PrezThanking 2025: What we’re thankful for (and how it can help you too)

Mikey Mioduski (00:01)

Welcome back to Presentation Thinking, aka the Storyteller Study Club. Molly, today we are here to give thanks. What are we thankful for? Let us give thanks.

 

Molly Geoghegan (00:10)

Let us give thanks.

 

Yes, you guys gather around the table. is our, Mikey, I think it's our third annual Prez thanking episode. The annual ⁓ Thanksgiving episode we release on Thursdays, Thanksgiving's on a Thursday. They had it first, so we had to adopt our episodes to adjust for this ⁓ funny little holiday that we, this feastful holiday. And what better way than to feast on some like,

 

Mikey Mioduski (00:23)

That's right.

 

Yeah.

 

Molly Geoghegan (00:44)

resources that we always stuff into the spice cabinet, but today is about the spice cabinet. That's what Prez thinking is about. It's about the pumpkin, the parsley, the PowerPoint tips.

 

Mikey Mioduski (00:52)

We're all up in that rosemary.

 

Okay, well, it'll be a quick

 

one. So Molly, ⁓ why don't you kick us off with maybe like, let's start with some tools and tips that we are thankful for.

 

Molly Geoghegan (01:06)

Yeah.

 

Yeah, that's

 

right. Yeah. Let's start with some tools and tips we're thankful for so everyone can get back to their family tables, their wicked viewings, et cetera. But this is an opportunity for us to bring in things that we've been thankful for this year in particular, and just in the presentation thinking world. Quick shout out to this new podcasting platform we're using, Riverside. There seems to always be a new form of technology that we adopt in some point of the year.

 

So thanks Riverside, unsponsored, but we're open. ⁓

 

Mikey Mioduski (01:45)

Yeah,

 

right. ⁓

 

Molly Geoghegan (01:48)

Riverside seems to be... This sounds scripted actually, Punky, but Riverside does seem to check a lot of boxes for our podcasting needs as a two-person show and can create a lot of fun video clips in a really easy way, separate tracks. That's important to me. If you have a YouTube channel, it seems like it's a great option. If you're a Twitch streamer, it seems like it's a great option. And if you just want to create media, I think it's a fun option. There's some good free...

 

Mikey Mioduski (01:49)

They need our audience, yeah.

 

Molly Geoghegan (02:17)

So you get a lot in the freebie version, but yeah.

 

Mikey Mioduski (02:18)

Yeah. And you

 

started, we started with old school Zoom and we were ⁓ locally recording as a backup with Audacity, which is free. We tried Descript. What's funny is like in the last probably 24 months, ⁓ everyone has some sort of transcription tool, you know, like probably my car does probably, you know, like tying my shoes. They're like, hey,

 

Molly Geoghegan (02:23)

We did.

 

Shout out to all us.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

There's so many. Yeah.

 

Mikey Mioduski (02:45)

We can transcribe this if you want. So it's like, it's a gimme. So at first it was like

 

Otter and now it's like everything will transcribe for you. And that's how I got my new nickname, Mike Juicy was through, think Otter called, Mikey Medusky and said, Mike Juicy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, and that I'm thankful for my new street name. ⁓ thank you Otter for that. ⁓ We are, yeah, so like, it seems like tools is the,

 

Molly Geoghegan (02:53)

Descript, ⁓

 

Yes.

 

My juicy. ⁓ Thank you, Otter. Yeah.

 

So many.

 

Mikey Mioduski (03:15)

has proliferated. We thought there was a lot of software a couple years ago, and you always see that loom escape of all the marketing apps out there, and dear God, it has exploded. So even in our presentation space, ⁓ I would say I'm thankful that there's more competitors on the market. I think that means the old guard needs to keep up in their game.

 

Molly Geoghegan (03:25)

Yeah. But now.

 

Thank

 

Mikey Mioduski (03:43)

designed for you slides in seconds. I think it's hilarious. Like I was doing like a little, I was just taking screenshots of every single slideware tool ever. And they all say, you know, like it's all slides in seconds, know, instant slides. And it got me laughing about Steve Jobs and thinking like, I wonder if he'd be stoked if his design team came up to him.

 

Molly Geoghegan (04:01)

Mm-hmm. Instant slides.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Mikey Mioduski (04:13)

minutes before his big keynote, Molly, and it was like, Steve, great news. We designed your slides in seconds. It's like, I wonder if that would have made his day. That's what he cared about, right? ⁓ Not about the content or what's being said or how, but ⁓ it's, yeah, the landscape is like, it's super fun and there's always gonna be these problems that emerge when.

 

Molly Geoghegan (04:21)

Excuse me. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

 

Yeah, the efficiency.

 

Mikey Mioduski (04:42)

especially now. Everyone at the company is starting to play around with different ones and making their own stuff. So I think the Franken-Dex stuff I think is also gonna proliferate and so ⁓ keep an eye on that. But I think there's really fun ones. Gamma just had some huge raise. ⁓ So that's one to start playing with. I think the biggest up and comer we saw in the last probably year is Figma Slides for sure because every design team ever now is on.

 

Molly Geoghegan (04:49)

Mm-hmm.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Mikey Mioduski (05:12)

Figma wagon and so just the fact that you can seamlessly start working, take all your design assets, you're there anyway, working in Figma slides, that's been probably our biggest shift from our purebred Adobe PowerPoint G slides package is now we're heavily involved in Figma. So shout out to collaborative tools, G slides really paved the way, PowerPoint, we found a helpful little... ⁓

 

Molly Geoghegan (05:19)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

 

Get in there.

 

Mikey Mioduski (05:42)

use, we work on Dropbox a lot and so Dropbox and Microsoft, there's a little link Molly we can give that we started to figure out ways to even do live versioning and shared ⁓ file work at the same time. Leveraging Dropbox and native on your desktop PowerPoint, that's pretty cool.

 

Molly Geoghegan (05:57)

Mm-hmm.

 

Yeah, and just to like add some emphasis there people, this is live editing hack to collaboratively change a PowerPoint in Dropbox, okay? So you can get the G slides feeling in PowerPoint. I know there's people listening that are frustrated with that. So this is a little hack that we are sharing, we are thankful for. ⁓ You're welcome. Yes, yes, yes, yes.

 

Mikey Mioduski (06:20)

guy.

 

Yeah, because it means you don't have to log into like SharePoint and all that like PowerPoint live

 

garbage, you know.

 

Molly Geoghegan (06:30)

Mm-hmm.

 

Mm-hmm. So collaborative slides. Let's go. That's the spirit of press thanking. Mikey, thank you for sharing that. Beautiful. I was gonna shout out, I think in this age of AI, like data visualization keeps coming up in a couple different ways, in old and new ways. Something we covered was a Ted talk by a data.

 

Mikey Mioduski (06:36)

Yeah, what else you got, Molly?

 

Molly Geoghegan (06:51)

a data nerd, I'm sure he'd claim, named Ben Wellington in episode 174, and he, in his spare time and interest, went and like mapped a lot of New York phenomenons and data. And I think it was just a great story, a couple of stories where he's mapping about, know, how many people are using the city by, or bikes and bike lanes in New York City, where do the most accidents occur in New York City, where the most parking tickets occur in New York City, so much so that he was able, he'd be blogging about these things. This is a 10-year-old

 

project that he had up on like Tumblr or something. So much so that he had mapped the spot with the most parking tickets was because of a very ill-signed parking spot. And so it got the city's attention, the Comptroller kind of people, they fixed it. And so it's a very micro example of how data visualization can truly affect change. And I know you interviewed Dr. Steven Frank-Canary from Northwestern who really specializes in visual data.

 

as well in episode 176. And I just think in this age of AI, people and in short attention spans, really do ⁓ need and are benefited by visuals with parts of that story. And so it's more important than ever to have accurate visual representations with your data. just, so just really don't underestimate that data visualization technology, I think is still going to be super, super important ⁓ in this.

 

Mikey Mioduski (07:51)

Mm-hmm.

 

Molly Geoghegan (08:20)

world of like as you know AI can build you any kind of like chart or graph but like just making sure that it's telling the right story the right way impactful yeah it can be it can really hold a lot.

 

Mikey Mioduski (08:28)

Yeah,

 

signals through all the noise and there's so much noise and yeah, being able to distill down and yeah, dashboards are the rage, know, but hooking in all the information from all the places into one spot that is clickable and, you know, sortable, all that, so fun, yeah.

 

Molly Geoghegan (08:42)

Dashboards, yes.

 

Mm-hmm

 

Yes, definitely,

 

definitely. So yeah, we've got like, yeah, we've got Riverside, collaborative presentation platforms, data viz, technology. And as always, this is a staple of the Press Thanking episode. We always shout out our Ghost Ranch YouTube series. Steve Sheets, the technical director of Ghost Ranch, who's out enjoying his best PTO time today, couldn't join us, but he's got an amazing series on YouTube of like, just going through these micro examples of

 

Mikey Mioduski (09:08)

Yeah.

 

Molly Geoghegan (09:22)

the troubleshooting PowerPoint problems that people have. And something that we just want to shout out is like always the videos that have done the best this year and one that consistently grows even though he posted it six years old and I just saw it in a Duarte newsletter recently was just shout, just remembering to group objects. Like don't underestimate this when you're knee deep in the Google slides.

 

Mikey Mioduski (09:47)

Yeah.

 

Molly Geoghegan (09:48)

and you've got something locked in and you're so frustrated with what you're grabbing and not grabbing in the slides. Like just don't forget to lock that shit in and it's really easy. And he also, with that episode, we need to have him updated, but he troubleshoots what to do when PowerPoint won't let you do it. I know you've run into that Mikey where it like locks up on you.

 

Mikey Mioduski (10:06)

Yeah, okay,

 

yeah, because something was going on. I don't even, you know how Molly, sometimes your your quick commands, you don't even know what you're pressing because your body just does it. I guess it's like, you click all the objects, I press, I'm on a Mac, so it's Option, Command, G, that groups them, and then you add Shift to that equation and it ungroups them. For some reason, in the last 12 months, there was...

 

Molly Geoghegan (10:12)

Mm-hmm.

 

Yes.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Mikey Mioduski (10:34)

something going on with an update in PowerPoint to where when I pressed command option G, was like, or maybe this was in G slides, it was taking me somewhere else. It was like they had changed my Mac OS so that that did something more on a system scale. It was crazy. Yeah, it threw my world upside down. I guess I took grouping for granted and it is, we should always give thanks for grouping.

 

Molly Geoghegan (10:42)

Yeah.

 

Yeah, it wasn't matching the program. Yeah. It's annoying.

 

Ever, yeah, don't take grouping for granted.

 

Give thanks for grouping. A couple other shout outs, how to transfer content between PowerPoint templates. It's super helpful if you're making a lot of similar type of decks, you know, for different teams, different purposes, different locations, going to different conferences. ⁓ That's a definite hit this year that he busted out. Go give that a watch. All of these things will be linked, of course, in the Spice cabinet. And then...

 

Mikey Mioduski (11:04)

Ooh.

 

Are we thankful

 

for templates? I think so, because I got one shout out from a CMO friend of ours this year. And he told me this project, ⁓ we did a corporate template for his company. And he was like the first time ever, like sellers came up to him and were like, this is the greatest thing that's ever happened to us. Yeah. So people, people geek out and they love, they appreciate a really well thought out, ⁓ functional and beautiful.

 

Molly Geoghegan (11:22)

Yeah, you know, I think so. I think so.

 

I know if

 

I love that. I love it. Yeah.

 

Mikey Mioduski (11:50)

PowerPoint template. Yeah.

 

Molly Geoghegan (11:51)

Yeah, and Steve

 

gets into like even if your sizes is different, like don't be scared to just like, you know, yeah, plug and play, plug and play with templates gives you so much freedom, so much freedom, don't shy away. He's got a nice little using chat GPT for content editing. I know everybody's on their own chat GPT hacks, but that was a hit this year. And...

 

Mikey Mioduski (12:00)

Yeah.

 

Molly Geoghegan (12:12)

And this is technically in March 2024, but he's got almost 10K views with it. So how do we extract media files from PowerPoint files? This is especially useful if yeah, you're handing all the files and the content off of certain deck and handing it to another team to go like use it for themselves as well. If you aren't using a template, if you want to just save all the files for future use so that you have like the native assets to that project and then you can just like pre-tracking that really well, it's a super useful thing to have. So.

 

might not think about it, ⁓ it's very, very useful. And you know, that kind of closes a little bit of a tech chapter for what we're thankful for, I know you and I have another kind of niche rabbit hole, which is that we're both subscribed to a number of newsletters, marketing, presentations, otherwise.

 

Mikey Mioduski (12:50)

Yeah.

 

Yeah. Well, in,

 

yeah, we've been kind of revisiting our, our newsletters and are like, is Mark, I think every year people like, is marketing still email marketing still a thing? And, I was at a, recent event, IMAX, you know, the meeting professional meeting there in Vegas and got to sit on it on a session by this dude, Jay Shweddelson.

 

Molly Geoghegan (13:06)

That's true.

 

Yeah. Hello.

 

Mikey Mioduski (13:26)

who you probably already follow if you're a marketer. He's on LinkedIn. He pumps out content. What does he run? Guru Conference ⁓ and email guru. So he sees billions of emails that they advise on. And I think they help essentially with event marketing, specifically with emails. And so he just gives real fast, real hot takes, and he's hilarious. so, Molly, I think I came back.

 

Molly Geoghegan (13:34)

school.

 

Mm-hmm. ⁓

 

Yeah.

 

Mikey Mioduski (13:55)

I think I saw him speak like two more times at IMAX because every time he was there, I was just like, I gotta get more. was writing so much down and he validated and he's kind of the contrarian view on, know, if everyone's doing this one thing, maybe we should ⁓ rethink that because it's, you know, so he's just got brilliant takes, ⁓ really funny and we like his newsletter. So yeah, Molly, I think you can have a link to it in our show notes.

 

Molly Geoghegan (14:11)

Mm-hmm.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Absolutely. Yeah, you you turned me on to Jay just recently and I've since gone to his guru conference subscribe to the newsletter Re-listen to his talk made a checklist for my own email marketing about like what some do's and don'ts have just updated stuff and I think Jay's a good example of like gets to the point it's minimally designed a lot of his stuff and He's just like yeah, just just giving you what you need to know and nothing else and he's doing it in a fun and not

 

Not cringey way and I think yeah, shout out Jay. We're excited to have you on the cast Another another newsletter. I just got a show especially if we're uploading these to YouTube Tom Fishburn our Our friend to the pod has been on he's been featured on the podcast last year and he Just getting his the mark attunist email newsletter is just a breath of fresh air If you just want a little just a little giggle once a week

 

Mikey Mioduski (15:07)

Mark a Toonist.

 

Molly Geoghegan (15:15)

making fun of poking fun at whatever marketing kind of shenanigan you're dealing with this one I will show is Here it is

 

Smartify everything and it's this image if you're watching on YouTube you see Why does every product have to be smart now and this person's looking at their toilet toilet that's syncing with Google Calendar and iCloud photos the Roomba the Roomba vacuum pay ransom over release videos of your ankles, you know There's a little ⁓ coffee cup that says need espresso pod subscription to continue and so it's just it's a it's a funny little ⁓ Way to just laugh at everything going on

 

Mikey Mioduski (15:40)

pay ransom.

 

Molly Geoghegan (15:55)

He's just got the pulse in such a beautiful absolute example of visual storytelling. Tom Fishburne, marketunist.

 

Mikey Mioduski (15:57)

Yeah.

 

I'm grateful

 

to see your inbox count too. You're not an inbox zero gal either. I have three times more than you, but I still, yeah. Yeah.

 

Molly Geoghegan (16:07)

I'm not, I'm not. It's three, it's three, ooh yeah. It's 3,000 for those that missed it. Yeah,

 

that's, and that's on whittling down the newsletters, yeah. And I will say that they do, some do get left unread, unless I get this new excitement with, Yes. yeah, thankful for that, thank God, yeah. Yeah, it's both, yeah.

 

Mikey Mioduski (16:18)

Yeah.

 

I'm thankful for the unsubscribe button that comes on top of in Gmail, you know, it's like, yes, yes, yes. But I don't think it's working, ⁓ you know, cause now you have to unsubscribe from like all 50 that they opted you

 

into.

 

Molly Geoghegan (16:37)

Yeah, I think sometimes I do feel like it kind of automates. You press the button, but then you still have to press. I think the emails are getting smarter. my god. Okay, so many fun guests we've had on this year, Mikey. So many people to be thankful for, and I'm gonna shout out some that I think brought in new ways of thinking and maybe even like bucked the system with their type of advice. Very much on that, on that kind of note. Ivan, Juanis Ruiz, shout out. He's been on the pod twice now.

 

Mikey Mioduski (16:40)

Yeah.

 

yeah.

 

Molly Geoghegan (17:06)

about his book, End Boring, and he has his own company as well coaching people, ⁓ presentation ⁓ wait John edit this out no I'm forgetting presentation lab ⁓ yeah public speaking lab that's it public speaking god it's public speaking lab I've linked it so many times Yvonne's has his own company public speaking lab where he helps coach people for speaking advice as well and he's just someone that really

 

Mikey Mioduski (17:20)

Public Speaker Lab? What is he? Is it?

 

Molly Geoghegan (17:35)

has those out of the box hot takes like Jay, the email marketing, but really actionable tips, just being able to practice your presentation in public, ⁓ kind of like bucks the system with like, the greatest speakers we of all time aren't necessarily like business people, it's like people that we see or these, know, in wrestling, like he looks to wrestling, he looks to con artists, you know, he's like, we're more enraptured by these kind of like... ⁓

 

Mikey Mioduski (17:50)

Right.

 

Yeah, cult leaders.

 

Molly Geoghegan (18:00)

Yeah, more media pop culture every day or even dark figures Yeah, where it's like we're more enthralled by those kind of figures than we are like necessarily the the Steve Jobs even though I think as we are delving into the Steve Jobs Talks Mikey, know, has it has its own merit. But yeah, I think Yvonne's POV is really interesting

 

Mikey Mioduski (18:17)

But yeah.

 

Because

 

I think I respect his approach because he He learned the rules so that he could break him right he he went through the training with Dale Carnegie He learned he was a facilitator for them and for others who teach the more by the books, know Toastmasters, this is how you do it. And so I think only someone who's done that and gone deep Can then say you know what? Some there's some outside thinkers who were doing this a little better and let's borrow from them as well. So when we know it's a

 

Molly Geoghegan (18:26)

Yeah, learn.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Yeah.

 

Mikey Mioduski (18:49)

We know we were impacted by a book or a speaker or a Ted Talk when you and I keep mentioning it for like 20 more episodes. It's like, I feel like Yvonne's name has come up constantly since we talked to him and he's just such a fascinating guy. Yeah. And then Chris Lum Chin, we're so glad she came into our world. Yeah, we, man, someone who was again, a practitioner of graphic design, but really wanted to become an educator.

 

Molly Geoghegan (18:56)

Yep, yep, exactly. A lot. Thanks, Yvonne. Totally. We're glad to have him around our table.

 

your friend.

 

Mikey Mioduski (19:19)

And she was turned out like stumbled as we all do into presentation design. And so she became ⁓ a PowerPoint, you know, like a deck slayer for some big corporations. And now she's teaching the youth. And what I loved, please listen to her episode. If you are an aspiring design professional or like a presentation designer, she had some really cool nuggets of wisdom. ⁓ And what's really

 

Molly Geoghegan (19:40)

Mm-hmm.

 

Mikey Mioduski (19:48)

inspiring about chrysalis is her her cause that she's doing outside of educating and design herself is her her project hello world studio there in los angeles where she's trying to help solve that stupid problem which is like entry level graphic design ⁓ you need two to three years experience well like where are you going to get that and so ⁓ hello world is putting

 

Molly Geoghegan (20:10)

Mm.

 

Mikey Mioduski (20:16)

fresh designers in the saddle on real world projects. ⁓ And so it's like a win-win-win for clients, for aspiring designers to get their chops, cut their teeth on real projects and gain that experience that's impossible to break into.

 

Molly Geoghegan (20:24)

Mm-hmm.

 

Yeah, definitely. If you're looking to hire some designers, check them out. Or if you're kind of an emerging designer yourself, check them out to join the cause. Yeah, Chris Lim, that'll be episode 183 in the spice cabinet. Another amazing artist really that we met this year, all the way from Australia, Haley Langsdorf for doodling by hand. She calls herself Chief Doodler, has such an interesting niche on the market where she got her start.

 

Mikey Mioduski (20:39)

Yeah.

 

Molly Geoghegan (21:02)

Literally using like Sharpies and colored pens ⁓

 

during her meetings and like kind of just transcribing what was going on. She's very visual note taker and we love that kind of style and she's literally gone on to create like this role as a live scribe at various events, conferences, big board meetings and stuff. ⁓ Especially as people are getting to like SKO getting ready to get those for next year. Consider having a live scribe at your event. She says her clients seek her out specifically because it's not AI generated and she's like this live artist. Like if you've ever seen it at like a wedding.

 

or something like a circus, know, you sometimes will see people doing like ⁓ real-time ⁓ illustrations and paintings. This is kind of what she does. It's really cool to capture a moment and capture ideas at a big video conference. Her comp- yeah, her company's called Thoughts Drawn Out. Sorry, Mikey. Yeah, Thoughts Drawn Out. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

 

Mikey Mioduski (21:45)

So cool.

 

Yeah, that does remind, yeah, is that thoughts drown out. I love it. And she's down in Australia?

 

Very cool. ⁓ Another friend of the show, Cameron McGee, who runs Avad3, and it's so funny, he's such a humble guy. He's the owner of this very successful event production company that does gigs all over the country. ⁓ But Cameron just wanted to come on and represent.

 

the perspective of just some guy from the crew. Everyone who's worked in marketing has worked probably an event or hundreds. And so we know the impact of events intimately. And there's always like the crew, the production guys, and Cameron just wanted to bring us some thoughts. And so it turned into a series of like, of what'll be three episodes where Cameron gave some pointed advice, some do's, some don'ts, best practices on.

 

Molly Geoghegan (22:24)

Mm-hmm.

 

Mikey Mioduski (22:50)

everything from rehearsals to running the actual event ⁓ and then the team that you need to be there. I think we're gonna even get into some ⁓ budgeting stuff, which I think might be a very popular episode.

 

Molly Geoghegan (22:54)

stage setup.

 

Yeah.

 

Yeah, exactly.

 

Cameron, thank you for your time. It's a three part series. Two parts are out right now. We'll link those and the third one is coming. At the top of the year, Mikey, we had an amazing like self-starter PMM powerhouse product marketing manager, Hattie the PMM. You might know her from LinkedIn because she's created such a name for herself there. That's her full

 

Mikey Mioduski (23:09)

Yeah.

 

Molly Geoghegan (23:26)

That's her full name, Hattie the PMM. And her episode 156 was just full of amazing PMM, not only PMM insights, PMM insights, but just self-starting ideas and ways to like positioning and self-branding. ⁓

 

advice and it's just so useful in again in this day and age of like there's so much content and stuff out there how do you be strategic with it she's so intentional with everything she does it's a joy to follow her on linkedin in the age where linkedin is becoming sometimes a little bit stale we were talking about this so how did the pm give her a give her look and a follow if you're a pm yeah

 

Mikey Mioduski (24:02)

It's a Patty, she's so cool.

 

Molly Geoghegan (24:04)

Unexpected guest, I'm really thankful for this year. Mikey, we got an email from none other than Jimmy Gibson, amazing marketer himself, but also has an entire career separate and adjacent to marketing as a magician. First magician to come on the cast. Jimmy really showed us, Mikey, I know you listened to this episode after recording and saw how gullible I was with this magic trick that he did. This one is on YouTube as we start to upload episodes to YouTube.

 

Mikey Mioduski (24:20)

Right?

 

Molly Geoghegan (24:34)

You can watch me just be overly amazed at the magic tricks Jimmy Chet, but I just I really feel like Jimmy proves that point that we have always always gotten at that presentation skills can be found all around us and more than that he's really built out these ⁓ these blueprints of his his magic trick scripts. He calls it the magic script. He also has something called the five fingers of marketing that relates to magic.

 

to build anticipation for during a presentation, keep people's interest. And, you know, I think his stuff is especially useful if you have to persuade someone of something, because think about a magic trick. You have to have them, their buy-in, you have to have the rapport, they have to trust you a little bit. He is, he's a master. And so if you are in that realm of like needing, you're building something out like a deck or a project where you have to convince someone of something, listen to Jimmy's episode 175. Absolutely useful. Thank you, Jimmy.

 

Mikey Mioduski (25:25)

Yeah. And that it was like quintessentially

 

why we started this project, Molly of presentation thinking is like, it's not just about, you know, some more like tips and tricks on how to make better slides, but that holistic approach to persuasion, communication, and that third leg of the stool that we realize it's not just story and it's not just design, but it's that, how do you deliver it? How do you captivate? And so, ⁓ yeah.

 

Molly Geoghegan (25:31)

Yes.

 

Mikey Mioduski (25:55)

I think that's just an example, Jimmy, and your conversation there where we can go kind of wide and still learn something about better business presentations from a totally out there kind of ⁓ left field industry.

 

Molly Geoghegan (26:04)

Uh-huh. Totally.

 

Yeah.

 

And if you're a magician out there listening, we'd love to talk. Let's go. Let's get more magicians on the show. I know it's not just, it doesn't just stop at like people we follow and that have been on the cast. We've read a lot of books we're thankful for ever building our presentation book club library, right? Yeah, Mikey, what did you read this year that was, that you're thankful for? What's on the story graph?

 

Mikey Mioduski (26:15)

I know. Yeah.

 

Well,

 

okay. The two books I'll talk about were amazing because I got to meet both of these people and I got to introduce both of them at story camp. ⁓ Terry Zuplatt, former ⁓ White House Obama speechwriter of eight years wrote this incredible book called Say It Well. And Molly, think we're gonna have a little book club.

 

Molly Geoghegan (26:46)

Shout out.

 

Very cool.

 

think it'll be really cool to like maybe get his specific insight on the cast. Even listening.

 

Mikey Mioduski (27:00)

So anyone listening?

 

Yeah, yeah. Terry Zuplat

 

told, tells stories of, you know, even his own, I guess, imposter syndrome or fear of speaking. He was, was the person behind many of these famous speeches. But when then he was asked to get up and do it himself, it was some inner turmoil and talks about how he, he got over that. ⁓ It's a really good book for.

 

for anyone looking to go from pen to page, no, pen to page to podium, I think as he calls it. So Terry really sees it through from some really good perspectives as well on what it takes, like the preparation. He's got this really cool kind of mindset of 50, 25, 25, but half of the process is just thinking and getting your ideas straight before you even start writing. So really good book.

 

Molly Geoghegan (27:52)

So cool.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Mikey Mioduski (28:04)

⁓ The second one was presence from Amy Cuddy. You know, that's been out for a while and it really is close to what she covers in her ⁓ famous Ted talk, but that one is about kind of about trust like what what's underneath everything is like to be present in a conversation in a a speech in a room, you know, it's really about like connecting with somebody and making them feel special.

 

And the way to do that is to just like that exchange of trust. And without that, it's really hard to to persuade anyone of anything. So I don't know, it's got really good stories. It's really touching. I think it's a really cool book, kind of a self-improvement meets communication delivery and a confidence building kind of manual, if you will.

 

Molly Geoghegan (28:57)

Yeah, boom, always building out that library. ⁓

 

What a blast. my God, I mean, there's a million things we could continue to link here. This is already a pretty chunky spice cabinet of an episode. What do you think, Mikey? I think the last thing we just gotta give thanks for is ⁓ you, Presentation Nation, for listening. We've had one of our most listened to years yet, despite a few misses on a Thursday. Sorry about that while I did some traveling this year. And ⁓ Mikey, my co-host, thank you for your

 

Mikey Mioduski (29:19)

Yeah.

 

Molly Geoghegan (29:32)

Patience and flexibility through it all. What a blast. What a journey.

 

Mikey Mioduski (29:35)

Yeah,

 

and shout out editor John. Thank you so much for making us sound better than we actually are putting up with our many,

 

Molly Geoghegan (29:43)

Yeah, we got-

 

technical mishaps and we're out of a subtle teaser you guys

 

Mikey Mioduski (29:48)

Yes. ⁓ But yeah, it's, and shout out,

 

thankful as always to Nonoflores.com. Nono, I love, she's just so good at color ⁓ usage and her, every single illustration she ever creates for our show is, it just like brings joy to my soul. They're so good. I love it.

 

Molly Geoghegan (29:56)

illustrator. Yes.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Yes. And

 

if you found our show and saw, like found it through the illustrations, that's all NoNoFlores. You can find her ⁓ doing custom doodles down in Savannah, Georgia. Go give her a check out. She's so rad. We love her. All right, Mikey, we gotta go eat. Gotta go eat. Yeah. Let them get.

 

Mikey Mioduski (30:16)

Yeah.

 

Right. Yeah. Okay. Are you going to eat some turkey? Yeah. Watch some wicked.

 

Molly Geoghegan (30:32)

Yeah, eat some turkey, watch some Wicked, probably more popcorn than turkey if I'm being honest. But I hope everyone has the ratio they need for their holiday. yeah, there you go, perfect. Thanks, Presentation Nation. Everybody, in the meantime, we'll talk, hold on, I'm gonna back up.

 

Mikey Mioduski (30:40)

Yeah, probably more football than Wicked for me. Yeah, alright Molly.

 

Molly Geoghegan (30:58)

You should doubt throw us. You always do it.

 

Mikey Mioduski (30:59)

Okay.

 

Well, thank you, Presentation Nation. Thank you, Molly. Hey, and until we meet again, keep on pitching.

 

Molly Geoghegan (31:09)

Keep on pitching.