorious weekend—Saturday sitting in the sun on the Upper West Side talking with a friend, much warmer than expected. After sharing trivia about the Apollo 13 explosion (1970) and Barry Bonds hitting his 661st home run (2004), Matt dives into a moment that made him feel very old: recounting a story about...

Beautiful Friday, a little cold as usual, and Matt stopped mid-race to get centered before two podcast recordings—one with someone who just appeared on the Today Show for a clever electrical product (the kind you wish you’d invented), another with Jan Miller who stumbled into his current company 20 years ago after casually helping people with student loan issues on the side. After sharing trivia (...