Presentation Thinking™

Porter Gale has a couple of TED Talks and they’re both about looking at everyday human connection as a form of networking.  As Head of Marketing for Virgin America from 2007-2011, Porter traveled a lot for work. On these countless plane rides, she found opportunities of connecting with interesting people and even on occasion people that would affect her work, become her friend or simply inspire he...

Mike Raab is good at starting things.  Executive Director of Northwestern University’s “The Garage” , an entrepreneurial community and startup hub, Mike is known in the startup community for his smart mentorship and mantra, “manufacturing serendipity.”   Mike is also the co-author of Founded: The No B.S. Guide for Student Entrepreneurs . With a background in television and film, Mike’s journey to...

What with Inside Out 2 around the corner (June 14th!), we wanted to bring back a “Presentation Preferred” crowd favorite and RE RELEASE this gem of an episode going through PIXAR’s 22 Rules for Storytelling. This is an episode for: Disney & PIXAR fans, presenters, speakers and anyone feeling stuck in their creative process.  It’s no secret that we love a good PIXAR story on this podcast.  PIXA...

Tom Fowler—CEO, Venture Capitalist expert and startup mentor—is the person you want in your corner. Tom spoke to us about the VC & startup world, creating pitch decks and presentation skills and we loved getting to know his unique breadth of experience in sports performance, investing and even theater (!).  Most importantly, he walks us through—slide-by-slide—his ideal format for the perfect P...

What happens in Vegas…gets directly recorded onto our podcast!  Mikey’s back from Las Vegas to spill the beans on all things Event Tech Live, an annual event for event marketing that brings in all sorts of new ideas and technology for the event industry to continue to be cutting edge.  From learning about prioritizing the attendee experience to humanizing events, we learned that events are their o...

Julie Terberg, Presentation Design expert and the woman who co-wrote THE book on PowerPoint templates (among others), joins the pod! With a background in industrial design and graphics, Julie designed slides pre-PowerPoint on physical slides before becoming an expert in the software. Terberg has developed several online courses, published books on developing PowerPoint templates. appeared at the c...

Paul Graham’s blog post, “Do things that don’t scale”, has largely been heralded as the best advice given for startups—maybe ever? But what can we takeaway from it as presenters?  As the founder of renowned accelerator Y Combinator, people trust Paul and are still talking about this post over ten years later. (A big deal for today’s Age of Information).  Mikey and Molly dive into the many conversa...

Guy Kawasaki is an amazing marketer, creator and thinker. (If you don’t follow him already, do it here !)  His 2005 blog post, The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint , provided advice for startups on how to pitch to VCs—but it blew up because it resonated with presenters of all kinds.  As presentation enthusiasts, it’s about time we checked it out and see what still holds up.  This is a shorter, “micro”...

If you couldn’t already tell from some of our Shark Tank episodes , we love the startup and Venture Capital world.  There’s truly no passion that matches that of a founder on a mission.  Alicia Syrett—a VC herself, author and business leader—knows this and wants YOUR passion to come to fruition. Her short n sweet TED talk at TEDx Fulton Street from 2018 is a perfect guide with simple Do’s and Don’...

What we’ll hear about: How Tamara’s MA and start in publishing set her up to be a standout storyteller and award-winning Product Marketing leader. Tamara’s emphasis on career intentionality and personal positioning. “Write your purpose in pen, but your path in pencil.” The ‘good time’ journal: Notice the activities that give you energy.  Tamara’s path to speaking, including mentorship along the wa...

We know that presentations are used across all kinds of industries but did you know they’re important in the medical world as well?? General surgery resident physician TJ Schaid joins the ‘cast to discuss his experience presenting research at various conferences around the world throughout his residency. Turns out, these medical presentations can play a big part of any surgeon’s journey! From pres...

Marisa Renee Lee is a speaker, an entrepreneur, an author and “grief advocate.”  Having lost her mom to breast cancer and struggled with infertility, Lee has alchemized her experiences into a NYT Bestselling book, Grief is Love: Living with Loss. Marisa joins us to share how she presents and speaks on such vulnerable topics, how grief can show up at work and how you can support colleagues experien...

Marcus Andrews knows how to craft a good narrative. In fact, we’d argue he heavily contributed to developing the concept of Narrative Design when working in product marketing at HubSpot.  Now as a Narrative Designer at Pendo, he joins us for a conversation around crafting a memorable narrative, what frameworks to use (or not) and how to create your own category. We exchange presentation experience...

Presentation Nation, by our 110th episode, you may well be aware that we worship at the stage of presentations.  And as Mikey Mioduski, co-host of the pod and founder of GhostRanch Communications, has started to speak at more and more events, we feel it only right to dissect the ins and outs of his preparation, execution and how many laughs he got while speaking. His latest speaker appearance was...

If you’re a presenter, you might have noticed that the conference speaker circuit is a male-dominated space.  With Women Talk Design , founders Danielle Barnes and Christina Wodtke set about to change that. Originally starting as a directory for women and non-binary presenters to find and learn from one another, Women Talk Design now offers a wide range of resources, workshops and most recently—a...

Personal experiences can power professional growth.  No one may know this better than Harvey Lee, a product marketer, speaker, former Rock n Roll roadie and now author of Backstage Pass: A Business Book that’s Far From Conventional.   We had the pleasure of chatting with Harvey about his book and how his background in the music industry helped later propel him into the world of product marketing. ...

Many Coloradans are familiar with the New Belgium Brewery founding story—where Jeff Lebesch and Kim Jordan return from a life-changing bike trip across Belgium inspired to create their own Belgian style beers for the masses.  In addition to their famous “Fat Tire” ale, New Belgium also created new categories and precedents among brewery business. They have been innovating in sustainable brewing pr...

Micah Kohne has some of the most well-rounded marketing skills around.  A web designer extraordinaire with a graphic design background, Micah has also dabbled in marketing, sales and co-founded his own business, Hype Legal , for “solutions-driven legal marketing.” Their speciality is building websites for lawyers, so Micah has also presented at various legal conferences—where a little graphic desi...

Actor, producer and Harvard grad Yara Shahidi presents a familiar story in a new way with her 2023 TED Talk, “Let Curiosity Lead” . We’ve all heard about the importance of re-discovering our child-like curiosity and wonder. Shahidi puts a fresh spin on that story with her personal journey of juggling both her Harvard education and acting career (she’s the star of Black-ish and Grown-ish) as equall...

Mikey and I read April Dunford’s latest book, Sales Pitch: How to Craft a Story to Stand Out and Win, and to no surprise to anyone familiar with her work—it was hilarious, accessible and whip-smart insightful. Dunford offers a fresh perspective on applying narrative to sales and flips the current advice on its head emphasizing that buying can actually be harder than selling .  One of the biggest t...

When Narrative Strategist and film nerd Asha Alaji-Sharif started to think about the Best and Worst films of 2023, she noticed a pattern.  What common factors make for a memorable movie? And can those factors be applied to brand storytelling as well?  That’s what we explore in this episode with “The Good Story Checklist”. How does The Little Mermaid remake create the perfect character development...

In September of 2013, Diana Nyad became the first person to swim unassisted in open water across the Florida Straits from Cuba to Florida. It was an epic feat, and one she returned to at age sixty after a failed attempt in her 20s.  A few months later, she gives an aptly titled TED Talk called “Never, ever give up” . Her story is one on never giving up, facing the odds and beating the ego. Nyad’s...

Entrepreneurs and startups everywhere love following Shark Tank —the reality show where passionate pitchers bring their product to a group of wealthy “sharks”—well-known Venture Capitalists—in hopes of investment funds and expert business guidance.  Continuing from Episode 69 , we break down another great round of pitches from 2023, “ 3 Biggest deals Season 14 ”. Oogiebear had all of the sharks fi...

For our hundredth episode of Presentation Thinking AKA the Storyteller’s Study Club AKA Pitchin’ Ain’t Easy, we’re reflecting on our ~metaphorical~ hero’s journey thus far.  We’ve learned so much about storytelling, presenting, speaking, product marketing, design and, of course, podcasting throughout the last two years.  From meeting fellow presentation nerds online to growing our audience over 3x...

Tis the season for SKOs (Sales KickOffs)!  After years in various roles in B2B marketing most recently the Director of Product Marketing at RingCentral, Ashima calls herself a “Product Storyteller.”  We discuss her path into product marketing management and the necessary elements needed for SKOs to really be a success. In fact, she even wrote a blog about it— "6 Tips & Tricks to Survive (...