Presentation Thinking™

For our 25th “Quarter Century” episode, we brought in the reason our Presentation Thinking pod has stayed consistent—our brilliant editor, Will Kommor. Will is an audio and editing guru, and has a lot to share about what he’s learned from Presentation Thinking, the podcasting process, and being a media editor in general. We also think that improv and podcasting might be more alike than you think…tune in for serious laughs!

Wadsworth Williams and the Nspire team are leading the charge in developing more efficient and comfortable nasal cannulas (tubes that help deliver oxygen) for babies. A low-cost commodity with potential for huge impact, Wadsworth has so much to say about innovation in the pediatric space, how to focus a pitch per audience while also sticking to their core mission—putting the patient first. Receiving first prize in the Life Science & Medical Innovation Category at the VentureCat competition, designer Grace Morris also joins us to discuss how this blend of science and emotion translated into a winning deck.

Zuri Fertility founders Blair Matthews and Giuliana Zaccardelli are on a mission to help couples everywhere who are struggling with infertility. Voted the “Audience Favorite” of the VentureCat 2022 Startup competition, they join the 'cast to chat about how they met, mistakes they’ve made & the real-life experiences that have fueled their real-life solution—an app that helps people connect with clinics and navigate the tricky journey that is infertility. GhostRanch designer Emily Pantoja joins as well to discuss how this project translated into a deck. It’s a personal journey, going through infertility. In making it public, Blair and Giuliana are going to help couples everywhere. An installment of our “Founder Series” guaranteed to inspire.

Inside InfernoGuard’s winning pitch and one founder’s plan to prevent wildfires. Kevin Kaspar joins Presentation Thinking to discuss his founder journey for InfernoGuard—a device that detects and reports wildfire conditions to first responders and land-owners before they get out of control. We are lucky enough to be connected to the Northwestern University startup competition called VentureCat—even luckier that one of GhostRanch’s designers (Lola Lopez) helped to create the WINNING pitch for InfernoGuard. We talk all things pitching (and bombing) and what the plan is for such an important device to receive funding and awareness. Only YOU (and InfernoGuard) can prevent forest fires!

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

Look Ma, we did a webinar! We dipped our toes into the world of webinars a few weeks ago and, thanks to the creative and strategic genius of GhostRanch Creative Director Dave Sheets, it went even better than we imagined! We zero-ed in on a hyper-specific topic—Cover Slides. What to put on them, how to cater to your audience and why it matters more than you think. None of us had any experience in producing a webinar, so in sharing our own process of piecing this project together, we hope to help those figuring out their webinar sweet spot as well.

If you’ve ever seen the first few minutes of the PIXAR movie UP!, you’re very aware that stories have the capacity to move you to tears. PIXAR animator Matthew Luhn might be the one to blame for this. Having worked on a few classics such as Toy Story, Ratatouille & The Incredibles, Luhn shares in a 2017 TED Talk what it is that makes stories like this so successful—and how we can we apply that to our own work and life. For Mikey and Molly, this is a breakthrough episode. We’re seeing patterns in the story structures our favorites are talking about and connecting some significant dots. A TED Talk not to be missed and a discussion that is sure to stir up your PIXAR nostalgia. Full show notes HERE.

Part 3, the closing chapter, of our Made to Stick book report/breakdown/book club is HERE. Frodo is ready to destroy the ring and we’re ready to discuss the “E” and “S” in Chip & Dan Heath’s “SUCCESs” checklist for a sticky story—Emotions and Stories. These components are so central to storytelling that many examples often go hand-in-hand. It’s a bit of a “Chicken or the Egg” debate: What comes first—the emotions or the story? How do you appeal to someone’s self-interest? How do you spot a good story?? Why is it that we all remember Jared’s Subway story??? Brothers Heath have the answers and Mikey and Molly have the spark notes. Listen to Part 1 on “Simplicity” HERE Listen to Part 2 on Unexpected, Concrete and Credible HERE

Dear listeners, welcome back to Book Club. We’re making our way through Chip & Dan Heath’s Made to Stick — a book dissecting all the factors that make certain messages and stories STICK. And there’s a lot of unpack! So, not unlike other greats such as JRR Tolkien or the makers of Die Hard, we’ve split this into multiple parts. (Listen to Part 1 on “Simplicity” HERE!) Part 2 covers “Unexpected”, “Concrete” and “Credible” on the SUCCESs checklist for story stickiness. Need help in one of these areas? Tons of great examples and Heath brother-approved insight await. “SUCCESs checklist” Simplicity Unexpectedness Concreteness Credibility Emotions Stories

[Disclaimer: This is not a Nancy Duarte interview. One day it will be.] Ever wonder what the SHAPE of a story looks like? Our “Patron Saint of Stories” Nancy Duarte AKA CEO/Founder of Duarte, Inc. has done the research to show us just that. In her first viral ~2008 TED Talk, Duarte shows off her analysis of several Communication Greats (ahem, Steve Jobs, MLK…) to prove there’s a science—an ebb and flow—in how information and stories are presented. Memorable communication follows a pattern. And for our humble Storytelling Study Club, we’re anxious to learn from those footsteps.