How to inspire students at your Alma Mater

Molly Geoghegan (00:02.55)
Welcome back to Presentation Thinking, AKA the Storyteller Study Club, the podcast helping you become a better communicator, storyteller, strategist, and might be the podcast that'll help you for when you get the call from your alma mater to come speak. Right, Mikey? You did it, welcome. We've got Mikey, our very own co-host, founder of Ghost Ranch Communications and Story Camp.

Mikey Mioduski (00:21.462)
That's right, Molly. Yeah, I did it.

Molly Geoghegan (00:32.13)
who, isn't this your second call though, back to your college to get to come speak?

Mikey Mioduski (00:36.278)
Yeah, maybe, yeah, I've done it. Like small, Posh, shout out, Go Tigers, my alma mater, tiny Midwestern liberal arts school. Yeah, I've been back, since I've been living back in Indiana, you know, I'm like an hour, hour 15 away from them. So I like to get back and I've done like, there's been some clubs, like a marketing group I've gone and hung out with, gave a little talk to here and there, but this one was more, a little more formal, like a.

Molly Geoghegan (00:47.212)
If you're in the Midwest, you know.

Mikey Mioduski (01:05.245)
a lunch lecture series that has been going on for like 30 years. when you go to a liberal arts school that doesn't have necessarily like a business school within it, they devised what's called the Management Fellows Program, which is sort of a combination of both coursework and then like things outside of courses, which are like.

these networking functions, a paid internship that you have to do your junior year, couple other things. And one of this was like, you had to show up to, I wanna say like four or five lectures per semester. And so it's during lunch, you're squeezed in between classes and you're like, crap, I gotta go. And there's like all these requirements of the program, otherwise you're you're booted. You have to keep certain grades, you gotta do all these things. And so this was pretty funny because I was...

Molly Geoghegan (01:46.35)
Mm-hmm.

Molly Geoghegan (01:49.89)
And you're like, I'd rather be eating.

Mm-hmm

Mikey Mioduski (02:01.248)
for four years on the other side. I was in that exact same ballroom. It was the exact same podium, the same setup. This time they had Papa John's. Back in my day, it was like kind of a seated, plated kind of thing. But same exact room. So was trippy to be on the other side of the podium, so to speak, yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (02:05.314)
Mm-hmm.

Molly Geoghegan (02:10.957)
Molly Geoghegan (02:17.207)
To be back, yeah, exactly. Okay, Mikey, you've built like a million talks, maybe not a million, but a hundred, and we've kind of been tracking your road to the TED Talk. It's inevitable, you're on it, whether they know it or not. And so what we love to do if it's your first time tuning in, Presentation Nation, is break down a talk's story elements, screen and stage. And Mikey, we've worked with a million different frameworks for building talks and getting like a bit of strategy. Of course, like,

audience first always and now you're talking to a former you, know, a couple of decades later. So how did you go about building this talk and what was the purpose of your, what was your commander's intent, North Star?

Mikey Mioduski (02:50.624)
Yeah, right.

Mikey Mioduski (02:58.774)
Yeah. Oh yeah. Um, this was cool. And I tried to lean into something that Terry Zuplatt told us, you know, at Story Camp, but he also wrote in his book, Say It Well, he has this sort of like 50, 25, 25 rule where when you're preparing a new talk, half the time upfront, 50 % is like research, you know, planning really. And then you craft it and then you edit it. But a bulk of it is just like, what the heck do I want to say? What do I want to leave them with?

And yeah, Molly, like you hit the nail on the head. was just trying to ask myself, like, I don't want to be that some someone up there talking had telling giving advice, you know, that wasn't asked for in the first place. Yeah. And it really reminded me of. I don't know if you remember the movie, you mean, Dupree Owen Wilson is, you know, doesn't have a career per se, you know, Yeah, yeah. And so he.

Molly Geoghegan (03:41.099)
When I was your age.

Molly Geoghegan (03:48.333)
Of course. Yeah. You've kept this alive for me with various references over the years.

Mikey Mioduski (03:57.909)
He kind of loafs through life, doesn't have a job, floats on couches, but he has this best friend who is like an architect, and the architect can't show up to the career day, so Dupree steps in and his talk reminded me of what I was about to go do because when I was in the program, a lot of the talks were from really smart finance people, investment bankers, people from these places like KPMG, Eli Lilly, really, really good companies.

Molly Geoghegan (04:08.365)
It's very funny.

Mikey Mioduski (04:27.85)
But I kept going to these things and I just had this feeling in my gut like, am I in the wrong program? Because I don't know if I want to wear a suit or go to Wall Street. Like something about this isn't resonating with me. But I still played the game and I tried because I wanted to. I really liked business and I find it fascinating and exciting. But I was presented mostly with that track. And so.

But later, through lots of trial and error and exploration, I found a creative career in marketing. And so I just wanted to come back and be like, hey, maybe one or two of you out there is like I was and was like, isn't there something else? Is there another track within business that is maybe not straight to finance or investment banking? And so I just wanted to kind of present them opportunities to say, you know,

Molly Geoghegan (05:21.217)
Mm-hmm.

Mikey Mioduski (05:25.726)
Not only are there like really cool careers in marketing and creativity, but even if you, no matter what track you pick, you should bring creativity into it because it is, especially today, gonna really differentiate you in whatever you do. So I think I also wanted to dispel as we've done with that kind of Duke study that we often reference is that creativity doesn't just belong to like quote unquote right brain people, that it's actually.

you know, what they're doing at a school, like with a liberal arts education is actually building those connections from left and right sides of the brain. So really like the underlying talk was like, try everything out. Most of the marketers I met who have done well did not quote unquote study marketing. And so I just wanted to tell them and find a little bit of inspiration as to like, hey, like try it all out. If you can connect the dots, you're gonna have a creative fulfilling career.

Molly Geoghegan (06:04.269)
Mm-hmm.

Molly Geoghegan (06:13.727)
Mm-hmm.

Molly Geoghegan (06:24.269)
Boom yeah giving your younger self the words you might have needed to hear. Yeah

Mikey Mioduski (06:28.872)
Yeah, and yeah, it's okay to major in some weird shit or like have a minor like I did. It was like, yeah. Latin American Caribbean studies, Molly, which as I said, as I wrote, like, yeah, I'm sure my parents weren't stoked about that, but little old me, was like, maybe one day the greatest Super Bowl halftime show ever will be purely in Spanish.

Molly Geoghegan (06:33.421)
Yeah, go ahead and tell the listeners what you majored and minored in.

Molly Geoghegan (06:42.933)
Anything can happen in the words of Ellie Gould.

Molly Geoghegan (06:51.905)
Yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (06:57.458)
And I wanna get the most out of that, you know? And it totally paid off, so the joke's on everyone else. Yeah. Yes.

Molly Geoghegan (06:59.123)
Yeah, totally. Exactly. Thank you. Bad Bunny finally making that happen. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that also brings in what we have talked about is a North Serf ghost ranch is combining right brain and left brain. We've talked so much about how creativity and storytelling is integrated into every industry, every person we've ever had on the podcast, you know, so no one has a.

a straight shot, you know, linear career necessarily. And so how did you go about, so if that's your north star, how did you go about, you're like, all right, what, you know, you mean the pre-eclipse am I using, how am I putting this together, what went into your storyboarding?

Mikey Mioduski (07:24.853)
Yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (07:32.256)
Yeah. Sure.

Mikey Mioduski (07:37.995)
Yeah, I'll kind of show you the, like where I landed at least on the setup of this presentation, Molly. Yeah, so I think, you know this, I talked about this a lot, but like I wanted to go into advertising. You know, I did not go into set out to become a PowerPoint designer for corporate B2B America, you know, but I love it. But that was a journey, you know, and so I, there was,

Molly Geoghegan (07:40.405)
Yeah, get it up here.

Molly Geoghegan (07:45.983)
Ooh, I haven't seen it yet. Premier for me. Check it out.

Molly Geoghegan (07:54.935)
Yes.

Mikey Mioduski (08:07.03)
as a student then of advertising though, because I've always been weird about irreverent ads. love to collect, I would collect the latest Sports Center print ad, or I always got a kick out of those Old Spice commercials and ads and stuff when they were kind of just doing some weird stuff. I don't expect this from a deodorant company. I started the talk.

Molly Geoghegan (08:23.969)
Yes, yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (08:30.177)
Mm-hmm.

Mikey Mioduski (08:34.57)
just saying like, I wanted to go into advertising and I showed this funny, know, LeBron James, my favorite commercial ever where LeBron plays like four characters, you know, the grandpa who's like, and then meanwhile LeBron, LeBron's like not saying anything, he's just training in the pool and then it's just funny, there's like, what is this? And it's quirky and it was made by my favorite ad agency ever, Widen and Kennedy, so I was like, look, like I really wanted to do.

Molly Geoghegan (08:51.244)
Ha ha.

Mikey Mioduski (09:02.804)
this is what I wanted to do. I wanted to work for Widen and Kennedy. And you might know them even more from the most famous tagline that's ever been made, you know, just do it, which changed culture, right? It didn't just help sell shoes. It actually like brought a lot of people to Nike that weren't necessarily athletes. They just like kind of bought into this sort of like mantra. But Molly, I guess you read the post.

Did you know this story about where the just do it tagline came from?

Molly Geoghegan (09:36.678)
no, no, didn't. Yeah. Give, give the listeners a little sample.

Mikey Mioduski (09:38.295)
All right, so yeah, so I was like, you I was thinking, Molly, I would tell a little story, because we know that's kind of fun. So, you know, that's what I did, was like, but did you know where this came from? So they told a story about this guy, Dan Wyden, who founded Wyden and Kennedy Copywriter, turned creative director, and they had just sold Nike five TV spots, but for five different products at Nike, like five different lines.

created by five different teams and Wyden, like the night before this really important pitch to go convince Nike that these were the spots was just kind of worried, you know? And he knew they were good, but he was like, they're disparate, you know? They're all different and that's, he wanted something to hold them together. And so he was like kind of scrambling and he's like, I think it needs a tagline. And...

Molly Geoghegan (10:33.366)
Mm-hmm.

Mikey Mioduski (10:34.283)
There's this really good video that we'll link to in the post that talks about the story. Long story short, there was this dude a decade earlier who was also from Portland apparently and so that's why he was on Wyden's radar named Gary Gilmore who murdered two people in Utah and when he was convicted and he asked to be for the death penalty and it's kind of, it's like made the news is really bizarre.

Molly Geoghegan (10:47.405)
Mm-hmm.

Molly Geoghegan (10:52.993)
Yes.

Molly Geoghegan (11:03.511)
Yeah, intense.

Mikey Mioduski (11:03.607)
And when they said, hey Gary, what are your last words? He said, let's do it. And the story of when that, so then it just kind of hit him and it's like, you know, the light goes on that, what that genius Mollie we talk about, it just kind of came to him. He's like, let's do it. And he's like, I don't like the let's part. Let's do just, and because he didn't want, yada yada. So then the story goes, like Phil Knight is like, I hate it. He's like, no, we don't need a tagline.

Molly Geoghegan (11:33.11)
Mm-hmm.

Mikey Mioduski (11:33.237)
Why didn't kind of push for it? He said like, just trust me, let's try it. And so I then, you know, kind of just wanted to show the impact of what that did, which, you know, in 1987, before Just Do It, they were at like 877 million. Decade later, they're at 9.2 billion, but the market share for that segment jumped from 18 to 43%. So damn near half of the shoes being sold post Just Do It were Nike.

Molly Geoghegan (11:49.397)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Molly Geoghegan (11:59.317)
Right, right.

Mikey Mioduski (12:02.934)
And so then this is where I kind of tried to bring it all back, Molly, like, you know, Dan Whiten said, I was never a good student. I was just really curious. so this whole talk, and then there's this talk, video I played about Basquiat, which ends with Steve Jobs saying, the great artists actually steal. They don't come up with stuff out of nowhere. Creativity is just connecting things. So.

Molly Geoghegan (12:25.868)
Yes.

Mikey Mioduski (12:29.652)
I kind of then just went on and showed a couple other examples of other really cool things in history that were basically just the result, big breakthroughs that were the result of someone just being deeply curious and connecting two different worlds. So Steve Jobs, when he dropped out of Reed College, he was like, what am I going to do with my life? They let him like audit classes he was interested in. And he like sat in on a calligraphy class.

and then he gets into computers and someday he's like, I wish there could be a computer that actually had beautiful typography, which we know like the Mac did. know, Rick Rubin, kind of like bridging the worlds of like mindfulness with music. He's not about like formula, but about like making sure his artists are chasing a feeling as well. And we know he's produced some great stuff. This is where I partnered up with like AI Molly for the first time as a research partner. So like,

Molly Geoghegan (13:03.947)
Mm-hmm. Beautiful. Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (13:17.153)
Mm-hmm.

Molly Geoghegan (13:26.796)
Mm-hmm.

Mikey Mioduski (13:27.188)
My sparring partner throughout this was Claude, who I was like, hey, this is my thesis. Are there other examples that you think prove it or disprove it? And this is where I learned a bunch more. Some guy named George de Mestral was a Swiss engineer. He liked to go hiking and hunting in the Swiss Alps. And you would always wonder why his dog would come back with these barbs all over his fur. So he took it just because he's curious, puts it under a microscope.

Molly Geoghegan (13:36.566)
Mm-hmm.

Molly Geoghegan (13:51.533)
Right.

Mikey Mioduski (13:56.139)
sees these like looping patterns, goes and invents Velcro. You know what mean? And so that's exactly like Sarah Blakely of Spanx, know, she was not, she didn't go to fashion design school. This is what I really wanted to tell everyone. It's like, no, she was selling fax machines. had these pantyhose that were like really uncomfortable. She's really good at sales. One day she busts out the scissors.

Molly Geoghegan (13:57.889)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, right. Solves a problem as well. Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (14:13.452)
Mm-hmm.

Molly Geoghegan (14:18.733)
Mm-hmm.

Mikey Mioduski (14:26.068)
and is like, huh, that feels a lot better. And it still does the thing I wanted and they don't bunch. a lot of hard work, leveraging her soft skills, her people skills, create Spanx, billion dollar company. And so I think there's honestly endless examples like that. But the connective tissue and what I wanted to talk about, really to fire them up is just say, I don't think it matters what you study. I actually just think it matters that you're

Molly Geoghegan (14:34.016)
Mm-hmm.

Molly Geoghegan (14:43.126)
Mm-hmm.

Mikey Mioduski (14:55.392)
curious and that you're paying attention and that someday you might connect some dots that are gonna like lead to some crazy breakthrough versus staying in one vacuum studying one thing and that's all you know I think there's something about the breadth and those connections that can be can lead to incredible things down the road

Molly Geoghegan (15:16.183)
Boom. And just to reiterate, your first line on the slide you started sharing there was, your liberal arts mind might be your greatest asset. North star. To me, I mean, that's what I would take away from that. And then we're gonna show this in little clip, but the Venn diagram kind of connection of being like this part of your brain and this part of your brain. Connect, there's some connection there, right? Like find the cross, the crosshatching between, yeah, the dog.

Mikey Mioduski (15:23.072)
Yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (15:29.866)
Yeah. Right.

Mikey Mioduski (15:36.671)
Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (15:41.069)
and you're going hunting with and the problem that you need solved. And I think you see that across like so many industries, whether it's yeah, music, design, obviously technology. Yeah, and Nike, had no idea the murder reference, but it makes sense. did I mean? And they probably don't wanna like totally promote that.

Mikey Mioduski (15:41.892)
Yeah.

Exactly.

Mikey Mioduski (16:00.596)
I don't think they're...

Molly Geoghegan (16:01.823)
Yeah, but that's like a, it was a cultural moment if this was like a really like an intense case blown out across the state, like, you know, all in every news outlet. And so for it to take a line and then change it for their own purpose is really interesting. And it's like, that's, yeah, it just goes to show that you can find storytelling inspiration anywhere. Yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (16:07.478)
Yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (16:19.83)
Yeah, and then exactly Molly. So then I tried to bring it, know, we like a good callback closure, red thread. And so I then told a little bit of like, okay, so then I was in your shoes and I didn't know what to do. I stumbled, I thankfully got this incredible opportunity as an internet Activision, the video game company, and that just opened my door into marketing and advertising. so then, yeah, so then I'm like, okay, back to this Venn diagram thing. It's like,

Molly Geoghegan (16:26.861)
Of course, of course.

Mikey Mioduski (16:48.106)
Ghost Ranch was really just born out of, hey, I studied advertising and branding, but I started working in B2B tech and I noticed that these presentations weren't that creative. And I think a little effort went a long way and so, boom, Ghost Ranch was born. And then after doing lots and lots of presentations for lots and lots of people, we noticed that good presentations aren't just good slides. It's not just a good story.

Molly Geoghegan (16:53.473)
Mm-hmm.

Mikey Mioduski (17:17.054)
and it's not just good delivery, it's like a combination of all three. you, and me, Molly, we've been talking about story screen and stage, and that's like sort of the methodology with which we plan story camp activities. And so again, it's just like, I don't know, there's something with this Venn that got me so fired up, and it's like two worlds coming together or more lead to these like really cool insights.

Molly Geoghegan (17:29.537)
Yeah. Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (17:41.741)
Yeah. And it was just the, and it echoes the exact image of right brain, left brain, in my opinion. You know, that we've seen that and that comes across like we've had that image change throughout the Ghost Ranch branding for many, years. So it's cool to see. So yeah, love it. So I'm seeing, yeah, what an amazing story. The visuals look great as we're seeing. How did it feel? What was this? Tell us about the space a little bit, the stage kind of vibe, the setup they gave you, where you mic'd.

Mikey Mioduski (17:47.018)
Yeah, exactly.

Mikey Mioduski (17:54.486)
Right, right.

Mikey Mioduski (18:05.226)
Yeah, yeah. was, they had a proper podium, which yeah, like a lectern with a, I was, but I had a lot of video and I still wanna talk to someone about what's too much video, when's it right, but I had like three or four probably, I do, and it gives you a chance to drink some water. But yeah, was pretty, there's one big overhead.

Molly Geoghegan (18:11.093)
Okay, yeah, so you're like, you a little stuck at the podium?

Molly Geoghegan (18:22.367)
Yeah, you love a clip.

Molly Geoghegan (18:28.991)
Yeah, yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (18:34.496)
thing behind me, like an old school projector thing. And the room was pretty wide. No one wanted to sit in the front row, maybe one or two. I found my anchors, as Amy Cuddy told us at StoryCams. You know, they, I think, so when I know, okay, part of them have to be there to fulfill, you gotta go to so many lectures, check, check, check.

Molly Geoghegan (18:43.565)
Mm-hmm.

Molly Geoghegan (18:47.437)
Yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (19:00.714)
But then you see the couple that are nodding their heads and they're like, like one kid laughed at the LeBron commercial. I could tell like if you had seen it. yeah, and so that was it. Like I found my, the couple people who I knew, my little pods who I knew needed to hear this. And I just kinda, you know, kinda focused on them, but it was kind of a wide room. They're just at their, yeah, kinda theater style, I guess.

Molly Geoghegan (19:03.17)
Mm-hmm.

Molly Geoghegan (19:17.378)
Mm-hmm.

Molly Geoghegan (19:21.217)
Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (19:25.367)
Tough, yeah, and like tough audience, young people, so hard to capture their attention. I actually think clips are probably really useful to like break up through, just to validate that, to break up the different patterns and ups and downs of your talk. Did you have a mic or at all? A mic, or was it just a projecting?

Mikey Mioduski (19:31.466)
Yeah, maybe.

Mikey Mioduski (19:44.371)
I, yeah, it was like the mic on the podium. So it was nice setup. And I had my laptop in front of me where you just like plug it in so I could see my, like what the next slide is what I like to look at. Yeah, exactly.

Molly Geoghegan (19:48.041)
Okay. Gotcha. Gotcha.

Mm-hmm

Molly Geoghegan (19:56.095)
Yeah, yeah, had projector view or presenter view. And did you wear those glasses? Full, full, full chin-z. Let's appeal to the, yeah. Like, who is this guy?

Mikey Mioduski (20:02.484)
No, I thought about, yeah, going full creep. Yeah, yeah. But, so then, I didn't know how much time I was supposed to have. I thought it was like longer. And then I was kinda like getting through it, and then I looked back at Steve, who brought me in, and he's like, holds up his hand like five minutes. I was like, all right. So, I think I just kinda wrapped it.

Molly Geoghegan (20:18.332)
shoot.

Molly Geoghegan (20:27.469)
He's like, I got 30 more slides. That's what I was gonna ask next.

Mikey Mioduski (20:31.534)
And there was really good questions. But the question that I loved was, you know, a gal who asked like, like, am I at a disadvantage because I think I want to go into marketing, we don't have any quote unquote, marketing classes at DePauw. And yeah, I think that's just when I, I think I scrambled to just say, you know, I probably said the best marketers I know are really good writers.

Molly Geoghegan (20:48.482)
Mm-hmm.

Mikey Mioduski (20:59.03)
who can just understand storytelling. So I was like, lean into the electives, like take a bunch of writing classes, creative writing, maybe film studies, like communications, you know? But I think to my point, it's like, it's not about that. It's about, yeah, try all the, try it all. Because I think the best marketers are just kind of plugged in and tuned in to the world and a lot of different things, you know? Molly, like you're self-included, right?

Molly Geoghegan (20:59.245)
Mm.

Molly Geoghegan (21:08.077)
Mm-hmm.

Molly Geoghegan (21:16.224)
Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (21:26.731)
I do love some pop culture for sure. Yeah. I think as well, like I like how you said it. think people, good marketers pay attention so that you, when you say something, it's like still relevant to the moment and like speaks to the world that's happening. And I also think people that are good marketers are passionate.

Allow themselves to be passionate about something else in their own life, you know? Because if you're passionate about that, then you can kind of translate that passion to something else. Like, how does that look for me? And so how does it look for someone else? And so, yeah, could have been Afro-Caribbean studies. I minored in film and French, okay? So, yeah, exactly. And then, yeah, comms made its way up there, you know?

Mikey Mioduski (21:53.077)
Yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (22:00.372)
Right. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (22:08.436)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (22:10.057)
later, yeah, my master's was completely unrelated. then, but like also, but but like to our point, as we've talked about, like being in nonprofit and human rights, like massive gap in communication and media and any marketing. So there's like this interesting tie in that I do think crosses all the brains. Yeah. Stitches, stitches both sides. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's so strange. Yeah. It really does. You can find, yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (22:12.662)
You

Mikey Mioduski (22:23.978)
Yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (22:28.17)
Yeah, all roads lead to presentation life, know, like fundraising and like, I was just like, no matter what you do, hopefully you can sell your ideas, you know? So then I was like, hammer those soft skills too, friends, you know?

Molly Geoghegan (22:39.787)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Cool. Well, it sounds like, yeah, an engaging Q &A as well.

Mikey Mioduski (22:47.606)
Yeah, and then I got to go to lunch at Marvin's, shout out, garlic cheeseburger, you've been there. Yeah, yeah, with three students, like a little more, you know, diving in deeper. But I don't know, it's fun. I loved college and I still love going back and just being like, enjoy this, y'all. It's like, my dad would tell me and his department professor told him, was like, don't let the books get in the way of your education. You know, like there's so much.

Molly Geoghegan (22:50.349)
Yes, that's it. For those that don't know, yeah, a greasy cheeseburger.

Molly Geoghegan (22:58.391)
Sounds hard.

Molly Geoghegan (23:05.709)
It's...

Molly Geoghegan (23:16.012)
Mm.

Mikey Mioduski (23:17.034)
here going on and it's not just about the classwork itself. It's like you're learning how to learn and how to do all the things. It's good, yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (23:20.705)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, collaborate. Yeah, network. We love it. Well, another talk, another notch in the belt on the way to Ted Talkin, Mikey. Seems like a really good threads of talk and even like different threads of this I think you can use for different things. So very cool to see it coming together. How would you, yeah, how would you, how are you feeling? Rate yourself story screen and stage. Excited, right, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (23:34.997)
Yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (23:41.204)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (23:47.479)
I don't know. Yeah, I mean, was stiff there at a podium. Yeah, here's, I don't know. One or two kids, told me, like, it was like pretty, it's like, yeah, a lot of these are like really boring and I actually really liked yours. It's like, thanks man. It's like, it was usually, I usually get something like, that was very different. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (23:53.353)
Use the room, maybe next time I could reuse the room more.

Molly Geoghegan (24:08.597)
Yeah, thanks, yeah, totally. Yeah, was low, you did a little better. That's what I'm hearing.

Mikey Mioduski (24:16.754)
I do think it was probably the most, it was different, probably.

Molly Geoghegan (24:19.903)
And your present, I mean, yeah, your design style, of course, is like eye catching. I'm sure it's way different than what they see. So I am not surprised by that. And again, but that is validating what we know and why we are still able to podcast, which is that presentations are on the whole pretty bad and boring. So like you to come in there, I mean, did you play yourself a walkout song?

Mikey Mioduski (24:32.458)
Yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (24:36.735)
Yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (24:42.358)
No, I should, yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (24:43.093)
If you got to do, if you got to, what would it be?

Mikey Mioduski (24:45.8)
yeah, Steely Dan, Never Going Back to My Old School, that's a good one. But obviously I probably would have played Beastie Boys. Yeah, yeah. Maybe Bad Bunny, I don't know. I'm just there right now.

Molly Geoghegan (24:49.355)
liberal arts. Okay.

Molly Geoghegan (24:55.475)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah. the scene.

Molly Geoghegan (25:02.005)
Yeah, the liberal, yeah, put all the liberal arts pieces together. We'll do a matchup of the three.

Mikey Mioduski (25:05.526)
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, but Molly, the, so one thing I played with a little AI trick I wanted to explore. Have you heard of 11 labs? It's like voiceover. Um, some, something, I think that's what it's called. So I wanted to try, cause I'm a very much an auditory learner. And for me, it's just like reps hearing myself or talking through it over and over and over helps to like, live it to like know what I want to say. And then you can riff.

Molly Geoghegan (25:17.023)
No, cool.

Molly Geoghegan (25:30.337)
Mm-hmm.

Mikey Mioduski (25:35.349)
So I was like, man, it was last minute, it's hour and a half hour drive. I tried exporting my talk track to 11 labs so that I could just like, as I was driving, just like listen to it over and over. And it wasn't like I was memorizing like the talk, but just some of these lines and stats that were kind of that I wanted to make sure I had in there. I think doing that, if I had done that, like if I had a big talk coming up, a Ted talk or something, I would.

Molly Geoghegan (25:56.506)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (26:03.085)
Here's a go.

Mikey Mioduski (26:05.398)
100 % do that. And then what did the Markatunist tell us? He said like he did, he would record himself on his iPad and then convert that into a transcript versus writing it all out and then trying to, so it's like, he would talk it out. Exactly. Yeah, but I think there is something to laying it down whether it's you or like some voiceover tool and then just kind of like listening back for a while to give.

Molly Geoghegan (26:06.721)
Nail that in.

Molly Geoghegan (26:19.817)
Mm-hmm. And then it was in his own voice of like the way he says it too. Yeah, I love that.

Molly Geoghegan (26:34.529)
Mm-hmm.

Mikey Mioduski (26:35.05)
to see how it does play.

Molly Geoghegan (26:37.259)
The other one I think we've heard from folks is...

translating your slides into index card, like one word from each slide to be like, can you look at just the index card with the one word or a couple of words and be able to launch it to like what your talk track was there? Once you're good, I think that's the step after listening to it for a few times. But if you really wanna dial that in and you're like, especially if you're not able to have presenter view, you're like totally there. But can you look at the index card? You're like, yeah, I know what I'm gonna say about this slide and I know what's behind me and stuff.

Mikey Mioduski (26:43.691)
Yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (27:02.494)
Right? Yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (27:09.088)
Yes.

Molly Geoghegan (27:10.025)
Very cool, yeah. We'll put a few things in the spice cabinet because these are a couple of great tools. I know we've been trying to do some AI integrations and how to leverage it for building a presentation. And as a final plug, I know that you've translated, talked about this experience a little more. If you're more of the blogger mindset and you want to hear more about Mikey's experience, he's blogging up on LinkedIn with a new newsletter series that I think is very fun and.

Mikey Mioduski (27:25.461)
Yeah

Molly Geoghegan (27:37.941)
I'm brag and you should You're a great writer.

Mikey Mioduski (27:39.008)
That's high praise from a writer, So yeah, Story Camp Dispatch is my newsletter. I feel like if I commit to a weekly brain dump of some sort, hopefully cogent, yeah, I just want to rebuild the muscle, Molly. And I think it's been good to synthesize and got two out. And so yeah, also if you want to get them via inbox, you can go to storycamp.com and sign up.

to follow along. I want to talk about things we're learning, both from the content that we consume, like in the authors and everything that we're doing with this presentation thinking study, but also a little bit of a behind the scenes and building story camp. We're learning a lot as we go. So anyone else out there trying to build an event or a community, hoping to shed some insights there too.

Molly Geoghegan (28:34.997)
Right, right, exactly. people, Story Camp is November 3rd through 6th in Boulder, Colorado this year and tickets are already selling so you might wanna pop over to storycamp.com and reserve your spot.

Mikey Mioduski (28:41.206)
Through six, that's right, in Boulder.

Mikey Mioduski (28:46.676)
Yeah!

Mikey Mioduski (28:51.488)
Bring a group, it's the ultimate offsite for a marketing team or a communications team, it's the best.

Molly Geoghegan (28:53.749)
Yeah, yes, this is for exactly tell. Yeah, exactly. We will, there will be more information being released, but it was a splash into the first, the first annual and we, yeah, there's nowhere to go, but up Mikey, you created something, you tapped into something important people are excited about, so.

Mikey Mioduski (29:04.95)
Yeah

Mikey Mioduski (29:10.822)
Uh-huh. It's fun. Yeah, we camping. All right. Well, Molly, jeez, thanks for being on the, you're a great interviewer. I really appreciate the gentle touch.

Molly Geoghegan (29:20.725)
Yeah, all right. Thanks for sitting in the hot seat. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Congrats on another talk down and hopefully inspiring some of our young presenters today. We love it.

Mikey Mioduski (29:31.668)
Right on. Well, thanks for having me. And Presentation Nation, thank you for listening. And until we meet again, keep on pitching.

Molly Geoghegan (29:38.359)
Keep on pitching.