Omaze CEO: Storytelling in business and conquering your fears

“Storytelling is an undervalued skill in business,” says Matt Pohlson. It turns out it’s a skill that has been key to Omaze’s success. Omaze offers prize draws for dream homes, rather than cash cheques, with a set amount of proceeds going to charity.

This type of prize has allowed them to tell a compelling story in the social media age, while building a profitable company.

Matt Pohlson is Sir Richard Harpin’s latest guest on the Business Leader podcast.

Pohlson co-founded Omaze in California in 2012 with Ryan Cummins. Pohlson had studied at Stanford University before gaining an MBA from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. From there, he moved into the world of film production in Hollywood, working with some famous actors. This is when he first flexed his storytelling skills.

But the gap in the market that he spotted centred around prize draws and celebrity experiences. He attended a private charity auction for high-net-worth individuals, where attendees could bid to have exclusive, in-person experiences with stars like basketballer Magic Johnson. He realised that these kinds of prizes could have a mass-market appeal, with the right storytelling behind them.

He began the business by focusing on unique celebrity experiences, like spending time with the cast of Breaking Bad. But he realised over time that this was tricky to manage and hard to scale.

So the decision was made to switch to offering something more permanent: dream homes, with the business relocating from Los Angeles to London to pursue this new strategy.

The cost of housing in each country simply meant the UK was more viable with its capital, Pohlson explains. It studies data carefully to figure out the best places to acquire dream homes, including migration data.

“We tried to find a wide range of houses,” says Pohlson, “Cornwall and the Lake District are the only places that are nationally appealing.”

Celebrities are often brought on board in social media campaigns to help publicise the draws. Each one has a guaranteed winner, ensuring a happy ending to each story.

The idea took off in the UK and the business has grown steadily, with Pohlson relocating to London.

Storytelling has helped the team to spread the word about their prize draws online, but it also helps internally when it comes to growing the business, for example, by approaching investors, says Pohlson.

“Every investment starts with a story,” says Pohlson. “The valuation is just metrics plus storytelling and massive PE ratios come from better storytelling, so it's a skill that’s undervalued.”

In fact, a big life event affected Pohlson’s attitude to business and storytelling. He was born with an abnormality in his stomach tissue, which had to be corrected with surgery. Forty years later, some of the scar tissue dislodged in his stomach. This led to medical complications and Pohlson flatlined for several minutes as doctors figured out how to react. His family watched as the defibrillator was used on him.

Pohlson recovered and the experience gave him a new mindset. He realised he had to stop being fear-driven and that “fear is just a story you tell yourself”. So he had to start telling himself a more positive story.

“The opposite of love is not hate, it's fear,” says Pohlson, “fear can be a motivating force, [for too long] I allowed it to drive my decision-making. You can make a decision out of love or fear, but when you are scared, your mind constricts, you are actually dumber.”

He also tries to bring some of that positivity about life to the Omaze brand.

“People want to survive and thrive,” Pohlson has learned, “your brand has to show them how to do that.”