YOU DON’T HAVE A [LEADERSHIPSALES] PROBLEM. YOU HAVE A STORY PROBLEM.
Matt Livadary is an Emmy-nominated documentary filmmaker who teaches organizations to find the story buried inside the problem they thought they had, then turn it into measurable results.
USC-trained documentary filmmaker. Emmy nominee. Cannes Lion winner. Netflix-distributed.
Now advising leaders at Ford, Kaiser Permanente, Envista, and Clipboard Health.
Not just inspiration, transformation.
Most storytelling programs sell you connection. Matt delivers higher close rates, retention, pipeline, and more.
Storytelling is the hardest underleveraged lever in your organization, and finding it takes documentary craft. Matt has spent twenty years extracting story under high-stakes conditions. From queer rodeo cowboys in Netflix’s Queens & Cowboys to leadership teams at Ford, Kaiser Permanente, Envista, and Clipboard Health, with brand and content work for Intel, Amazon, Charles Schwab, and NFL Network along the way.
The marketing résumé runs just as deep: a Cannes Lion, Emmy nominations, and a creative team he scaled from four to forty at Uproxx, reaching thirty million monthly viewers before Warner Music acquired it. Today the best brands trust him with their story because the work shows up in their numbers.
“He’s a rare combo of heart, empathy, and execution. He just gets it.”
Long story short.
Let’s be honest: most workplace uses for storytelling are incredibly brief. Good news. You don’t need to tell an entire story to engage someone.
You need the four ingredients that make every story work: tension, stakes, surprise, and transformation. They fit inside a sales conversation, a product moment, a support call, an OKR, an all-hands. Sometimes inside a single sentence.
Most people can’t use those ingredients because they’ve never learned to find them. That’s the methodology: twenty years of documentary craft, compressed, teaching teams to surface the story hiding in their work and deploy it until engagement becomes second nature.
No two engagements look the same.
Every brand has a different story buried inside a different problem.
Matt comes at business the way a documentarian comes at a subject. Embedding. Ride-alongs. Customer interviews. Conversations with engineers, frontline staff, and the C-suite.
Sales, leadership, marketing, culture: wherever the gap is, the answer usually involves story. Matt’s job is to extract it, then turn it into something your team can actually use.
This certainly wasn’t a copy/paste workshop. Matt took the time to deeply understand our sales process and our product, going on multiple ride-alongs, sales calls, and support calls with our team… We are seeing our customer conversations connect at far deeper levels than we ever had before, and we have seen a noticeable uptick in new customer close rates and existing customer lifetime value.
How we might work together.
Three formats, one system underneath. Whether the engagement runs forty-five minutes or six months, everything gets custom-built around your team, your industry, and what’s on the line.
Keynote
45 – 90 min · In-person or virtualThe spark. A custom talk that reframes the room around what’s actually broken and gives leaders a clear next move.
Best for: conferences, sales kickoffs, leadership offsites, all-hands.
Workshop
Half-day, full-day, or multi-dayThe tools. Hands-on training where teams leave with frameworks they can use the next morning, instead of a feeling that fades by Friday.
Best for: sales orgs, leadership cohorts, marketing teams, executive teams.
Long-Form Engagement
Multi-week to multi-monthThe system. Embedded work that installs storytelling as an operating capability: narrative audits, Story Banks, sales enablement builds, executive coaching, and fractional Chief Story Officer retainers.
Best for: organizations ready to make narrative a permanent operating capability.
The system, applied.
Five common starting points. Each one bends to fit the team in the room. Tell Matt what’s on the line and he’ll recommend the shape.
For sales orgs facing commoditization, lost deals, or new-hire ramp issues. Turns pitching into story-building, with measurable lift in close rates.
For executives and managers who need to communicate change, vision, and direction. Turns strategy into a story the whole organization can repeat.
For marketing teams losing differentiation in crowded categories. Installs a master narrative and a repeatable framework for hero campaigns.
For founders, executives, and sellers preparing for high-stakes pitches, board updates, and keynotes. The goal is simple: give the room goosebumps, then give them a reason to act.
For HR and People leaders driving engagement and retention. Story rituals and shared language that turn back-of-mind purpose into front-of-mind motivation.
The proof.
Sales storytelling workshop with multiple ride-alongs across sales and support calls. CFO-cited uplift in new customer close rates and existing customer lifetime value.
Built the in-house creative engine that took Markforged off agency dependence. Half a million in agency fees gone from the budget every year, plus 148% organic YouTube growth ahead of a successful IPO.
Average improvement in self-assessed skill across 100% of participants in the org-wide leadership storytelling program.
Brand storytelling workshop for marketing, sales, and service leadership.
Full-day storytelling and engagement program built to fight burnout across a $72.6B health system. The narrative rituals designed that day are still running months later.
Ongoing teaching across the Seaver College Business Division. Storytelling for leaders and presenters, applied in the classroom.
Intel · Amazon · Netflix · Warner Music · Charles Schwab · NFL Network · Uber · Honda · Wondery · Torani · Coors · Rotary International · USC
$100B+in combined client revenue.
Ready to solve the
REAL problem?
Let’s start with a conversation about how story can transform your business.
Book a 30-min strategy call →Sending this to a committee? Download the programs guide (PDF)
Story is the most powerful tool we have.
Let’s prove it together.
Want gold in your inbox?
Don’t worry, I loathe marketing emails. The rare times you hear from me, it’ll be a story worth stealing or a framework you can use that afternoon. Suffice to say, worth it.