The Personal Interest Inventory
Catalog the facts about yourself by reach and intensity, then weave them strategically into how you speak.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 90%
A tool for business communicators who default to being 'round, white, and flavorless.' You build an inventory of personal facts about yourself, each rated on two axes — total addressable market (how many people it could connect with) and intensity of connection — then slip the right item into answers and narratives to become memorable and human rather than a faceless corporate spokesperson.
Origin
Matthew Dicks's tool used with corporate clients (e.g. his work with Masha Ratner at Slack); featured in his forthcoming business storytelling book.
Core principles
- 01In business, assume nobody wants to hear from a corporate monolith; humans connect to humans
- 02Every personal fact has a reach (addressable market) and an intensity of connection
- 03High-reach/moderate-intensity items (married, has kids) build broad baseline trust
- 04Low-reach/high-intensity items (marathoner) create instant strong bonds with the few who share them
How to run it
- 1
List your personal facts
Inventory things true about you: married, elementary school teacher, parent, runner, cat owner, etc. — anything that might mean something to someone else.
Pro tip 'Elementary school teacher' is high-value because 'everyone loves me... they think I'm doing God's work.'
- 2
Rate each by reach and intensity
For each item estimate its total addressable market (how many people could connect) and the intensity of that connection. 'Married' is broad reach, moderate intensity; 'marathoner' is tiny reach but enormous intensity.
Pro tip For a man, signaling you're married reads as validation that 'someone has agreed to spend their life with me' — broad, moderate connection.
- 3
Weave items into answers, don't announce them
Never front-load a bio ('I'm a married elementary school teacher with two kids and two cats'). Instead, embed one item while answering a question. Asked 'how are you?', reply: 'My fifth-graders were actually decent human beings today — they didn't try to kill me.'
Pro tip Bundle it with amusement and a touch of self-deprecation so you inform and entertain at once.
Watch out Answering 'How are you?' with 'I'm doing great' is 'the stupidest answer you can offer' — it wastes a connection opportunity.
- 4
Surface high-intensity matches when you spot them
When you detect a rare high-intensity item in your audience (someone else ran a marathon), find a way to bring yours out — the bond is nearly automatic.
Pro tip Stacking inventory items with other techniques (adjacency, humor) compounds memorability.
In the wild
Slack's comms director crafted the narrative to counter Microsoft Teams. She first refused to include the personal origin (a lonely Tuesday night, post-breakup, two glasses of wine, mid-pandemic, three words on a napkin). Later, at a lower-stakes talk, she added a 30-second anecdote about it.
→ Afterward people approached her saying 'I remember feeling the same way during the pandemic' — the personal detail turned a corporate spokesperson into a human they wanted to talk to.
Common mistakes
Removing yourself from the narrative
'We do not insert ourselves into our narratives' is the corporate default that makes you forgettable; the personal detail is what makes it land.
Reciting your bio
Announcing all your facts at once is off-putting; the skill is slipping one relevant item into an answer while still answering the question.
Is it for you?
Best for
Heads of comms, executives, and any 'corporate monolith' presenter who fears making it about themselves but needs to be memorable.
Not ideal for
Contexts requiring strict anonymity or where personal disclosure is genuinely inappropriate.
From the transcript
“I have this tool I use with corporate folks called a personal interest inventory”
“And each one of them has sort of an addressable market. So, how many people could this potentially hit and then the intensity of the…”
“if you're a man and you're married, you're you're safer in the world”
“You should be seeking to be like full of color and full of edge and full of flavor”
From the episode
How to tell better stories
Matthew Dicks (Storyworthy)