Presentation Thinking™

Zuri Fertility founders Blair Matthews and Giuliana Zaccardelli are on a mission to help couples everywhere who are struggling with infertility. Voted the “Audience Favorite” of the VentureCat 2022 Startup competition, they join the 'cast to chat about how they met, mistakes they’ve made & the real-life experiences that have fueled their real-life solution—an app that helps people connect with...

Inside InfernoGuard’s winning pitch and one founder’s plan to prevent wildfires. Kevin Kaspar joins Presentation Thinking to discuss his founder journey for InfernoGuard—a device that detects and reports wildfire conditions to first responders and land-owners before they get out of control. We are lucky enough to be connected to the Northwestern University startup competition called VentureCat —ev...

Georgia O’Keeffe was a badass artist and desert legend. Dare we say…the Shakespeare of the Southwest?! Writers aren’t the only ones that tell stories — there is much to be learned from the art world and Georgia’s impact on it. In our Presentation Thinking journey, we want to understand & learn from storytellers of ALL varieties to better understand what about their work and the way they presen...

Look Ma, we did a webinar! We dipped our toes into the world of webinars a few weeks ago and, thanks to the creative and strategic genius of GhostRanch Creative Director Dave Sheets, it went even better than we imagined! We zero-ed in on a hyper-specific topic— Cover Slides . What to put on them, how to cater to your audience and why it matters more than you think. None of us had any experience in...

If you’ve ever seen the first few minutes of the PIXAR movie UP! , you’re very aware that stories have the capacity to move you to tears. PIXAR animator Matthew Luhn might be the one to blame for this. Having worked on a few classics such as Toy Story, Ratatouille & The Incredibles , Luhn shares in a 2017 TED Talk what it is that makes stories like this so successful—and how we can we apply th...

Part 3, the closing chapter, of our Made to Stick book report/breakdown/book club is HERE. Frodo is ready to destroy the ring and we’re ready to discuss the “E” and “S” in Chip & Dan Heath’s “SUCCESs” checklist for a sticky story—Emotions and Stories. These components are so central to storytelling that many examples often go hand-in-hand. It’s a bit of a “Chicken or the Egg” debate: What come...

Dear listeners, welcome back to Book Club. We’re making our way through Chip & Dan Heath’s Made to Stick — a book dissecting all the factors that make certain messages and stories STICK. And there’s a lot of unpack! So, not unlike other greats such as JRR Tolkien or the makers of Die Hard, we’ve split this into multiple parts. (Listen to Part 1 on “Simplicity” HERE !) Part 2 covers “Unexpected...

[Disclaimer: This is not a Nancy Duarte interview. One day it will be.] Ever wonder what the SHAPE of a story looks like? Our “Patron Saint of Stories” Nancy Duarte AKA CEO/Founder of Duarte, Inc. has done the research to show us just that. In her first viral ~2008 TED Talk , Duarte shows off her analysis of several Communication Greats (ahem, Steve Jobs, MLK…) to prove there’s a science—an ebb an...

This week we're working through a hyper-specific Pitch Problem and there was no better man to chat to than our Technical Director at GRC, Mr. Steve Sheets. Efficiency-obsessed, he wants you to have an easier time editing your decks. He wants you to befriend the Notes tool in PowerPoint. And he wants you to have something more than a file link to share for the inevitable "Will these slides be share...

Breece Justice is one of our top-notch Presentation Designers on the GhostRanch Communications team. When a client recently entrusted her with the task of traveling to an in-person conference to ensure their high stakes keynotes went according to plan, we couldn’t wait to hear the #PresentationThinking deets. Taking slides from a virtual setting to the stage comes with its own set of design and st...

What’re the Olympics for Presentation Design? It wasn’t in Beijing, but the TechPoint Mira Awards in Indianapolis are what Mikey calls “a rite of passage for Indy tech people.” We’re super proud to share that Mikey’s beloved presentation agency/brainchild, GhostRanch Communications (GRC), was a nominee for the 2022 Mira Awards’ “Service Partner of the Year.” We don’t know if he won a medal (YET!)...

In her 2017 viral TED Talk, “You Are Contagious”, Vanessa Van Edwards teaches us that our emotions and feelings are contagious—and what to do about it. A human communication expert and renowned public speaker, Edwards takes us through the verbal, non-verbal and even EMOTIONAL ways that we can spread ideas, thoughts and feelings. (And, of course, we get into the structure of her talk). So. How can...

Fresh off the PrezThinking Reading List! You’ve probably seen it on your philosopher college friend’s bookshelf—Malcom Gladwell’s The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. We wanted to revisit why this book that was written in the year 2000 caused such a scene—and what we can still takeaway from it today. Though we do think Gladwell’s breakthrough book would be wildly differe...

For this episode, we’re kicking off a series called Founder Stories where we get to talk with founders directly. The folks that are putting pen to paper, their idea in motion, or practicing their pitch in the mirror. To kick us off, Mikey got connected to Lisa Riggs of Spirit Sox USA. From getting laughed at and told “no” to Trade show experiences to getting connected to the ROYAL FAMILY through a...

Published in 1992, The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron has withstood the test of time. Groups around the world still actively participate in her 12 week “Creative Recovery” journey, including Molly - who shares her experience of the process with us on the pod. Modeled after 12 step recovery programs, Julia’s setup of the book, its various journal prompts and group ethos is a Presentation Thinking le...

You ever take a career tangent that feels like a full 180 turn until you realize all the skills you learned up until that point are the reason you got there?? Such was the case for friend of the 'cast Molly Geoghegan upon jumping from marketing to the human rights and non-profit space—and flexing her “Presentation Thinking skills” all along the way. In this episode, Molly returns to The Ranch (Gho...

Mikey and Bethany watched Matt Abrahams's, and then talk about it. Seriously, go watch his Ted Talk, the guy is a brilliant communicator, and gives a bunch of tactical tips on how to manage your public speaking anxieties. The talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIXvKKEQQJo

I know, it would be cooler if we had actually interviewed Canva co-founder and CEO, Melanie Perkins, for this episode. But for now, we're just going to listen to someone else's interview and talk about it. Besides, Guy Raz is pretty decent at what he does. So, this is where we are in our storytelling rabbit hole so far, we are taking in a whole ton of content and trying to figure out what it all m...

Mikey and Bethany watch Daniel Pink's Masterclass on Sales and Persuasion, and then talk about it.

Friend of the program, André Fernandes, Director of Strategy at GhostRanch Communications, joins the show to discuss the most recent book he's pulled off of his massive stack of storytelling reads. This week, Andre gives us a Cliffs Notes view of the "granddaddy of storytelling," Joseph Campbell's 1949, "The Hero with a Thousand Faces."  Big thanks to Andre for being our proxy and digging int...

Mikey and Bethany watch Judd Apatow's Masterclass teaching comedy. Well, not even the whole thing, just the chapter on pitching. It's a 13 minute chapter, and we somehow talk about it for like double that. Dig!

Mikey introduces what is to come with Presentation Thinking, aka Adventures in Storytelling, aka Pitchin' Ain't Easy. It's a cool ten minutes and change, quickly setting up the what and why of this flavorful podcast. Let's start pulling some storytelling threads and get into this goodness!