The White Rabbit

Matt and Alper go into ways to build trust with your audience during your presentation, including, perhaps counterintuitively, saying no.

Wes Wheless, in going into something he calls intellectual headshots, talks about the importance of distilling your larger body of work into a set of clear visual representations of an idea, and how those visuals allow your idea to travel. Link to the Headshots, and other good stuff: https://www.developmyip.com/whiterabbit

Baldwin Berges, an advisor for the European Commission and the Islamic Development Bank, talks about doing business in emerging markets. In particular for us presentation-related folks, he talks about some of his tips and tricks for researching your audience, and a couple top-level frameworks you can use for understanding a group's dynamics.

Guest Brad Farris dives into how presence saves time. Often, we humans tend to think being present costs time. But listen up as Brad goes into how it can help you solve problems faster and have more time on your hands at the same time (no pun intended).

Our guest Luka Krejci, a presentation trainer from Croatia, talks about presentation training in general and his new book Presentation Cookbook in particular. Also, Matt and Alper focus on different aspects of the view outside Luka's office window.

Alper dives into an episode we did recently with Alex Smith, applying Alex's principles of strategy to the world of presentations.

Matt and Alper riff on a couple comments from recent guests, to the extent of us humans being less rational than we like to think we are, and what can we do about that, if anything.

Selim Selveroğlu, a product manager for Dell, goes into the "Me First" vs "Connection First" communications strategies framework, and some of the ways he trains people on how that framework can help them improve their communication.

Şebnem Dağ Güven goes into the importance of storytelling in sales and how she goes about training her people in that skill.

Alex Smith of basicarts.org talks about the two stories every company needs, and how important having a well-defined strategy is before making them.

In today's episode, Rick Pizzoli returns with valuable suggestions for startup companies who are moving from founder-led sales to a more professional sales team. Even if you're not in this startup demographic, there are some great learnings coming out of this episode about how the sales transition is going to affect your organization.

This episode's guest is Rick Pizzoli, the CEO of Sales Force Europe. Rick goes into things like what prompts a company to want to sell abroad, how to get your employees and investors on board, and some of the nuts and bolts of selling into the EU specifically.

Alper goes into the three mistakes he sees people making all the time. Learn what these are, don't make them, and you'll be ahead of half the game.

Yalın Yüregil goes into various aspects of selling into another country, specifically the importance of addressing operational issues you think you already figured out, adjusting your expectations, staying away from the all-to-common mindset of "it works here, so it will work there too," and the legacy experiences of your buyers.

Matt goes into what he took away, from a recent interview, about building trust. He touches on commitment (hat tip to Robert Cialdini, someone Matt and Alper both have mixed feelings about), how to build trust into a pitchdeck, the importance of describing the problem and its role in building trust, and a couple studies he found that looked into what parts of the body are involved in the building...

Vlad Cazan, co-founder of Romania's KFactory, goes into his company's efforts to sell in other countries, particularly into the UK. In particular, he goes into the importance of patience and preparation, and what to do when you don't have any connections in the target country yet. Vlad also mentions the importance of, when considering what countries to target first, to ask yourself whi...

Bertay Fişekçi, employee engagement expert extraordinaire, goes into his public speaking journey, starting with what initially prompted him to work on that skill, how he got past initial fears once he started down that road, and how it helps him in his daily life now.

Matt and Alper blow out the carbon (a phrase an old family friend of Matt's used to use to mean taking an old car out on the highway for some exercise). In this case, that means they cover a couple miscellaneous pieces of business. Matt is considering updating a staple of his trainings, The Four Things, and Alper discusses a video he recorded recently where he takes a side on the "visuali...

In this episode Matt interviews Alper on other ways into angel investing. Matt has a dream that we can provide a service and magically become part owners of, say, Microsoft, but Alper squashes that dream, saying that yes, some actual money is probably going to be needed. But don't worry, if all you want is to brag to your friends over a beer, you can probably get in for not much, but you'r...

Brad Farris returns to the podcast to describe a pivotal moment in the emotional regulation of how you show up for any communication event, be it a presentation or an employee's performance review. Matt plays the guinea pig (in other words, test subject), providing the disastrous subject matter Brad uses to troubleshoot and advise. This episode is perfect for anyone who wants to make sure the righ...

In this episode, Melda Sofuoğlu, a former client of Matt's, goes into what she has picked up over the years in the presentation world. Also, Melda, having worked in multiple countries, weighs in on the age-old question: Is presenting less data on a slide a culture-specific thing, or is it universal?        

In this, the 100th episode of The White Rabbit, Matt and Alper talk about what has changed in the world of presentations over the past two years. In particular, what they keep coming back to is that the magic only appears when you show up regularly, and the possibility that others won't get what you were talking about, and don't take that too personally, sometimes you just need to let go.    

Following a recent episode, where Matt posed a question to Alper in binary terms, Alper digs deeper into the potential problems associated with any binary approach. Alper points out a recent Netflix documentary that provides an excellent view into what can go wrong if the presenter gets pig-headed, and instead of changing tack, ignores the signs and plows ahead with the plan anyway. Anyone uncomfo...

Matt asks Alper for his opinion on two perspectives, which Matt soon realizes sound opposite but are actually not, and Alper offers up a third perspective. If you've ever wondered who the most valuable person in the room is, this episode is for you.              

Alper compares PowerPoint, Keynote, Google Slides, and Canva. Each has its pros and cons, and Alper does his best to stay diplomatic and acknowledge that.  Listen in on this one if you want to hear a pro weigh in on the "should I export or not" question.