2024 Wrapped: A Year-in-Review of Stories Beyond the Slides

Mikey: [00:00:00] Welcome back to Presentation Thinking. The last one of the year. This is Mikey Meduski, your co host, founder of Ghost Ranch Communications, joined by Molly Gagin across the country in Inglewood, Colorado. What's up, Molly?

Molly: Woohoo! Yeah, this is the last one of the year, Mikey. This is gonna come out. The day after Christmas, in case anyone's Oh, very cool.

And wanted to tune back into presentation thinking, your source for all things presentation, storytelling, brought to you by Ghost Ridge Communications, creative agency specializing in presentation design. We're gonna start plugging that more at the ca Are we gonna have a little pre roll in

Mikey: 25? Yeah, let's do it.

[00:01:00] Yeah,

Molly: to give you guys more context of who we are and why we're here. So, Mikey and I have been on a journey. A journey. Yeah, one could say a hero's journey. Maybe anti hero.

Mikey: One could say, did we not miss a single episode this year? Maybe we, maybe we had to re spin one on and off week or something.

Molly: That's true.

We had one funny re record when we were trying and failing to talk successfully about Malcolm Gladwell's.

Mikey: Yeah.

Molly: Apology TED talk.

Mikey: Oh, true.

Molly: And kind of he deals with like a sensitive subject and you and I botched it the first time. So we did re record. It's touchy. It's touchy, but no, we put out today or as of today, Mikey, We put out 52 episodes this year.

Oh, that's our goal. Yeah, for everyone, for every Thursday. Some were shorter, some were funnier, some were more successful than others. But we learned so much, and as is an annual tradition, we just like Spotify Raft, we've got our year in review for you. Some highlights, some lowlights, some highlights. So if you're just tuning into the cast for the first time, this will be a great directory episode.

We'll keep telling you where to go for the [00:02:00] last, for the last few weeks.

Mikey: Nothing we're, nothing we're plugging here is, is more than 52 weeks old. Exactly.

Molly: And it's,

Mikey: a lot of it's never been done before. And if you're just joining us too, one thing you should know about the Presentation Thinking Podcast. Our take on this whole thing is to be something of an aggregator, a curator.

There is a ton of information and really cool resources on the interwebs and elsewhere, even on bookshelves about how we can all become better storytellers, right? Better presenters, better business communicators. So like Molly and I are on a quest to learn about it and talk about it as much as we can and share that with you.

So. If you're here, you're probably on a, on a similar quest. You've realized that soft skills pay bills and, uh, we want this to be a repository where you can learn. And so Molly, like, let's talk about maybe some of our favorite episodes from 04, 24, 2024. 04,

Molly: yeah. [00:03:00] Crazy that we're in 2024 moving on to 2025.

Yeah, just a few, a few fun stats. You know, we really increased our listeners this year. Spotify tells me it's 204 percent increase. So if you're starting a podcast and like this is, we're going into our year three, Mikey. So it's really cool to know that we're a fourth year even, right?

Mikey: Is it really? Yeah.

Molly: Yeah, because I started, yeah. So this is cool. Just like consistency matters. You know, we had a really cool uptick in the spring where a certain episode from last year in 2023 was shown, I think, over 50 like we got like it amounted to over 15, 000 impressions on Spotify, huge uptick with some like SEO and people finding like the episodes being shown on Spotify and that was huge.

So it's cool to so that like if you're making out there making a podcast, keep going.

Mikey: So we've doubled our listeners. I think consistency matters from year two to three. Yeah, but that's just on Spotify, so like that's just on Spotify. Who knows if someone's doing weird stuff on like pod bean or whatever, over

Molly: calendar.

[00:04:00] Overcast. Yeah. Wherever the hell

Mikey: if you

Molly: Apple podcasts. So we can,

Mikey: but hopefully Apple, Spotify, I imagine those are the lion's share and uh, welcome. Yeah. If you're listening from those.

Molly: Okay. So. The top episode of this year was episode number 105. And this was what we call a TED Talk an episode where Mikey and I listen to a TED Talk, watch TED Talk and we break it down because we know if we're looking at great presentations and great speakers, some of the best of the best are on the TED stage.

So we like to kind of zoom in there, see what they're doing well, see who who's on the stage. And for episode 105, it was this amazing young actress. Her name is Yara Shahidi. Mikey, what did you think about this episode? so much.

Mikey: Oh, I loved it. We always analyze a TED Talk from the three prongs of what we think are sort of the, the presentation stool, the three, the three legs of story, screen, or like visuals, and then stage or performance delivery.

So, Obviously, I mean, this amazing woman [00:05:00] is an actress, a successful one at that. So her stage presence, as you know, 10 out of 10, I forget the visuals. What I do recall is she went to Harvard and If here's one note, if you go to Harvard and you're on a TED talk, be sure to mention it several times. Cause

Music: you

Mikey: get a lot of cred, man.

And I think I noted to you, I was like, man, I would've, I would've dropped Harvard like every minute. But she also, I found out is Nas, the rapper's cousin.

Molly: I know that's a fun, that's a fun family. And,

Mikey: but it was a great one. I think that is a top. If you want to just look at a speaker style, someone really comfortable in their own skin.

I thought Yara's TED talk was really good.

Molly: And. I think what Yara does really successfully in this one, she kind of has, her story that she shares is about wanting to pursue acting and education at the same time. That was like a big challenge for her. She was really told by everyone that you had to pick a path.

And of course, she figures out a way to kind of make it all work for her and what [00:06:00] I would call a Hannah Montana esque arc, you know, and I think what she does well that I continue to see throughout the year in various ways, Mikey, is share her personal story in a way that is applicable to other people's lives or a way so it's like her personal and meeting the professional.

What we continue to learn with narrative design and different forms of storytelling and talking to other great storytellers this year is about. Yeah, it was a really interesting blend of personal with professional, and I, it's interesting that that episode came out at the beginning of the year, it's our top episode of 2024, and I think that theme really carried throughout the year.

Mikey: Molly, who said this? Yeah, you're reminding me, but it was like, um, maybe it was the next guy. Someone said, you need to have enough personality in your presentation that someone else can't just walk up and give the same content, but it's like, how is it uniquely yours? And let your personality come through.

And I think you're so right that when you welcome someone into [00:07:00] thinking of, yeah, don't make it all about, even though Yara's story was about her journey. She somehow made it accessible to a lot of us to put ourselves in that rhetorical questions

Molly: I think another kind of channel in which we Learned about this Mikey was kind of something that you and I explored for several months this year Which was the world of like startups pitching and like for fundraising, you know Like Shark Tank and Nesk kind of stuff and we talked to like a lot of VCs Venture capitalists people maybe that people that deal with like angel funds You And startup incubators and our next top listen to podcast of this year was episode 120.

Called, uh, Pitch Perfect. How to do the perfect pitch with, uh, Tom Fowler, who is an awesome guy you got us in touch with, who's seen, he's had probably thousands and thousands of pitches. Oh, yeah. And so he had a great perspective on how to implement your story into a pitch. And so I think that really showed up there, too.

Mikey: Yeah, Tom's straight shooter. [00:08:00] I got like, this rarely happens, but I got like side pings from people in my network who are more kind of like in that startup incubator, like kind of VC bro space, but there's like this, this was your best episode ever because they just fell in love with like, Tom has is very opinionated, but it's backed up, right?

Like, cause he's seen so many, he's helped, he's an advisor to so many startups and uh, Yeah, I think he's, I think if you were to just listen to his episode and take it to heart, if you're trying to go raise money.

Molly: Yeah, absolutely. As a

Mikey: startup founder, it was gold.

Molly: Get yourself over to episode 120. Also, a shout out to another great one, similar, who has done a lot of pitching and is great at telling his own personal story, was episode 125, Mack Conwell, right?

You talked to Mack.

Mikey: Yeah, Mack the VC.

Molly: Amazing, just entrepreneurial, uh, guy, founder of Rare Breed Ventures. Over in, um, what, what, what city does he rep? Is it?

Mikey: I think Baltimore.

Molly: [00:09:00] Baltimore.

Mikey: Yes. Yes.

Molly: And he's done so much for the city and so much for the, you know, the founders and the great original thinkers in his community.

And I think he's really perfected his. You know, personal story blended with his pitch. He's someone that's very comfortable with that as well. Very cool.

Mikey: Yes. And Molly, we should note too, that like, it's funny that I had us on this tangent, like, cause we, at Ghost Ranch, you know, we, we helped design presentations.

And so a lot over the years, startups come to us with, um, pitch deck needs. And we've, we've wanted to see if we could put out like a state of the pitch deck kind of, you know, Research report, funny timing, because I think really 2024 and 2023, just like VC money was so much harder to come by. And so you really did have to have a really good pitch and a really good story and idea to break through, especially with amongst all the AI noise too.

So it was, it's funny that it was such a tough [00:10:00] year for, for raising. Um, but hopefully things are on the, on the swing around, you know?

Molly: Yeah, totally. We went down kind of this little pathway, but I think it was really good to explore too, and kind of get to know it a little more. And yeah, we like talked to some people we had never talked to before or wouldn't have otherwise, um, really interesting thinkers, you know,

Mikey: it's an important space because of how, when you think about the volume game and it's, it's that That question of, how do you stand out when someone sees thousands of decks every single year?

And so it's really important questions that arise that we can apply to all sorts of pitching and presenting.

Molly: Also, along that narrative, we talked to our third most listened to episode, shout out to Marcus Andrews. Who kind of helped create and term narrative design, like, which it came from product marketing alliance, his time there, um, he's elsewhere.

He's got a

Mikey: master, a masterclass there, right? Yes. This is

Molly: yes. A masterclass. And we, you and I got certified in that, [00:11:00] in that, which is really cool. And just learning the kind of, you know, there's so many different frameworks, right? We've talked about this for storytelling and how to implement it, but how do you you know, name that change in the world.

And position, it's a lot more of like, it's combining the positioning, the messaging and the narrative. And that's like, the narrative design ethos is combined, that holistic view of how your product or service is fitting in. Potentially creating a new category, not always, it's not always appropriate, right?

But you're kind of seeing change in the world and rising up to meet it. That's a, that's such a helpful class that I really, I really would recommend.

Mikey: Yeah, I loved hanging out with Marcus because he and I. I don't know if we were like, born in the same year or something, but I think his walkout song was Beastie Boys.

He talked about bringing OutKast to the Pendium, or You know, the Pendios, like, user conference. I was like, oh my gosh, we're speaking the same language, buddy.

Molly: Cut from the same cloth. Yeah, that was actually freaky for me to witness as well. So [00:12:00] if you want to go listen to episode 111. Mikey and his like long lost twin.

Did we just become best friends? Yeah, we really found each other there. That was very funny. I loved it. I loved it.

Mikey: What's our next one? Top four episode. You've probably noticed our voices sound Like instruments, like well tuned instruments ever after Episode 130 with Michelle Siracusa, right Molly?

Molly: Yes,

Mikey: and

Molly: she was our voice

Mikey: coach.

Yes.

Molly: Yes, and you Brought her to us Mikey because you have taken some voice coach lessons with her. Yes. And how has it been?

Mikey: It was great. It was good. I had seven one on one Coaching calls with Michelle my wife Megan has a she's always told you you have a very distinct voice It's kind of like she makes fun fun of it But like a very distinct like lower voice and they've told her like she might be good at voice acting So she sought out this coach and I was like, oh that sounds interesting I wonder if she coaches for like people who want to become better [00:13:00] presenters and stuff and it turns out she does She does.

So yeah, Michelle has a cool voice Practice, she can coach actors, but also does a lot in the business space. And so check it out. It's cool. Like a lot about the inflections, intonation, how you can, how the delivery should match the feeling that you want to convey and that there's a lot we can do. If we just think about our voices and practice enunciation and delivery with intentionality, yeah.

Molly: I'm telling you, that was such, if you want to listen to Mikey and I kind of be a little vulnerable and embarrass ourselves in episode 130, we go through a few of these actual, like, literal, minute exercises of like, okay, here's a sentence, say it as if it's going to be sad news. Here's a sentence, say it as if it's going to be good news.

You know, it's like, So specific intonation and tone and pauses, and I've been thinking about the way I speak ever since, and I loved it.

Mikey: I loved it. Molly, [00:14:00] even worse with me behind the scenes, like the one on ones, I was doing like Like lip tricks and stuff, I was

Molly: like, But I found you!

Mikey: Just making the fool, yeah.

Molly: Yeah,

Mikey: it's crazy, yeah.

Molly: I, how, I even feel like, You know when I, depending on what time of the day we record the cast, you know?

Music: Yeah.

Molly: If I've had like, you know how dairy can like, affect your voice and stuff? like, if I've just had like, water and stuff? I'm like clearer, but if I've just eaten, I'm like, kind of like, this is weird because just like you're just kind of clearing your throat more and it's like you're less, I, I find it's like it affects my delivery for sure.

And so it just depends, there's so many factors, both physical and mental, that affect your delivery.

Mikey: I hadn't been wanting to tell you to lay off the dairy before episodes, but I'm glad you caught it.

Molly: It sounds weird, but I just, every, every little thing, yeah, it's like. Oh, it's interesting.

Mikey: What's, what's still our top of all time?

I think it was the one that I wasn't on, Molly.

Molly: Our still the top episode [00:15:00] of presentation thinking ever is episode 79 when just me, little old me is talking about Amy Cuddy's power poses. And if you're not familiar, Amy Cuddy is a really interesting researcher and psycholo um, social, uh, psycholo scientist, social scientist, who kind of termed those, those terms, the power poses were.

You hold a superman pose, a powerful pose, arms outstretched, standing, that kind of thing, for at least a minute, over a minute, before you go into an interview to gain some confidence, to regulate your nervous system, for any of those reasons, and she really put some proof to that research of that affecting people's confidence and ability to perform, and it's a really cool It's kind of had some controversy since and um, anyway, I know to do a follow up on that, but

Mikey: uh, yeah, I got the book Yeah, she's so smart.

I try to prove that power poses are gonna be like [00:16:00] Counter helpful, I don't buy it 80 no 73 million people have seen that YouTube Or TED Talk, I think it's um, the second highest viewed of all time, and I think Molly intercepted it in the algorithms, which is why we got so much play on our podcast to that episode, which is awesome.

You did a great job covering it.

Molly: And now we just gotta get Amy on for 2025,

Mikey: that's the goal. Wouldn't that be cool? I know. So,

Molly: yeah, I think, I mean, and with that kind of like, plays into my third theme of this year, you know, we dove in. One, we dove into the pitch world. Very cool to kind of understand what was going on there to, you know, implementing narrative in a natural way, combining your personal with professional and three, like with Amy's per Amy's thing, like and Michelle Syracuse, the vocal coach, like delivery really matters and your stage presence like will affect your presentation.

And we talked about this a little bit in Malcolm Gladwell does an apology TED talk for a theory that kind of contributed to some some [00:17:00] harm broken windows theory in the past that he brought up in his OG best selling book tipping point and so we never done an apology. Talk or gone through an apology talk and even though I know we said we struggled through it.

It was really just an interesting It was a fascinating time to break down because it's so different An excitable. Here's my research. Here's this cool discovery. I made here's like a funny thing because I'm a comedian and It was very very different. Yeah delivery matters

Mikey: And his is already, yeah, I mean, that was a fast, a rapidly growing TED Talk view, it's almost at a, it's probably like three quarter million already, it's only like a month or two old.

Music: Mm hmm, mm hmm.

Mikey: But yeah, you're right, and yeah, those are good themes, and it's, it's true, one of our favorite things is like when we, almost like you're at a liberal arts degree, like, the way that we're, Trying to bring in all sorts of different outside thinkers. You know, we're not only talking to presentation design experts, we're trying to bring in anybody [00:18:00] and everybody who might have something that we can glean and, and apply.

But I like when we see that crossover, cause even Tom Fowler. You know, a startup advisor, when we asked him like, okay, how important is story, design, performance, and he's like, oh, performance, 11 out of 10, you know, delivery, it's everything, you know, and he's just like, dude, charisma matters, like personality matters, 11

Molly: out of 10, yeah, yeah,

Mikey: yeah,

Molly: he's like that all matters,

Mikey: as you said, though, like delivery is something you can have a banger story, great visuals, but if you just Deliver it poorly or not in a way that feels natural.

You know, like the stars need to align that perfect. Then of the three coming together is what we're really striving for.

Molly: Yes. Mikey, do you have a highlight of this, uh, this past year in podcasting together? Yeah. Yeah. What's, what's something that stood out for you?

Mikey: One of my favorite moments was bringing one of my old instructors, uh, from Savannah College of Art and [00:19:00] Design, Art Novak.

Legendary gentleman, episode 132, but Art was an OG, like, copywriting professional in advertising. And so He shared us his stories. He told us how when he, when he then got into the teaching world at the university level, he's like, I had a problematic PowerPoint past, you know, because he, but he recognized that, oh, these kids are really like visually oriented.

And I'm just guilty of this, like stuffing them full of like PowerPoint slides with all these bullets and I'm just reading to them and they're, they're getting dazed looks in their eyes. And so he, he, he went on a journey to like change that. And, um, and I loved it. And he had some. So we got to just like nerd out on advertising.

And one thing that I liked that he had really cool answers for was when we asked art, do you see any overlap between better ad campaigns and, and they're like better presentations. And he said a successful ad campaign, it can teach us something about better presentations, but a [00:20:00] campaign needs to possess two kinds of qualities.

He said, first, it needs like integration or like consistency, right. Across the board. So sort of Molly, like that big idea. A connective thread throughout a whole presentation. But then he said a campaign also needs freshness and variety. So there's something that he's, he really likened it to a great presentation where it's like you have something tying it all together, but each slide, each section can bring the audience back with like a fresh take on it.

So it's not just like over and over and over, but presented in a nice. Reinvigorating way. So yeah, art connecting the dots between advertising and presentations was one of my favorites.

Molly: Yeah, I love that thread. It's such a fun one to follow with ads. One of my highlights was kind of an unexpected thing we weren't planning on.

And it's someone, we got to meet someone that we have like, We've idolized for years and years and really, you know, you own her books, we, we've, we've quoted her in various blogs, et cetera. And it was [00:21:00] when we were having a presentation summit goodbye party with Rick Altman, founder of the first and only, you know, summit about presentations, very cool and interesting community.

He was one of the pioneers of PowerPoint on the front front lines. And so we invited him to share, to bring a few people from his community to have this little goodbye party and talked about pre sum. And he invited none other than Dr. Carmen Simon, amazing researcher into, uh, presentation design, uh, now at Corporate Visions.

And she joined with, um, Mike Parkinson, who's an amazing, like, data viz kind of guy, too. And it was just really fun that our first interaction with her was kind of in this very casual presentation summit way, you know, it wasn't our official, it wasn't like an official interview just with her. And I just thought that was some kind of karmic that, that ended up being the presentation summit goodbye party.

And then she had to head out to tennis practice. It was

Mikey: Dr. Karmic. Yeah, she, she did it from the tennis facility. I love that.

Molly: Yes, it was so fun. I love that. Um, so that's episode 139. And it just was, [00:22:00] uh, it was fun to meet her in that context. So now. Now I feel like we're friends and we can bring her back for an interview, you know?

I

Mikey: mean, that's why we did this whole thing. Is it time to just hang it up? I know, honestly, we're meeting our heroes. People say don't meet

Molly: your heroes, but the presentation ones have been really nice.

Mikey: Well said.

Molly: Yeah.

Mikey: And that brings us into the Spice Cabinet one last time. For

Molly: 2024. It's been a spicy year.

Mikey: Let's just go straight to what everyone wants to know. Molly, what was the walkout song of 2024?

Molly: Right in a high on, uh, Wicked, movie, musical turn movie. Yeah, and uh, I loved that as a kid. Everyone knows I'm a theater kid, I say it every few episodes, probably. So, um, I would go with Defying Gravity, or Defying Gravity.

The stats of stagnancy for this podcast and it's not left my head It's been airworming for weeks and weeks since i've seen the movie. I'm, not even mad about [00:23:00] it yet So i'm gonna go with the new defying gravity from the movie

Mikey: Ariana cynthia, that's my walk outside and molly No, yeah, man. I'm with it. I'm very pro that movie I've seen it. I laughed, I cried, and it's really good. And gravity. The big, wicked, stupid, phony, emperor guy. Wizard. Yeah. Jeff Goldblum is boring, horrible, no thought powerpointing, okay? Jeff Goldblum is a wall full of bullets,

Molly: okay?

Exactly.

Mikey: We're

Molly: defined that by PowerPoint.

Mikey: You need to just, everyone's like, he's trying to pull everyone in. Just do it like me. No way. Yeah. I love that you fly above that. You get on that broom.

Molly: Yeah, exactly. You're, yeah. You can be my glinda. My[00:24:00]

Oh,

Mikey: I get it. I let Usda let us be ified. I like how they talk.

Molly: I know. It's really

Mikey: fun. That's a good one. All right, Molly, I, I got nothing to add. I, I was gonna say the exact same thing.

Molly: Oh, I know. I knew we shared, I knew we shared that.

Mikey: Yeah,

Molly: one short day in Emerald City. I relate maybe more to like Who's Peter Dinklage's character, the little goat, goat professor.

Mikey: Dr. Doolidge Yeah. Dr. Dillamond. Dillamond.

Molly: Oh, fun. Yeah, I love it. Well, we've got so much linked in the Spice Cabinets throughout the year. So if you're just perusing our episodes from this year, go ahead and cut straight to the Spice Cabinet for tons and tons of resources, endless amounts of story frameworks, people to follow, books.

Mikey and I will publish. Publicly our reading list for next year because we're gonna be reading a lot more books next year. I think Mikey.

Mikey: Yeah, we are So we're gonna be TED talk and we're gonna be book reporting. We're gonna be interviewing.

Molly: Yes We're we've got a lot of fun

Mikey: stuff

Molly: lined

Mikey: up sharing our own speaker journey I'll go ahead and

Molly: just plug if you want to follow along with the presentation [00:25:00] thinking book club We are currently on Emma Stratton's Make It Punchy, and we will, we may or may not be book reviewing that pretty much first thing next year, so.

Mikey: That's right. Okay.

Molly: Get in that. Well,

Mikey: Molly, thanks for another fun year of podcasting. Y'all. Learned

Molly: a lot.

Mikey: Hope you don't get a lump of PowerPoint coal. We know you've been nice and thinking about those presentations as gifts, and because they are, if we do it right, everybody wins. So until then, until we talk again in 2025, keep on pitching.

Molly: Should we do it one more time?

Mikey: Yeah. It needs to be like,

Molly: Will's gonna laugh so hard at this episode.

Mikey: Party on and keep on pitching.

Molly: Yeah. Okay.

Mikey: Or

Molly: you really draw it out. You really draw it out. And I, I'm, oh yeah. I'm cutting into

Mikey: it. Well, you guys like, wait for me, .

Molly: Okay.

Mikey: Are we gonna PowerPoint on and keep on pitching?

Okay.

Molly: Okay. Yeah. PowerPoint on and keep on pitching.

Mikey: Okay. So until then, [00:26:00] PowerPoint on. PowerPoint

Molly: on and keep on pitching. What if I say, yeah, PowerPoint on and you say keep on. I'll say keep on pitch honey Willie, you should just like take this and like cut it in.