The White Rabbit podcast

Matt Krause and Alper Rozanes

Whether you are a professional corporate employee or a startup entrepreneur, good communication and presentation skills are widely accepted as critical success factors towards reaching your business goals.

In this podcast, Matt Krause and Alper Rozanes, who are communications trainers, authors and startup investors share their views on assorted presentation-related techniques.

As they say at the beginning of the movie The Matrix, “Follow the white rabbit.”

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On AI and consulting

I have a number of clients in the consulting business, and many members of this email list are consultants. This one goes out to them… Some outside the industry say consulting is all about the collection and presentation of data. However, the real business of...

There is no spoon

This subject line is, of course, a reference to the scene in the movie The Matrix where Neo visits the Oracle's house and the weird bald kid tells him how to bend the spoon. (As you can tell, I am a huge fan of The Matrix, and in fact have, for over three years, been...

More on AI and writing

ChatGPT (and similar LLMs) will get you 90% of the way there. Which means if you are using ChatGPT to write your sales materials, you will convert about 10% of the time, which in B2B leads to bankruptcy. If you are a going concern, you will usually convert 20% to 25%...

How do you spell your name?

When I was walking across Turkey, my life depended on strangers in ways it hadn't before. One of the things I did to size up the people around me was to spell each person’s name out loud and make lots of mistakes in the process. There were a couple reasons this was a...

Don’t stare at people

When I was a kid, about 5 years old, my mom used to take my brother and me to the McDonald's. At that point, we lived in Oakland, California, just a few miles across the bay from downtown San Francisco. The three of us would get on the subway, ride it across the bay...

That’s crazy talk

As many of you know, I am a huge fan of Rory Sutherland. Not only is he very thought-provoking, he is quite funny -- in fact, given the opportunity to watch a professional comedian or Rory Sutherland, I'll choose Rory Sutherland every time. If you are a reader, he has...

124. Sevil Kubilay On The Transition

Sevil Kubilay, a recent arrival in Startup Land, goes into The Transition (going from corporate life to startup life), the hesitance to put herself into her company's story, and a common misconception of Japan's ikigai.

123. Pranav Kale On “What’s The Big Idea?”

In this episode, guest Pranav Kale riffs on how to find your big idea, the importance of knowing what your big idea is, how to sync it with the words the market might be using to describe it, and, surprise surprise, what all this has to do with Subway sandwiches.

Phone sex

(NOTE: there are some of you who forward these emails to your kids; you might want to think twice about doing that this time; I try to keep it family-friendly, but every family has different standards about what is and what is not acceptable) Many years ago, I had a...

Throw it across the room

I got so angry at that book that I threw it across the room. Multiple times. And at over 700 pages, it was a big book, so it’s a good thing I wasn’t throwing it at a window or at anything else breakable. The book was Naomi Klein’s 2007 book “The Shock Doctrine.” Why...

122. Nick Richtsmeier On Mindset Baked In The Internet

In this episode, guest Nick Richtsmeier talks about how the internet is affecting the mindset of your audience members. This is a great episode for beginning to understand the mindset your audience members are in long before they even show up in the room for your...

Cost of sale

I talk often about the need to put some of yourself into your stories. Today I’m going to beat on that drum again, but perhaps from a slightly different angle… Not putting yourself into your stories commodifies your business and raises your cost of sale. Remember,...

Put some Tuba in it

I've written many times encouraging you to put personal details into your speeches and presentations. Why is that? The people you are doing business with want to see how you interact with the world. That's just what humans do. Even in the most rational of B2B...

Building trust

In a new episode of the podcast, Alper and I riff on building trust, one of the common themes we heard recent guests touching on. We mentioned things like borrowing trust from the audience’s parents, putting yourself into your stories, etc. Also, Alper discusses an...

121. Tips For Building Trust

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

America

I usually try to stay away from politics in this newsletter. After all, most of you are here for presentation tips, and some dude spouting off about politics probably isn't what you signed up for. And like they say, "opinions are like a**holes -- everyone has one and...

Wall of context

By far the single most common problem I see with case studies is what I call the "Wall Of Context." The Wall Of Context obstructs your connection with your potential client and reduces your case study's effectiveness as a sales tool. You know the Wall Of Context: It's...

Bridge to the future

The other day, recent podcast guest and list member Wes Wheless (hi Wes!) challenged those of us on his own email list to represent an idea visually. I accepted the challenge, and figured I would try to visually represent that moment my friend Jeff buttressed my faith...

Don’t waste your time

Observation #1: Rory Sutherland has a great line, to the effect that half of the people around you simply don't know what you do. (By the way, as many of you know, I'm a huge Rory Sutherland fan. I've read his book "Alchemy," I binge-watch interviews with him on...

Spaghetti

I talk a lot about how we are often wrong, no matter how thorough we are trying to be, and how that means we just have to throw a bunch of spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks. In other words, have a Plan A, a Plan B, a Plan C, etc, and try them out...

It’s a myth

For years, I've seen quite a few salespeople, people who should know better, making a mistake, and that is thinking that in a B2B sale, there's one decision-maker, and the higher the better. What I mean by that is that they know there are others involved, but they...

BMG in sales

In that recent LinkedIn Live I did with Rick and Jennifer from Sales Force Europe, I went into one of my favorite story structures, and how would it be used in sales. You probably all know the structure, since I talk about it all the time: BMG (Boy Meets Girl)....

Being wrong

In business life, we adults like to think we can predict the world better than we actually can. This means we often spend years pursuing "A," when "A" is going to be a total failure, while "B," which takes a mere fraction of the time, is what will end up being...

Nervous

One of the most common questions I get about presenting is: "I'm nervous, how do I get over it?" And my answer is: "Sorry man, you're never going to get over it." I know, it's not the answer anyone wants to hear. But I'm not very good at blowing smoke up someone's...

My favorite spot in Seattle

The other day, Alper and I recorded a podcast episode with Wes Wheless. (Wes is on this email list, so if you are seeing this email Wes, hello!) Wes and I do very similar things in our work, so it was a pleasure to talk to someone of a like mind and see how they do...

120. Wes Wheless And Intellectual Headshots

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...

Spies among us

As many of you know, I walked across Turkey (click here if you want to see a map and photos). At one point I was passing through a small town, and the group I had befriended suggested I have a drink with "Başkan." "Başkan" is "Mayor" in Turkish, so I was quite...

Anneciğim

Some years ago, before we got married, I heard my wife call her cat "Anneciğim" ("mommy"). This was before I learned that it's quite common for Turkish mothers to call their infant sons and daughters "Anneciğim," so I said, in that tentative and careful way you speak...

Blitzkrieg Bop

I've written before about the importance of constraints in bringing out your creativity. A lot of people mistakenly seem to think that creativity comes from the removal of constraints. But if you want creativity, put the project under such tight constraints that...

Tom Tran

Back in May 2023, Alper and I had our first guest on the podcast, Tom Tran. That was two years ago. I don't think Tom realizes how big a deal he was, but having guests was a key part of our podcast still going strong two years later. You see, when Tom came on, Alper...

People don’t buy things

Years ago, a girlfriend of mine in Seattle joined a climbing gym. One day, she was talking to some of the teens in the gym. (By the way, I was never much for talking to teens, even when I was one, so she was doing me an immense service in picking up the slack in that...

Reaching sentiency

A couple days ago, I wrote about AI and my world. Today I'm going to branch out a bit beyond little ol' me… A lot of people these days are afraid of AI. Is it going to make us humans obsolete? When I say there's not much to be afraid of, I tend to get pushback in two...

AI and me

My business, as most of you know, is using storytelling to bump conversion rates. A lot of people lump that in with content creation. And when you think of the phrase "content creation" these days, the topic "effect of AI" is a mere half-step away. ("Content...

Boring

My podcast co-host Alper and I are both huge fans of Blair Enns. Have been for over 10 years. For those of you not familiar with the name, Blair Enns is all about the selling of creative services. Recently, Blair Enns released a new book and is doing a series of...

Car repairs

Today’s email has absolutely nothing to do with presentation tips. If you’re here for presentation tips, sorry, come back next time. As the kids say these days, I’m just putting this out there in case anyone needs to see it (plus there’s kinda-sorta a life lesson in...

The Matrix

A few days ago I interviewed an old friend of mine, Baldwin Berges, for The White Rabbit podcast. Baldwin and I did a short-lived podcast on investment fund management about 10 years ago, and then Alper and I called on him for some key "behind the scenes" advice we...

The stories we tell ourselves, Volume 2

For years I've been saying, "There are the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, and there are the realities of our lives, and the two are almost never the same." However, all this time, I conveniently managed to not apply this tidbit of wisdom to myself. Then...

Peaches

In my early 20s, I got really lucky. After graduation from university, I went to live and work in China for a year. Shortly after I came back, I got a job where, right from the very first morning, I learned a ton of very useful stuff they never teach you in college....

119. Baldwin Berges On Doing Business In Emerging Markets

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...

Time shift phrase at work

A great example of a time shift phrase at work is this pitch from Mad Men (I've linked to this pitch scene many times, so you've probably seen it): The pitch starts with: "My first job…" Remember, starting your pitch with a time shift phrase is a subtle but potent way...

Other things

Other things that juice the oxytocin: Location shift phrases: "A customer in Manchester…" "A friend in Frankfurt…" Remember how stories often start out: "Once upon a time, in a land far, far away…" We've been trained since childhood to respond to phrases like that....

Breaking patterns, Volume 693

I talk a lot on here about breaking patterns. The other day I broke one of my own patterns, and I didn't even mean to. I was talking to a friend. He said, "People only value what they pay for." "True," I replied. Up until a few days ago, I considered that one of those...

Why does this work?

Think of when you were a kid. Who do you trust when you are a kid? Probably your mom and dad. What are your mom and dad often doing? Telling you a story. What do a lot of stories begin with? A time shift phrase. So you see, humans have been trained since birth that...

Get it flowing

Remember, oxytocin is the trust hormone. Oxytocin is what gets your customer to step out onto that bridge between "where I am now" and "where I want to be." What gets oxytocin flowing? Stories. I can already hear the collective groan from here. "Stories, ugh. Who has...

Drugs, Volume 2

For the past few days I've focused on operating within the world of constraints ("The relief of pain," "All I want"), so today I'll move on to something else and discuss one of the crucial drugs that needs to flow through your customer's brain during your pitch (sorry...

All I want

The other day, for reasons I can't quite remember, I ended up listening to "All I Want" a million times over. "All I Want" is from The Cure's 1987 album "Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me." By the time it put out that album, The Cure had been around a while. "Kiss Me, Kiss...

The relief of pain

The other day I was talking to a friend of mine. He had been enduring an extended period of deep pain, and it just kept coming in waves, worse and worse and worse. It was "Job-like," he said. (Job, or "Eyüp" for our Turkish speakers here, is of course the guy God...

Lies we tell ourselves

When money lands in your bank, like the monthly salary that your employer pays you, you like to think that that money is now yours, right? The payment is final. The money belongs to you, not to the person who gave it to you. Along those lines: In recent years, for...

P&L

A few years ago, I served on the board of the US's Presentation Guild. I had 10 years in the industry by then, but serving on the PG board gave me a broader view of the industry than I had had before. And you know what? I had noticed this issue before, but being on...

Life’s phases

One of our recent podcast guests, Alex Smith, says the first thing you do, before you make your company and customer stories, is decide, "What is the thing I am trying to change?" If you don't do that first, he says, you are lost and your stories will go over like...

118. Brad Farris On How Presence Saves Time

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).

Bats and bees

As many of you know, I am on a quest to assign a dollar value to stories. I will not rest until there is a calculation a company can use that says "stories add X to our P&L each year." Why would something like this matter? It helps us make better decisions....

The first most-common

The other day I mentioned I was working on the second most-common mistake my customers make in their sales proposals. One of you emailed me back and said, "Nice, Matt, but what's the first most-common?" The first most-common mistake, by far, hands down, no contest, is...

ChatGPT

People ask me a lot, "What does ChatGPT mean for my presentations?" The short answer: Nothing. If you’re a CTO, ChatGPT and AI are helping your coders a lot. They probably save them boatloads of time. They might even be helping clean up their code or even write blocks...

Pudong

Today's email has absolutely nothing to do with presentations. If you're here for presentation stuff, sorry about that. The next one will have something for you, I promise. If you're still here… In 1992 and 1993 I was teaching English at a university in China. On my...

Details, Volume 2

Yesterday I was sitting in my office, rewriting a sales proposal for a client. Nothing unusual about that. That's what I do for work, so I do it pretty much every day. By the way, when most people hear the word "writing," they think fingers on keyboard, eyes glued to...

Break it

In recent weeks I've written about the importance of breaking patterns in your presentation (yuvarlanıp gidiyoruz, clear the cache, etc). I know, I'm a strange person to be giving that advice. Routine and patterns make up a huge part of my day-to-day life. I wake up...

117. Luka Krejci And Presentation Cookbook

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.

Get off the pot

When I was a kid, I heard my mom say to my dad, many times, "Jim, sh*t or get off the pot." I've always loved that phrase, and its bias towards taking action, even if imperfect. I've mentioned before, and I'll say it again: People care way more about whether you have...

The beauty of boredom

As many of you know, I used to be an import buyer, which means that I was flying from Seattle to Hong Kong quite often. I used to love that flight. I hated the return flight, because I knew that when you fly east across the Pacific Ocean, you tend to have huge jet-lag...

The penalty for deviating is death

For years, I was puzzled by the word strategy. "What is strategy, what does that word even mean?" I figured it was a word people used mainly when they wanted to sound smart. Then, a month or two ago, Alper and I interviewed corporate strategy consultant Alex Smith on...

You will never not be nervous

I've been doing presentation training and public speaking for over 15 years. If I had a dollar for each time I've heard someone say those things make them nervous and they want to learn how to not be nervous, I'd be a very rich man. Of course you're nervous. Humans...

Slack (cut yourself some)

Below is a cut from our blooper reel where I forget the name of my own podcast. My point for your presentations is that you will never be perfect. In this example, even if you've been doing your podcast for three years, you're still going to forget the podcast's name...

Craziness

I'm currently reading a book, "Alchemy," by Rory Sutherland. Sutherland is Vice Chairman of Ogilvy UK, one of the biggest advertising agencies in the world. When Coke and Apple choose an advertising agency, Ogilvy is probably on their short lists. Rory Sutherland is...

115. We’re not that rational

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.

Peppercorns

When I was 28, the company I worked for bought a pepper grinder company. We would buy the raw peppercorns from India and have them shipped to the grinder companies in Thailand and China, where the grinders were made and then filled with the peppercorns. It was the...

Stamping metal

I got to visit my first metal stamping and polishing factory at age 26. This one was in China, and there were many more to come, in many other countries, but I'll never forget my first. You see, metal stamping and polishing is an inherently filthy process. I was...

Subjective is not good enough

As many of you know, I'm on a quest to quantify the value of a story. I want a financial calculation I can plug into a spreadsheet. I want to take something people consider subjective and turn it into a hard metric. And the question often comes up, from people whom I...

Good times

We've talked a bit about the BMG story structure. We've also talked about the drug flow of the BMG cycle, and we've even talked about how tweaking the sentence arrangement of a case study from Finland would improve the drug flow in that particular case study. But it's...

BMG, physically represented

Some of you have asked for me to sketch out what BMG (the story structure boy meets girl) looks like. Here you go: The first leg (boy meets girl) gets the dopamine flowing (you want your customer to get at least somewhat positive vibes from you), the second leg (boy...

God

One of the deepest needs in man is to make sense of the world, to see order where it may or may not exist. Evidence of this deep-seated need is all around us. You can see it in how we vote. You can see it in how we think about chaos theory. You can even see it in how...

Drugs

Sorry, no, I'm not talking about the illegal ones, like heroin or cocaine. I'm talking about the ones your body makes naturally, like oxytocin. Oxytocin is often called "the trust hormone." It enhances bonding between people. Your body makes it when you fall in love,...

Chasing the wrong solution

Fully 70% of the people who call me are chasing the wrong solution. And as a result, they are setting themselves up for misdirecting a huge chunk of time, 10 years, when all they need is 4 months. You see, the problem they are trying to solve is how to make a better...

The fastest way to say more

It's counter-intuitive, but the fastest way to say more is to slow down and say less. Here's what I mean: Recently I was working with a client on her storytelling and public speaking skills. She ran an insurance company, and she felt like her speeches to her employees...

Clear the cache

One of the most interesting things I ever learned was that a lot of what we think we're seeing, we're not actually seeing. Turns out the human brain caches an awful lot of information, including information it's getting from the eyes. For example, right now I am...

Step away from the PowerPoint

My friend Şebnem Dağ Güven, Chief Commercial Officer for payments processor iyzico, has her people use an approach similar to what I’ve been using in my trainings for years. Before she lets them build the presentation, she has them walk through what they are going to...

You’re going to suck at the start

There's a podcast I love listening to, Acquired. We're not talking about a podcast I kind of enjoy, something I turn on for background noise while I cook eggs in the kitchen or fall asleep in bed at night. No, we're talking something like appointment TV. When there's...

It will never be a good time for anything

There's a guy, I've written about him before, the 85-year-old guy who goes to the park to exercise six days a week. He's been doing it for 30 years. Maybe not at this particular park, because who knows where else he's lived during that time, but exercising, somewhere,...

IMF

One of my favorite projects was for a Turkish client who was attending the IMF meetings in Washington, DC. (Most of you will be familiar with the term "IMF," but for those of you who are not, it stands for "International Monetary Fund.") The IMF meetings happen twice...

Yuvarlanıp gidiyoruz

I used to have an early morning class, and I was usually greeted at the door by my client's assistant, who would arrive at work a few minutes before his boss. He would ask me how I'm doing, and I would sometimes reply "yuvarlanıp gidiyoruz" (we're rolling along). It's...

Personal details

It is well-documented that sprinkling personal details into your stories works. It works whether you are hanging out with friends over a beer, or whether you are selling a widget to a potential customer. Why is this? Why are personal details such a potent ingredient...

Teddy volume 2

The other day, I wrote about a scene in the show Mad Men. That scene illustrates some really useful presenting skills, so I wanted to call them out here. If you clicked through to the video the other day, you've probably already seen these, but in case not... He...

Teddy

A couple weeks ago I mentioned a back issue of Scientific American magazine, and how enamored they were of the use of anecdotes. I see this all the time in my own work. If you want to make a point, wrapping your point in an anecdote that makes your point, too, goes...

Kill your darlings

I've mentioned before that when I was a kid, I was really into bicycle racing. There's a point at the beginning of every race, immediately after the gun goes off, when everyone has a lot of energy. Everyone is sprinting ahead, the pack is going really fast. It's hard...

Something to say

One of the more embarrassing moments of my life was when I told a story to Maya. Or, more accurately, failed miserably to do so. You see, when I was in university, I was totally hot after Maya. She was beautiful in all the right ways, with just enough of an edge that...

Punched in the face

Mike Tyson has a great quote, "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face." Years ago, long before we started the podcast, Alper and I were talking to Noel Francisco, an old university roommate of mine who has gone on to fame and fortune as one of the top...

Moonraker

When I was 9 years old, my mom took my brother and me to see the new James Bond movie, Moonraker. That was when Roger Moore was James Bond, remember him? Moonraker was my first James Bond movie. The movie had everything a nine-year-old boy could want. Outer space,...

That’s a lot of wires

Today we dig further into this "measurements don't need to be exact to be useful" idea. Here we go… At one point I needed a new heater core for my car. The heater core is the little radiator that sits inside your car, behind the dashboard where you can't see it. When...

Reducing uncertainty

In my bathroom there is a new sink. That sink is 0.9 meters wide. Or maybe it's 0.89 meters wide, or maybe it's 0.91 meters wide. I don't know and I don't care. If I had been working in a tight space, or if I had had to fit that sink into a cabinet, then the added...

Snowpack analysis

The other day I wrote about learning how to use an ice axe properly, and what it had to do with practicing for your presentations. Today, since we're in winter, the snow theme will continue, but the point changes to understanding your audience. Here we go… One thing I...

Where these emails get written

This is the main place these emails get written: Sometimes they get written here too: Notice that there is not a keyboard in either of these photos. Writing is not the words you use, it is the idea you are talking about, and the best ideas come when your mind is free...

Ice axe

At one point, I was doing a lot of stuff in the mountains during wintertime. Snowshoeing, backcountry trekking, building snow caves, sleeping on the ice, etc. One of the pieces of equipment I needed with me, just in case, was an ice axe. Ice axes are used for many...

Chasing the dragon

Years ago, a girlfriend and I had a ritual: We would get take-out from the Boston Market restaurant, and then we would take it home and eat dinner while watching a movie we rented from Blockbuster (later, of course, the kids would coin the phrase "Netflix and chill"...

BMG in action

There's a great study from a university in Finland about using storytelling in B2B sales. The study looks at an IoT (internet of things) company that was selling sensors for factory machinery, and it was also selling an upgrade where they would monitor the machines...

Every day be born a dumbass anew

The other day a friend sent to me a link to a video on YouTube, "How Anthony Jeselnik misdirects the audience." Anthony Jeselnik is an American comedian. I hadn't heard of him before, so don't worry, if you don't know his name it doesn't mean your knowledge of...

Hold my beer

In my quest to put a financial number to the value of storytelling, to hold stories up to an ROI calculation, I often get the pushback that putting a number to the value of storytelling will somehow strip storytelling of its magic, that somehow it will kill the...

Elderly black woman

I have an elderly black woman who lives inside me. She wears a plain print dress with faded pink flowers and blue-green stems set on a white background. She lives in the state of Georgia or Alabama (I've never tried to figure out which one), speaks with a heavy...

Accepting the call

The other day I was re-watching one of my favorite movies, "Not Fade Away." I've probably seen it 9 million times. Some of you know it, too. One of my favorite scenes in the movie comes during one of the band's practices, when the main character, played by John Magaro...

The Quest

As many of you know, I am on a quest to quantify the value of storytelling. I want to put a number to it. I want a calculation I can put into a spreadsheet. It is not enough to say, "Storytelling is good, we should do more of it." It is not enough to say,...

111. Rick Pizzoli on moving forward from founder-led sales

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...

That’s not rain, it’s blood

You know how I bang on on a regular basis about how important mirror neurons are, and how important it is that when you are presenting, you display the emotions you want your audience to feel? Here's a little story related to that: When I was a teenager, I was really...

Back issues of Scientific American

The other day I was reading a March 1847 issue of Scientific American magazine. Don't worry, I don't normally read 178-year-old Scientific American back issues. I was looking into something else and just so happened to stumble across this one. There was this great...

Teresa

When I was 29, I was cruising through the streets of Hong Kong in the back of a taxicab with my friend Teresa. It was nighttime, so we were probably heading to dinner somewhere. Her dad had created a business that had become one of our vendors, and she was taking it...

One, not two

I was watching a TV show recently, Outer Range. It started out so well. Rancher in Wyoming, a "strong but silent" cowboy-type played by Josh Brolin. Loyal wife. Two photogenic kids. Cute grandkid. A couple "hot, but realistically-so" types (one a vaguely-disturbing...

Spill your blood

One of my favorite movies is “Cadillac Records.” It’s about the founding of one of the seminal record labels for American Blues. It and the movie “Not Fade Away” are must-sees for anyone interested in the birth of rock. In the the movie, Beyonce plays Etta James. She...

Mixed tape

The other day I wrote about chaos theory. Today I'm going to write about a mixed tape a friend recorded for me when I was a kid. And believe it or not, there's a connection. When I was 16, I lived in eastern Washington state and drove my dilapidated Volkswagen back to...

Fluke

These days, I am reading a book called "Fluke," by Brian Klaas. It's about chaos theory. You know chaos theory: Basically, "butterfly flaps its wings in Japan, and a hurricane hits the United States." A lot of people hear about chaos theory and think, "Boy, that...

Ses Etme and the genius zone

Recently I wrote about the genius zone. Remember the genius zone? It's the place where you are doing something almost no one else can. The activity comes to you naturally. You don't even need to think about it. It's like god put the words in your mouth, you are simply...

Today is my birthday

Today is my birthday. I have never made much of my birthday, even when I was a kid. My birthday comes sandwiched between two of the biggest holidays in the world, and I figured, well, people are exhausted from all the holiday-ing, so I'll just shut up and pretend it's...

A/B testing the value of stories

An excellent example of the value of storytelling comes from the non-profit world. Yes, the non-profit world. We like to tell ourselves that our world of business is the real hard-nosed one, and non-profits are for fuzzy do-gooders, but the reality is this: Cash...

Measuring the gap

I've mentioned before how the use of AI in your organization will be making the base of your organization's pyramid narrower, and how this could impact succession, and in turn competitiveness, and in turn the stability of your enterprise value. The question comes up,...

Yes, but don’t

The other day, a friend and I were talking about whether he could do work outside of his genius zone. You know the kind of work I'm talking about. The kind of work you can do, but others can do it too. My answer was "Yes, but don't." Why not, if you can? Because you...

Something for our HR buddies

Regular readers of this email have heard me mention the economics blog "Marginal Revolution," and have also heard me spout forth opinions related to AI and how it is changing, and will change, the world of white collar workers and the organizations they work for. So...

Your island is shrinking

In the summer of 1992, I had just graduated from university and I needed some quick cash for my upcoming trip to China, so I worked on a construction crew building a house in Utah. I was a college boy who had studied Chinese history, so I was the lowest man on the...

We’re fooling ourselves

We like to think that B2B is the rational one, and that B2C is the one dripping with emotion, and that somehow we are playing a more rational game when we walk into work. But reality is showing something different. I'll get to a couple examples in a moment. But first,...

Jesus and mold

One of the things that I enjoy about writing this newsletter is trying to find the connection between things that normally have little to do with each other. For example, what does the rock band Love and Rockets have to do with storytelling. In doing so I tend to, a...

HGOMM

This is a real quick gut check, a filter you can put your stories through. Only takes a couple seconds, you can do it outside your customer's office to calm your nerves before you go in there. H = Hero (usually your customer)G = Goal (usually your customer's goal)O =...

Man in hole

Last week I was talking a lot about the Boy Meets Girl story structure. Remember, BMG is one up, one down, one up. Insert yourself and your product/service towards the end of the second leg. Today I want to mention a second story structure, "man in hole." Basically,...

Difficult conversations

In 2014, I started working primarily with CEOs and board members of publicly-traded companies. You know these companies by name, their ads are everywhere and these people get asked to speak on just about every panel and TV news show that ever existed. At first, I was...

Keep a loop open

The other day I was writing about storytelling in business, and how it can be so much easier than you might think. Today I want to dive deeper into the topic of storytelling. But if that was Storytelling 101, this is Storytelling 102. So in other words, nothing too...

Humans are a fungus

I am reading a book called "Wanting: The Power Of Mimetic Desire In Everyday Life" by Luke Burgis. "Mimetic" is a fancy word for "imitative" (don’t worry, I had to look it up too), so the book is basically about how we learn to desire things because other people...

Love and Rockets meets BMG

Recently, in two separate emails, I mentioned the band Love and Rockets and a storytelling structure. Both are going to come back today. First, Love and Rockets. They have another great song, "No New Tale To Tell." In the song are these lines: People like to hear...

Storytelling for business

The other day I was talking about the value of storytelling in customer retention. Stories are one of the best ways you can get your clients to remember your product. But if I had a dollar for every time I heard someone say, “Oh, we don’t have time for stories in this...

Customer retention (Love and Rockets edition)

Want to know one of the best customer retention techniques ever devised? Learn how to tell a story, and then become the one who tells your customers' stories back to them. One of the best bands to come out of the 80s, a band that produced music that sounds as good...

Throw up your hands

Almost as soon as I got to high school, I wanted to drop out. You see, I realized that classes at college were worth more than classes at high school, so if I went to the college and scheduled my classes just right, I could be out of there by 10:30am, instead of the...

Where can I find drywall anchor bolts?

Question: Where can I find these drywall anchor bolt words? The short answer: In the headlines of the Financial Times. Okay, here's the longer, more thorough answer: Keep in mind that your client has a gazillion other options, and often, you are not competing on...

Drywall anchor bolts

Recently I wrote about Pink Floyd and how listening to rock songs is a good way to learn how to make a limited vocabulary go a long way. Today’s email digs deeper into that theme. Some of you saw an article like this from me in March, but many of you haven’t seen it,...

Jeffrey

I feed the stray cats outside my apartment each morning. I call it "Breakfast Club," a reference to the 80s movie of the same name. I've been doing this every morning for a couple years, so the cats learned long ago that when the hall light comes on at 5:05, "Salam...

AI and corporate succession redux

A few weeks ago, I wrote an email about AI and corporate succession. Remember that one? It's the one where I referred to AI as the crusher of white-collar labor costs, like the steam engine was the crusher of manual labor costs, and how that means the bottom of your...

Pigs on the wing 1

There are 4 things that I tend to work on with my clients, four things you can do in order to express yourself really well without learning any new English. Of those four things, the fourth is “use vivid vocabulary.” A lot of people seem to think that means they need...

Badass beats pretty

There's a guy who exercises in the park. He's 85 years old. He's one of the regulars (there are only three or four of us in that time slot, actually). He's there, rain or shine. In late January, when it's cold, and it's dark, and it's rainy, he is there, wearing his...

Up and down

Forget the presentation skills this time, I'm not even going to bother tying this one in, today we’re just going to geek about microchips and cocaine a little … As most of you know, I'm a huge fan-boy of the Acquired podcast. In fact, I'm such a fan-boy that not only...

Beach days and market research

My dad, may he rest in peace, used to have an orchard grafting business. He started out doing pit fruit (plums, peaches) in central California, and as he was expanding the business into the vineyards of western California's wine country, we would often combine our...

Put some Tuba in it (plum pie and diabetic husbands)

A while back, a friend of mine named Tuba was working on her public speaking skills at Toastmasters. I encouraged her to make sure that in all her speeches she "put some Tuba in it," by which I meant to put some of her own personality into everything she said. These...

Humans don’t scale

Lately, as you can tell, I've been binge-reading the blog and cartoons at Gaping Void, like this one… In the blog post this cartoon is in, they mention the phrase "humans don't scale" -- one of my favorite phrases, especially in this era of social media and...

How does this person think?

Recently I wrote about Netflix, AI, and the importance, nay, the duty, of rocking the boat. Getting good at tapping into this next tip will be one of the best things you ever did for your career: Keep in mind that one of the most basic desires most humans have is to...

Sex and Cash

Usually in this newsletter I take whatever little story I start out with and find a way to tie it to presentation skills. If presentation skills are what bring you here, sorry man, couldn't do it this week. So if you're one of those people, come back next week, and in...

110. Rick Pizzoli On Selling Tech Into The EU

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.

Nobody knows anything, Volume 2

These days I'm reading a book about the early days of Netflix, written by one of its founders, Marc Randolph. I came to the Netflix game in 1999, a few years after they started. At that point, internet speeds weren't good enough for streaming, so they would drop your...

How AI affects your succession plans

Like the steam engine crushed the labor cost center, AI crushes the white collar cost center. Here's what that meant for the labor world: The need for labor didn't go to zero, it just went down a lot. We still have construction workers and farm laborers, just fewer of...

109. Don’t Do These Things

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.

Don’t flunk the “Taxi Test”

Don’t flunk the “Taxi Test”

What is the Taxi Test? It's a test you apply to the headlines on your slide deck before you send it out. The question you are asking yourself: If someone only reads the headlines on your slides, will they still understand what you are proposing and why? Imagine that...

Ankles

As many of you know, I go to the park to exercise in the pre-dawn hours. I've been doing this for years, it's one of my favorite activities each day. Last week I suddenly, out of nowhere, started limping on the way to the park. The problem was my ankle. You see, the...

Trust

A couple weeks ago I wrote about selling evil eye (nazar boncuğu) bracelets. When you're selling a $20 bracelet, trust enters into the picture, but not that much. These days I'm in another world though, one in which my projects might be for 2,000 times that, and on...

Preply

The teachers, at least at Preply's pricing high end, tend to be 30-35 years old, which means they have, at best, spent 10 years witnessing and solving the problem your company faces. Many of them have a methodology they will mention in their videos. A methodology is...

Spies sell peanuts

Years ago when I was walking across Turkey, I was out in the middle of nowhere in the eastern part of the country. Some old beatup car, like a 1970s Datsun or something like that, stopped on the other side of the road and a man got out and walked towards me. This was...

Tear gas and Toastmasters

Some years ago, there were some protests near my house in Istanbul. So I grabbed my camera and figured I'd see how close to the action I could get. I didn't get very close before the tear gas turned me away… (click image for video) That day, I learned that a spray...

Iranian weddings

Today it's all about Iranian weddings. I've written before about how when I came to Turkey I started a business selling evil eye bracelets. After a couple years in that business, I saw Amazon getting into the game, and I knew their reputation for being ruthless about...

Puking cats

Recently I wrote on dogs chasing cars and our human predilection to assign cause when there is in fact none. Today I want to talk about puking cats. Don't worry, I promise that it has to do with something, and also that future issues of this newsletter will deal with...

108. Yalın Yüregil On Breaking Into Another Country

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...

Be more like a dog

You know how when a dog chases a car, the car leaves? From the dog's perspective, the car left because he chased it. Sure, from our human perspective, we know the car was going to leave anyway. But from the dog's perspective, chasing cars is 100% effective. Chase a...

107. Building Trust

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...

More problem

Time and again, one of the most common things I see in presentations is the speaker not spending enough time describing the problem. Plenty of time is almost always spent describing the solution, but not enough attention is given to the description of the problem that...

The Four Things

When I first moved to Istanbul, some Brits invited me to play in their weekly football game. Keep in mind that I have never had any football skills whatsoever. None. If my life depended on my ability to dribble a ball, I would be dead within a second. They invited me...

Tight constraints

Many years ago, in a former life, I was an inventory planner for a kitchenware import company in the US. We would design stuff, get it made (mostly in China, surprise surprise), and import it into the US. Since I was managing one of the largest assets on the balance...

None of us know what we are doing

In the podcast short below, Romanian entrepreneur Vlad Cazan talks about the learning process that has continued, and still continues, throughout his entrepreneurial journey. The guy, and his business partner, have between them decades of experience in IT, sales,...

106. Vlad Cazan On Selling Into Another Country

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...

Constant pitching mindset

Years ago, when I was walking across Turkey, I adopted a phrase: "Every day be born a dumbass anew." It doesn't mean forget all the stuff you've learned, it just means put that stuff aside for the moment, confident that it'll still be there if you need it, and let the...

Rockin’ the mike

A few years after arriving in Istanbul, I found myself saying, "You know, what this place needs is a Toastmasters club." (for those of you not familiar with Toastmasters, it's basically a place where people practice their public speaking skills) So I started one up....

105. Bertay Fişekçi’s Public Speaking Journey

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.

104. Blowing Out The Carbon

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...

Do what you love

I used to hear that phrase "Do what you love," and think, "That's a lot of woo-woo hippie-ish BS," about loving everything, always being happy, The Secret, etc. "Life's not like that," I'd counter, "sometimes it throws a lot of suck your way." Now, though, I agree...

Stories in data-heavy presentations

Back in 2003, one of my first entrepreneurial activities was to get a 20-foot container of galvanized steel springs made in China. They were called "Branch Benders," and their purpose was to open up the branches of a new tree so the sunlight could get in and the tree...

International sales expansion

Some of you have asked why we are doing a podcast miniseries on international sales expansion. What does that have to do with presentations? You've asked why I am interested in this subject. What is my tie to this subject? These are very good questions. The answer is...

Train wrecks

I'm a presentation coach. But even I have presentations that go, shall we say, "less than ideally" (read: disastrously). I tell myself that having disasters of my own makes me a better coach, because I know what to look out for. 😉 I remember one in particular, in...

“I need business English” is a dangerous phrase

“I need business English” is a dangerous phrase

Why? Because it leads to way too much unfocused effort and time wasting. You're going to waste your time learning how to set meetings and talk to receptionists. I don't mean to malign receptionists, they are great people and the world needs them. But you have an...

103. Alternative Ways Into Angel Investing

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...

102. Brad Farris On A Pivotal Moment

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...

101. Melda Sofuoğlu On Presentations In The Telco World

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...

100. What Has Changed

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...

99. There Ain’t No Cookie Cutter

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...

98. Prizing In An Investment Pitch, Yes Or No?

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.              

97. Tools

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.    

96. Limiting Beliefs

Matt and Alper dig further into an article Alper wrote recently about how the beliefs and mindsets we carry around make it hard to present well. Interestingly, many of these scripts that run in the backs of our heads are useful elsewhere in other contexts, but can get...

95. Zombor Berezvai On Data-Heavy Presentations

In this episode, economist Zombor Berezvai goes into the importance of telling stories, even when presenting to academic audiences. You'd think that academic audiences would be fine with the unprocessed presentation of data, but as Zombor reminds us, even those groups...

94. Berk Temuroğlu On Startup Sales Expansion, Part 2

In this episode, Berk Temuroğlu goes further into organizational changes as a startup's sales base expands to other markets. In particular, how the company's investor base will evolve, how the new investors can help the company, the inevitability of a culture clash...

93. Berk Temuroğlu On Startup Sales Expansion, Part 1

Berk Temuroğlu, in the first part of his repeat guest visit, goes into what challenges a startup, having conquered the world of domestic sales, typically faces when launching into the challenging world of international sales. In this episode, Berk talks about who to...

92. The Use Of Constraints

In this episode, Matt goes into three of the constraints he often puts his clients into. Sometimes the best way to cut is to subject yourself and your presentation to artificial constraints. In real life, you won't have to meet these artificial constraints, but if...

91. Yeah, But I Don’t Need That

This goes out to all the people out there in their mid-30s who say "My technical skills got me where I am now, so they'll be enough to keep me going." If that's you, you're absolutely correct about the first part, your technical wizardry, and your development of it,...

90. Bringing Peace

A couple weeks ago, Alper went into the spiritual side of the business for him. Today we turn the tables on Matt and make him explain the spiritual side from his perspective, and it has to do with bringing peace to others, but not in the way that phrase is usually used.

88. And Then The Spirits Rose Up

Alper expounds on a more spiritual way of looking at presenting. Who would have thought Rumi would come up in a conversation about presentations? And yet in this episode, he does. Warning: The phrases "existential" and "serving others" come up in this episode, so be...

87. Max Traylor On Productizing Creative Services

In this episode, Max Traylor, consultant to consultants, goes into ways creative businesses can productize their services, other than designing templates and selling them on Canva. One of the core points he makes is the importance of looking at your process, and the...

86. Memet Yazici On The Management Meeting

In this episode, Memet Yazici, who runs a private investment advisory service, goes into a key part of the investment process, the management meeting, and in particular how the audience expectations are different in a meeting with venture capital people compared to a...

85. No, 93% Is NOT Non-Verbal

Matt and Alper debunk the 93% myth as it has been misapplied to communication, and give some alternatives about what key skills are needed instead. And who would have thought that drywall anchor bolts had something to do with presentations. In this episode, we learn...

Gilmore Girls exercise #2

In this exercise, you are doing two things: 1. Training your mouth to move quickly in English, and 2. Training your mind to think in English, because with the quick conversation, there isn't time to think in Turkish too. Below is a video and a transcript. Try to read...

84. 25 Times Revisited

Matt and Alper wish a Happy New Year to those celebrating, shoot down the idea of organizing this into seasons (after all, it's a podcast, not a TV series), and go into preparing for a non-linear presentation. For all of you who were hoping our recent discussions of...

Gilmore Girls exercise #1

In this exercise, you are doing two things: 1. Training your mouth to move quickly in English, and 2. Training your mind to think in English, because with the quick conversation, there isn't time to think in Turkish too. Below is a video and a transcript. Read the...

83. Nervousness Ain’t Always Bad

You know the feeling. The palms are sweating, the temples are wet, the mouth is dry. Is it a heart attack, or is it just an old-fashioned case of the jitters? In this episode, Matt and Alper lay into the misconception that nervousness is always bad, that it should be...

82. Presenting Bad News

Inspired by a recent guest's comment, Matt and Alper dig into Alper's patented 4-step process for presenting bad news, not just bad news to the board, but bad news to pretty much any audience. The four steps are: 1. State the obvious (be upfront about the problem); 2....

81. Brad Farris On The Big Picture

In this episode, agency coach Brad Farris goes into the big picture of what a speaker is going through. Interestingly, he sees nervousness as not entirely a bad thing. He also goes into making mirror neurons work for you, how audience agreement doesn't necessarily...

80. Ebru Demirel On Pitching To Procurement

Today we talk about pitching to procurement. It's a department feared by many, and with a reputation for commoditizing all who appear before it, but Ebru reminds us that the procurement department is staffed by regular folks just like the rest of us, and the...

79. Kill Your Darlings

Matt and Alper go into one of Matt's favorite phrases, "Kill your darlings," including how to implement it, why it won't make your audience think you're stupid and simple, what it means for slide design, and more. A hot tip: It's an alternative, easier, "back door"...

78. Jonathan Stark On Uncovering The Real Reason

Jonathan Stark guests on the podcast again, this time to tell us how to have a conversation that will uncover the real reason the client has called you in. Jonathan outlines the three specific questions to ask, plus why it's so important to just sit there for a bit...

77. Jonathan Stark On Hourly Billing

In this episode, guest Jonathan Stark, the king of not billing hourly, goes into how he came to the realization that hourly billing is a huge mistake, how hourly rates are actually "corrosive" to your relationship with your client, and how moving past them ushers in a...

76. It’s Not Personal

Alper riffs on a subject a guest brought up recently, that maybe the pushback you get during your presentation isn't about you, it is legitimate questions about your idea. We tend to take things personally (after all, we're human, at least most of us), but as Alper...

75. Ebru Demirel On Pitching An Idea

This week business owner and industry organization board member Ebru Demirel goes into how to present an idea to a company or organization. In particular, she talks about the need for transparency, the willingness to discuss the downside risks of an idea, the...

74. Geraldine Carter On Avoiding Downward Pricing Pressure

Almost every slide designer has heard the phrase, "But we can get this done in [insert country here] for a fraction of the price. Slide designers aren't alone in feeling this pressure. So in the interests of hearing how another industry deals with this, today we talk...

The point

The point

In this episode of The White Rabbit podcast... https://open.spotify.com/episode/1cn5bJITDjfxZBOjUeJoSE?si=708e2514c8354bef ...Alper makes an interesting point, that the value of a presentation is not in convincing people to support you, it's in reassuring your...

73. Can You Quantify The Value Of A Presentation?

On the docket for today, measuring the efficacy of a presentation. Can it be done? Our answer: Yes. Actually, it's not so simple. Matt not-so-secretly suspects that the presentation itself has no value, and Alper suspects that it does. 

72. Pareto Your Presentation

Matt and Alper revisit the low-hanging fruit, the clients' perennial favorite question: "I have a surprise presentation coming up in a few minutes, what are the quick things I should do first to get the biggest part of the improvement?" Hint: They are: 1. Answer the...

71. All Grip On Niching

Amidst all the solopreneur emphasis on the need to niche one's business, Matt mentions that his favorite clients, by far, are the ones who, months later, have evolved to something that has absolutely nothing to do with his niche. He highly recommends that the other...

70. Success Factors, Alper Edition

Alper goes into the traits he sees making for a successful client. They are 1. Recognizing the power of exceptional communications, 2. Understanding that this is not an overnight process, 3. Recognizing the fine line between persuasion and fit, and 4. Understanding...

The right questions

The right questions

99% of my clients are not native speakers of English. (Fun fact: Did you know that, by far, most speakers of English are not native speakers of English?) And, quite dependably, every single one of those clients asks at some point, "How is my English," or some other...

69. Three Traits Of Successful Clients

Matt describes what he sees as the three traits of clients who get the most out of the training. The traits are: 1. A history of serial problem solving, 2. A frustration coming from one of life's slaps in the face, and 3. The fear of god (an external force that makes...

68. Crisis Of Confidence

Matt asks Alper for advice on how to handle a crisis of confidence his clients often face shortly after starting work.  

67. AI, Volume Two

Alper goes into how AI is affecting his slide design work, and in particular how he reduces its impact. In short: Even if the AI image quality were perfect, which it's definitely not, the legal situation is too fluid, so go with your tried-and-true techniques: Make...

66. AI, Volume One

After resisting the temptation to talk AI, Matt and Alper finally break down and do it. Along the way they discuss the meaning of the phrase "con man" and the existential reasons for why they do what they do. The upshot of the discussion is that AI's source material...

Exporter of Humans

Exporter of Humans

I recently began introducing myself at parties as an "exporter of humans." That never goes over too well. People imagine me loading excessive numbers of Syrians into an inflatable raft and then pushing it towards Greece. What I actually mean is much more boring. Of...

65. The Sales Presentation Deck

Alper goes deeper into the specifics of a sales presentation slide deck, and in particular how you know it's time to upgrade your old deck, the importance of interactivity, and the importance of talking directly with your sales force while deciding how to layout the...

64. Stalking The Board

Matt goes into a phrase he uses often with his clients, "stalk the board," and what he means by that, why to do it and how to do it, and what to expect and not expect. Don't worry, it doesn't involve hiding out in the bushes at midnight, getting arrested, or looking...

Stalk the board

Stalk the board

This is a great article, it made me so excited and I jumped for joy many times upon reading it! One of my favorite points it makes: Know the board members. Not on average. Every. Single. One. They're all different. I call it "stalk the board"...

RFP presentation tip #2

RFP presentation tip #2

The second step in our series is to reduce your ahh count. It's much easier to listen to somebody who is not saying "uh" all the time. Let me give you an example. Option 1: I, um, went, um, to the, um, store. Option 2: I went to the store. Read them out loud. Compare...

63. Self-Confidence In The Sales Presentation

Alper mentions a sales presentation webinar he was leading recently, and in particular, suggestions he gave for building one's self-confidence in the delivery, and what are the right things to practice and what are the wrong things to practice. Also, what is an...

People are like dogs

People are like dogs

If you stare at one long enough, it'll attack. Screen-based teleprompters are great. They allow you to read a script while looking at, or at least appearing to look at, the camera. But don't fall in love with your teleprompter so much that you forget to break eye...

62. Matt’s Specialization Journey

Matt goes into the major steps (and missteps) in his specialization journey, including what prompted him to start down that road in the first place.

Aspect ratios

Aspect ratios

"The aspect ratio is off."Said no one in your audience, ever. They probably aren't sitting there thinking, the aspect ratio is off, I don't like this guy.But they might be sitting there thinking, I don't know what it is, but something is off. Maybe it's the color...

RFP presentation tip #3

RFP presentation tip #3

Make mirror neurons work for you. What are mirror neurons? Basically, it’s that humans tend to do what other humans are doing. You know how if you’re at a party talking to someone, and they are smiling, you’ll smile too, even though you’re not sure why you’re smiling?...

60. The Four Things

Alper asks Matt what he means by the phrase "The Four Things." If you want to "Pareto" your presentation or speech (do the 20% of the things that will get you 80% of the improvement), these are the four things to tackle first.

RFP presentation tip #4

RFP presentation tip #4

Use vivid language. Use words loaded with color. Emotion. Sound. Why? If you use dead or uncolorful words, then when your audience leaves the room, they're going to forget what you said. They're going to forget you. And when you're giving a pitch presentation, being...

59. Natalia Talkowska on Letting Your Geek Flag Fly

Matt and Alper interview Natalia Talkowska about the importance of putting some of your own story into your presentations, even if you feel a bit unsure about it, and how your audience needs that from you in order to connect with your message. Also, Natalia challenges...

58. Tom Tran On Internship Presentations

Tom Tran makes another guest appearance on the podcast, this time to talk about internship presentations. What are they for, and what should be in there, and in particular, the importance of getting buy-in during the presentation development process.

56. Overcoming Zoom Latency

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

55. Stress Factors

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...

54. Doing The Non-linear

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.

53. Tackling Resistance (The Matt Chapter)

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.

52. Tackling Resistance (The Alper Chapter)

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.

51. Tom Tran On Presentations In The CPG World

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.

Six

Six

There is a magic number for how many filler words are fine. It's six. There are some people on the logical extreme, and they'll say you need to hit zero. And sometimes that would be nice, to hit zero filler words, but in my opinion, don't worry about it too much. Less...

50. The Inner Game

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...

Slides are a crutch

Slides are a crutch

It was the most important presentation of her life. Not just of HER life. Of the lives of every single one of the people who worked for her, too. After all, their jobs at her company were how they put food on the table to feed their children. But they weren't going to...

49. The Point At Which

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."

48. The Cobbler’s Children

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...

47. One Way To Distribute Questions

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.

Don’t feed the monster

Don’t feed the monster

Don't feed the monster. Kill it. You don't need prettier slides. You don't need fancy animations or most of the bells and whistles that are built into PowerPoint. You probably don't need to spend hours and hours preparing, if you're already an expert on the subject....

46. Grab Bag

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,...

You don’t need more noise

You don’t need more noise

Slides are noise. There are 30 million new slides made every day. No one wakes up in the morning and says, "You know what I need more of in my life? PowerPoint slides." What the world needs more of is the ability to take a one-hour idea and crush it down into 3 or 4...

45. Stock Photography: Use It Or Not?

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...

44. Revisiting Cialdini

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.

Tech spend and second marriages

Tech spend and second marriages

They say that 60% of tech projects fail or underperform. (That number varies, but it's usually north of 50.) Which means tech spend is, like a second marriage, the triumph of hope over experience. Your budget committee presentation is going to be mostly numbers, team...

43. Three Tools And A Rabbit Hole (Alper Edition)

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!"

Go retail

Go retail

A lot of public speaking coaching is directed at speaking to large groups. You know the images: A speaker, holding a microphone, standing in front of hundreds of people, usually on a stage or something like that. But most big decisions are not made by hundreds of...

42. Three Tools And A Rabbit Hole (Matt edition)

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.

What does ChatGPT mean for my presentations?

What does ChatGPT mean for my presentations?

The short answer: Nothing. If you're a CTO, ChatGPT and AI are helping your coders a lot. They probably save them boatloads of time. They might even be helping clean up their code or even write blocks of code that would be a waste of time for a human. But when you're...

41. Low-Hanging Fruit

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.

40. Training: What Is It Good For?

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...

Make your headlines tell your message

Make your headlines tell your message

Make sure that if someone reads only the headlines of your slides, and nothing else, they will still get your message. For example: Slide 1 headline: Sales are up Slide 2 headline: But average pick lines per order are too Slide 3 headline: So to protect profitability,...

39. Service Guarantees

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...

38. Alper’s Milestones

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.

37. Matt’s Milestones

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,...

36. Make The Trend Your Friend

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.

36. Make The Trend Your Friend

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.

Was Don Draper cool or not?

Was Don Draper cool or not?

Elsewhere, I've held up Angus Young, admiring him for his complete lack of detachment. Today, I hold up the opposite, a King of Cool, Mad Men's Don Draper. When you need to be cool and collected in a hot environment, channel your inner Don Draper. But now that I think...

35. Starting Out

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...

Let your freak flag fly

Let your freak flag fly

Look at that guy. He's sweating, he's drooling, he's desperately sucking oxygen through a tube. He's the uncoolest guy that ever existed. And yet… There are tens of thousands of fans calling his name, straining to touch him, like he is a god. You don't need to be...

34. Fanboys Reminiscing

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...

33. Getting Over The Curse Of Knowledge

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...

32. Getting Under Alper’s Skin

Alper goes into 4 things that really get in the way of your most important job in any presentation: Connecting with the audience. Do not let these 4 things interfere with the mission. They include corporate templates, stories, and more. These 4 things are not just any...

31. The Hero’s Journey For Normal People

Lots of people hold up the Hero's Journey as the end all and be all of a great story structure, but who has time to study it? So in this episode, Matt and Alper provide an alternative that normal people can actually use in their daily lives.

30. Putting Your Head In The Lion’s Mouth

Matt goes into six tips you can use when doing what he calls "putting your head in the lion's mouth" -- presenting to people who might be way above your pay grade. Alper and Matt also discuss whether these same techniques can be used in other cultural situations, too.

29. Angry Audience Member

It's one of the most popular questions Matt and Alper get: "Help, an angry audience member is confronting me, what do I do?" Today Alper goes into what to say and do in situations like that, including what to do when the angry person just won't let it go.

28. How Matt “Cleans” A Presentation

Matt goes into how he, a self-admitted know-nothing when it comes to visual design, "cleans" a presentation, rails at what he calls the "Happy People Slide," and briefly touches on the need for trust when the "cleaning" process is so radical.

27. Rockin’ The Agenda Slide

You know the agenda slide, the one that makes you say, "First I am going to talk about Topic #1, and then I am going to talk about Topic #2, and then I going to talk about Topic #3, and then..."? What if you could do a nonlinear presentation with the same slide deck?...

27. Rockin’ The Agenda Slide

You know the agenda slide, the one that makes you say, "First I am going to talk about Topic #1, and then I am going to talk about Topic #2, and then I going to talk about Topic #3, and then..."? What if you could do a nonlinear presentation with the same slide deck?...

26. Cleaning, Part 2

Last week, we went into things 1, 2, and 3 that you should do when making your deck "pop." Today we go into things 4, 5, and 6, including importing information from Excel, and the opportunity presented by Data Values. Plus, there's the bonus Magical 2-Minute Tip. What...

26. Cleaning, Part 2

Last week, we went into things 1, 2, and 3 that you should do when making your deck "pop." Today we go into things 4, 5, and 6, including importing information from Excel, and the opportunity presented by Data Values. Plus, there's the bonus Magical 2-Minute Tip. What...

25. How A Pro Cleans A Deck

Alper goes into the first things he does when someone sends him a deck that needs some love and care from a professional. To get a boring deck that looks like everyone else's, don't do these things. Warning: If you do decide to do these things, you might actually end...

24. Matt’s Model

Matt, inspired by a podcast he listens to regularly, decides to map out a model he uses often in his professional life, including the four steps he would give to the hypothetical client Bruce, who wants to know how to use the model to overcome a presentation problem....

23. Presentations That Make A Difference

Alper wrote a book a few years back called Presentations That Make A Difference. Don't look for the book in English yet, it currently exists in Turkish and Spanish. Today Alper goes into the book a bit, discussing why he wrote it and who he wrote it for (spoiler...

22. Under the Kimono: Alper

There aren't a lot of kids who say, "Mommy, when I grow up I want to be a Presentation Designer," so most people in the presentation business come at it via seemingly random directions. Today Alper describes the winding road that got him into the business. Alper's...

21. Under the Kimono: Matt

Having broadcast for about 5 months, Matt and Alper decide it's time to tell the audience how they got into this business, so people don't think they're just random axe murderers who showed up to talk about presentations. Up today: Matt and how he got into this...

20. Exit: Must-have Elements for Entrepreneur Pitch Decks

Alper wraps up this mini-series with a deep dive into must-have principle #6 of the entrepreneurial pitch deck: Exit, and how it is so sorely needed, and yet is lacking in almost all pitch decks. A shout-out goes to Mathieu Carenzo, Alper's mentor in Barcelona....

19. Scalability: Must-have Elements for Entrepreneur Pitch Decks

Alper goes further into must-have principle #5 of the entrepreneurial pitch deck: Scalability, and scalability of a particular type (hint: it's not scalability of revenue or headcount). A shout-out goes to Mathieu Carenzo, Alper's mentor in Barcelona. Mathieu is not a...

18. Team: Must-have Elements for Entrepreneur Pitch Decks

Alper goes further into must-have principle #4 of the entrepreneurial pitch deck: Team, and what needs to go on that slide and what is just table stakes, even though entrepreneurs seem to love putting it on there. A shout-out goes to Mathieu Carenzo, Alper's mentor in...

17. Timing: Must-have Elements for Entrepreneur Pitch Decks

Alper goes further into must-have principle #3 of the entrepreneurial pitch deck: Timing, and suggests some more imaginative ways to represent that element on a slide. A shout-out goes to Mathieu Carenzo, Alper's mentor in Barcelona. Mathieu is not a slide designer,...

15. The Lightning Round

Matt and Alper cover 6 of their presentation pet peeves, and try to do so quickly without droning on and on for 6 hours. Avoid these common mistakes and your audiences will appreciate it!

14. Vocabulary is a ZIP File

Alper asks Matt what he means by the phrase "vocabulary is a zip file," a phrase Matt uses a lot but that probably warrants some explanation, and Matt demonstrates how you can use vivid words in your presentations, even when you are speaking to an audience that might...

13. Underutilized Presentation Tools

Alper witnessed a presentation this week where the speaker missed out on using three particular tools he probably should have taken advantage of. They are very common, but even so, all too many presenters overlook them. Don't overlook these three tools, and your...

12. Talk to the Dog?!

Matt uses this phrase all the time: "Talk to the dog." What does that even mean? Finally, an answer to the question.

11. Fanboys Mapping

Matt and Alper, both fans of Blair Enns, take one of his structures (a sales cycle structure) and see if they can map that structure to presentations, too. Warning: They are taking somebody else's one thing, and seeing if it can be repurposed for a different thing....

10. Alper’s 3 Favorite Apps for Presenters

Alper tells us about 3 favorite apps useful for presenters. The apps: Camo Studio: https://reincubate.com/camo/ Duet Display: https://www.duetdisplay.com PromptSmart: https://promptsmart.com

8. Going Deeper on Audience Resistance

Alper and Matt go deeper on the issue of audience resistance, and the unfortunate tendency of presentation training to try to overcome it, instead of elicit it and then leverage it. This was not an intended episode, but last week's discussion of resistance triggered it.

7. Resistance From the Audience

Alper talks about his evolution from trying to overcome audience resistance to actively eliciting it, and how others can seek it out, too.

6. Making Good on a Promise

Matt and Alper make good on a promise to give people a story structure they can actually use in business presentations.

5. Alper Punches Holes

Alper punches holes in Matt's "No Visual Design" theory, and Matt clarifies what he means.

4. Matt Visits the Psychologist

Matt reveals a "controversial" opinion he fears is going to get him run out of town by an angry mob, and then he finds out it's not actually that big a deal.

2. The First 3 Questions

Matt goes into the first three questions you should ask before any presentation. They sound obvious, but they are surprisingly not.

To look back

Meaning: to think about the past Examples: It is important to look ahead at the future, and to not spend too much time looking back. When I look back at my childhood, I realize it was a very good childhood.

To clear away

Meaning: to open a space, to put things away Examples: You should clear away all your toys before bedtime. I need to clear away the trees before I can farm this land.

To catch on

Meaning: to become popular Examples: This game will catch on among young people. In the past, that song was not popular, but now it is catching on.

To catch somebody up on something

Meaning: to give somebody the latest news or information about something Examples: Can someone catch us up on the latest news? He doesn't know about the new products. I will catch him up on them.

To make up for something

Meaning: to recover, to make something better, to fix a problem you created Examples: Nothing can make up for a lost child. I came to work late yesterday, so I have to work this weekend to make up for it.