The White Rabbit

Matt and Alper talk to product manager Ömer Gençer, who describes how he customizes his presentations for the many different audiences he encounters in his day-to-day work life.

Matt and Alper go into some tips for dealing with "Zoom latency" -- the tendency of videoconferencing software to interrupt the way we humans interact.  

Today Alper goes into the three factors causing us to be so stressed when speaking during a presentation, even though we know the chances are pretty low that someone is going to shoot us in the head while we're doing it, along with some of his techniques for getting around that stress.        

Alper goes into some ways to execute the non-linear approach to presentations in PowerPoint. If you want your message to land with the audience, you need to know these techniques.

Matt goes into his own form of resistance. Hint: It relates in particular to writing. In true Matt form, his technique for overcoming resistance is perhaps simplistic and reductive: He boils it down to one single step.

Alper goes into overcoming resistance, particularly as it applies to making videos, and more generally, as it applies to rehearsing for presentations. He outlines the six steps he goes through, and recommends to others, when overcoming resistance.

Tom Tran, an associate brand manager in the CPG business, comes on the podcast to describe how presentations are prepared in his world. Matt, Alper, and Tom suspect that maybe, just maybe, a future episode will need to deal with documents that go out before the meeting.

The White Rabbit podcast turns the big five-oh. Congratulations to TWRP! Inspired by a comment he heard from Chris Do of TheFutur.com, Alper wonders how presentations would change if we stopped using the vocabulary of obligation to describe them (“I have to give a presentation tomorrow”), and instead used the vocabulary of opportunity (“I get to give a presentation tomorrow”).

Today Matt and Alper go into visual design, not just generally, but including its role in furthering communication. Alper discusses the need for prioritization, and the point at which one can confidently say, "That's enough, time for other things now."

Matt and Alper go into three skills fundamental to everyone's success in life. In fact, they are so fundamental that Matt, a professional communications trainer, recently felt the need to improve them in himself. Today he mentions what they are and how he is going about "sharpening the sword."    

Matt lays out a piece of advice he gives to clients about "seeding," or "planting," questions during the presentation, and Alper gives some feedback on whether Matt's is a good piece of advice or not.

Matt and Alper expound on choosing images for your presentations, including the idea that maybe, just maybe, a less-attractive photo might help you more than a more attractive photo.  They also go into the need to distribute questions throughout the presentation, rather than saving them up for the famous "Questions?" slide at the end, and better alternatives to the traditional "Thank you" slide.

The conversation starts out with the impossibly handsome or beautiful "people" shown on website testimonials these days, and then turns into a general conversation about stock photography. When to use it and when to stay away? Is stock photography about stock photography, or is it about something else?

Matt and Alper, having given trainings on the 6 principles of persuasion, revisit a couple of those principles and ask themselves how their understandings of those principles have morphed over time.

Alper goes into three tools he uses a lot (remember, no PowerPoint, we have to take that one out), and his rabbit hole. His rabbit hole is a mean one. Even Matt heard about it and thought, "Oh, man, that's like Kryptonite!"

Matt goes into his love for Grammarly and his unfortunate relationship with Wordpress plugins. BTW, his words about Netflix just might help you defend yourself the next time your spouse says you watch too much TV.

Matt and Alper go into actionable items that normal people can use to make their presentations better, without hiring a fancy presentation coach or a dedicated visual designer just for them.

Matt and Alper venture further into the existential question that came up last week: Does anyone benefit from training, or should we all just go home? Fortunately for the training industry, the answer comes back that training is good for some, but a complete waste of time for others. Along the way, the debate winds through pro basketball players, catered lunches, and internal conviction.

Matt and Alper, joined by guest Andreas, dig into whether they should or should not be offering service guarantees. No definitive conclusion is reached. In fact, the debate explodes into a larger subject that will need to be addressed in future episodes. But for today's episode, they stick to the narrower subject of guarantees.

Alper continues the "Business of a Presentation Business" theme by outlining the milestones of his own business, including the evolution from his first slide design job for a Toastmaster, to life in the high-stakes world of entrepreneurial pitches.

After more than 8 months of dispensing weekly presentation tips, Matt and Alper decide to give something back to the community: Talking about the business of running a presentation business. Having run their own presentation businesses for more than 10 years each, they weigh in on one of the topics newbies in the business often ask about: What are the milestones one can expect to go through? This...

Matt and Alper tweak a story-telling structure they've mentioned before, and then can't decide whether to rag on an author or give him props.

Matt and Alper go into the importance of making a strong start in your presentations. Almost no one says, "You know what you need to do? You need to start weak," and it's probably not the first time someone told you to start strong, so Matt and Alper try to offer up some tangible ways to start your presentation.

In this episode, Alper discusses Blair Enns' book Win Without Pitching, and in particular a few of the main principles that got him started righting the ship in his own business. Note that as much as Matt and Alper are both big fans of Blair Enns, they are not paid shills, just enthusiastic readers and listeners. For more information on the WWP, you can visit their website at: www. WinWithoutPitch...

Matt rereads a famous messaging book, Chip and Dan Heath's Made To Stick, and recounts the six ways they recommend overcoming the Curse of Knowledge. Suffering from the Curse of Knowledge is so deeply embedded in the human experience that you'll probably never get over it completely, but these are six things that'll get you closer.