Tell an SKO story with Kaitlyn Hines

Mikey Mioduski (00:02)
Welcome back to Presentation Thinking, AKA the Storyteller Study Club. This is Mikey Medusky. I'm joined by Molly Gagan. And Molly, coffee is for closers. That's something that people say at a big sales kickoff meeting, I'm fairly sure.

Molly Geoghegan (00:18)
I've never, I believe you. Always be closing, always be closing. We've said that, we've said that, yeah. Presentation Nation, welcome. If you're just tuning in for the first time and you're like, what the hell is gonna happen here? ⁓ We have a very special episode, a bit of a show and tell that we've been teasing at for a long time because we are put on, it's probably sponsored by Ghost Rancher Communications, Presentation Design Agency, full of.

Mikey Mioduski (00:19)
or always be closing, I don't know. Let's go sell a lot of stuff. Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (00:43)
amazing designers making amazing slides for really cool clients and we I mean pretty much every project Mikey that we like to hear about from the ranch we want to show off on the cast and this one if you are just coming out of scos season will be especially useful for your post mortems you're planning we have creative director Caitlin Hines from the ranch on the pod with us welcome Caitlin

Kaitlyn Hines (01:11)
Hello! Happy to be here, excited!

Molly Geoghegan (01:13)
Yay! First podcast sound effects. Ding ding ding ding ding. We do have a little sparkle for that. ⁓ Mikey, yeah, you've declared this the year of our show and tell. So I know this was a big push for you. Let's show off projects.

Mikey Mioduski (01:18)
Yeah.

Yeah, mean, Caitlin's one of the best

presentation designers in the world. And now as associate creative director, deals with like higher and higher level types of engagements. ⁓ And Caitlin, I know you're coming out of a big beefy sales kickoff push for a big tech client, a big tech company. And so we wanted to pick your brain and see like what lessons you walked away with, you know, any big insights. And then yeah, if there's a couple of slides that you thought were...

Kaitlyn Hines (01:32)
you

Molly Geoghegan (01:33)
We know it.

Mikey Mioduski (01:57)
Maybe could give people some pointers to when they're thinking about you know more engaging stuff for their next sales kickoff Yeah, we wanted to have you on so first. Will you tell us a little bit of like? What your background was in design and how many animals you have ⁓ and where you're located?

Molly Geoghegan (02:15)
Just a couple things to get through.

Kaitlyn Hines (02:17)
Yeah.

Yeah. So as far as design background, I... Sorry, I'm really nervous.

Molly Geoghegan (02:26)
⁓

Mikey Mioduski (02:26)
Are

you good? You good? Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (02:27)
I love it. You're good. You're good. We're hanging out.

Kaitlyn Hines (02:30)
Okay. ⁓ so yeah, as far as the design background, I've worked in agency and in-house advertising and then kind of found my way over to the niche of presentation design. I am based out of East Tennessee. That's where I am now, but I did grow up in Michigan. I spent a good little chunk of time in South Florida, ⁓ and then made my way to the mountains. And that allowed me to have a lot of animals.

Molly Geoghegan (02:33)
much.

Yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (03:00)
Ha

Kaitlyn Hines (03:00)
I was just

telling Mikey and Molly before we got started that there could be the sound of a random cat attack in the background because we have seven cats and two dogs and a lot of farm animals, fish, chameleons, birds.

Molly Geoghegan (03:14)
my God. Okay, we're gonna talk about their names and behaviors in the

Mikey Mioduski (03:16)
So cool. It's a zoo.

Molly Geoghegan (03:19)
spice cabinet. It's gonna be a spicy spice cabinet. And we're gonna have some, I mean, this is gonna be some visual clips people, so maybe we can include some slides. We'll do a slideshow of the pet skateboard at the end. Like running through into PowerPoint. What was your first thought? Like I know, yeah, you're a really talented designer. What was your first thought when you were like, the encountered presentation design and you're like.

Mikey Mioduski (03:27)
Yeah, hey, yes.

Kaitlyn Hines (03:30)
Okay.

Molly Geoghegan (03:41)
Is this, this is lame, a lame version of design or what was going through your head?

Kaitlyn Hines (03:46)
Yeah, that's a good question. I think I've always had a love for presentations and presenting my work. And I've always put a pretty high value on how I present my work. so working in an ad agency in just previously in-house places, a lot of designers don't like designing presentations or don't really care how they present their work.

And I think I've always been the one going back in there and like quickly tightening things up. And, and I've also always gravitated towards pitching. And so a pitch deck has always been something I love to work on. ⁓ so I always found my way towards those types of projects. and so I think when I saw, ⁓ the opportunity to become a presentation designer, was like, Hmm, this might be something like I'm really interested in. And I started doing some research and the types of clients that we work with and.

and it got me excited. So that's how I kind of ended up here.

Molly Geoghegan (04:43)
Yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (04:45)
There's so many three letter acronyms ⁓ that happen in B2B, GTM, go to market, marketing. ⁓ Were you familiar with SKOs ⁓ prior to coming to Ghost Ranch, Kaitlyn?

Molly Geoghegan (04:51)
too many.

Kaitlyn Hines (04:59)
To be honest, I actually wasn't. ⁓ But now I'm very f-

Mikey Mioduski (05:04)
Yeah. And

Molly Geoghegan (05:04)
Yes.

Mikey Mioduski (05:05)
cause Molly, I was like, are we just so in our own little echo chamber? Cause here we are like late February and a lot of our clients are B2B tech companies. And we know like a lot of them have these rallies at the beginning of the year to do a couple of things, right? Celebrate the previous year, ⁓ get everyone on the same page for new products that they're about to go sell, get everyone fired up, ⁓ and rowing in the same direction. So it's about alignment.

Kaitlyn Hines (05:09)
Yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (05:33)
getting people hyped, calling out people who killed it the previous year, did a great job. And I think they go by a bunch of different names, like RKO, revenue kickoff is emerging ⁓ because marketing as well as sales are a lot of times incorporated at these. It's not just sellers. But other industries apparently do it too, right? It's like even packaged goods, ⁓ non B2B, like consumer brands might have like an annual sales meeting or global sales meeting, GSM. ⁓

Molly Geoghegan (06:02)
Mm-hmm.

Mikey Mioduski (06:03)
So they go by many a name, right? But I think it makes sense that you would do it at the top of the year to get everyone like, as a bit of a rally cry, like, let's go sell the crap out of this stuff, you know?

Molly Geoghegan (06:13)
Yeah, right,

right. It can often be a time where they're like, here's a bunch of the shiny new things in the box. Let's go team, like rah rah, total pep rally vibes.

Mikey Mioduski (06:23)
So then

you have the big stage stuff, but then you have either breakouts or training sessions, and that's where sales enablement comes in, and they do the more hands-on, right? Here's how you actually speak to this new thing. It's not just, so it seems like there's a good breadth of programming to both get people hyped, but also give them the tools that they need to go forth and crush it. ⁓ So, yeah, like.

Kaitlyn Hines (06:47)
Yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (06:51)
Can we get into a little of the nuts and bolts of like what you actually made and saw there, Caitlin?

Kaitlyn Hines (06:56)
Yeah, of course. yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (06:59)
And

just to brag a little bit, like, Caitlin, this was a project to get like the specific ask of this from our ⁓ big tech client was like, I asked the account side of things. I was like, how many hours were put into this? Like all of the SKO and there was a Presco and all this other project stuff. There's 15-ish decks at the one that was all said and done that you had a hand in quite a few of them. And...

Mikey Mioduski (07:02)
Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (07:24)
300-ish hours was the answer. So this is like not just a little thing. This was a huge, a huge thing to bite off. ⁓ yeah, we're really excited to talk about like the visual storytelling elements, go through some specific slides and ⁓ yeah, hear about your experience. ⁓ So yeah, what was your main focus, Katelyn, coming into this when the asks first dropped?

Kaitlyn Hines (07:51)
Yeah.

Yeah, so I mean, we can kind of start talking some of the things that Mikey was just mentioning on the breakouts and the mainstage keynote. And there might be little activities or interactive things happening at a SCO. ⁓ They usually have a theme, and that's kind of like the connective tissue between all of these different little elements of the sales kickoff. And so that

Molly Geoghegan (08:18)
Yes.

Kaitlyn Hines (08:20)
is kind of how we can jump into talking about maybe our first example. ⁓

Mikey Mioduski (08:23)
Mm-hmm.

Molly Geoghegan (08:26)
Yes, yes, the theme

reveal.

Kaitlyn Hines (08:30)
What is it?

Mikey Mioduski (08:30)
We've always been back and forth on

themes, because it's like, ⁓ the pros are like, it's conceptual, you can package up. It helps maybe hang the message of what you want the anthem for the year to be. And so you can kind of design around that. And then the naysayers of going heavy theme might say, yeah, but then it's going to be extra work. We want to be able to use these same assets out in the field, and we're going to have to convert it all from this weird

fancy theme into something more corporate. ⁓ I feel like, Caitlin, do you feel like this one split the difference a bit or was it like a totally brand new template for the event and stuff like that?

Kaitlyn Hines (09:12)
⁓ I would say it, it split, split the difference. mean, going into these, I kind of think of them as like a mini brand identity, almost like this brand dressed up for Halloween as a climber in this case, or an astronaut in the space section or the F1 race car driver. ⁓ but yeah, so we can

Molly Geoghegan (09:35)
So brilliant.

I love

that, I'm marking that. A theme is a mini brand identity dressed up for Halloween. It's perfect. Yeah, yeah.

Kaitlyn Hines (09:47)
Yeah, or like shape shifting. It's like the brand

Mikey Mioduski (09:47)
So good. Yeah.

Kaitlyn Hines (09:51)
shape shift into this other thing. So you can kind of still feel the essence. We're using, you know, the same brand colors, the same brand fonts. We're maybe bending the rules in a couple areas. But for the most part, we're staying on brand, but kind of reinventing the space that it's in, I guess.

Molly Geoghegan (10:13)
Mm-hmm.

Kaitlyn Hines (10:13)
⁓ so this example, ⁓ was for one of our larger tech clients and it was a climbing themed, ⁓ SCO. And so this was just a little sample of some of the slides. ⁓ in this case, a lot of, a lot of the larger keynote presentations will have award slides because they're kicking off the new year, but they're also celebrating their wins from the previous year. ⁓ so I'll put this in presentation mode real quick and click through.

Mikey Mioduski (10:33)
Mm-hmm.

Molly Geoghegan (10:37)
Mm-hmm.

Kaitlyn Hines (10:42)
But the idea here was like, how did we dress up these award slides kind of in that climbing, theming in more ways than one. ⁓

Molly Geoghegan (10:52)
So cool. Yeah, and if you're watching, is some sick elements. So click into the spice cabinet so you can see the visual aid here to look at. Ooh, that animation.

Kaitlyn Hines (10:53)
that

Yeah, yeah, so it's more than even just design, like how can we alter the animation and the transitions to also kind of feed into the theme and really make people feel like they're immersed. But yeah, so you can kind of kind of see there.

Molly Geoghegan (11:15)
Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Mikey Mioduski (11:22)
A lot of layering

in this one, huh? Was that a big, the background like climber image? Was that just like a big separate PNG? ⁓

Kaitlyn Hines (11:31)
yeah, that was a huge- a huge piece of my like, moving and morph but yeah, that was a fancy one but I kind of had the idea early on and I'm like, now I have to commit to this like, when I pulled them I was-

Mikey Mioduski (11:33)
It looked tall. Okay, yeah. Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (11:35)
Yeah.

You

Mikey Mioduski (11:44)
Okay. And then

Molly Geoghegan (11:44)
Yeah, yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (11:46)
was that a separate moon element too in the background or was that one like stitched in with the wall? Yeah.

Kaitlyn Hines (11:49)
Yeah, a separate moon slash

highlight and then yeah, we've got the mountain. It was really just that mountain piece with the climbers attached to it that is like what's moving.

Mikey Mioduski (11:58)
Okay.

Molly Geoghegan (11:58)
Mm-hmm.

Moving along.

this get the, Caitlin, this was all in PowerPoint, right? Y'all created it there. ⁓ I think people kind of forget how cool visual and those like kind of.

Kaitlyn Hines (12:05)
Yeah, this was completely PowerPoint.

Molly Geoghegan (12:12)
seemingly fancy video edits, and they are fancy in PowerPoint especially, ⁓ but to see them up on the keynote, you're like, surely someone, some video editor made that in After Effects, but you can do so much in PowerPoint, it's really amazing. And this is such a showcase. So you've got the award sequence of the mountain climbing through, and then there's also the beautiful just like stock of the mountain layered with those, like a cartography style map layer over that, and then the beautiful text.

Mikey Mioduski (12:36)
Mm-hmm.

Molly Geoghegan (12:39)
the colors kind of pulled from the brand, but also expanded from the brand a little bit. ⁓ Any other elements like those ⁓ that what you pulled from the brand that you're like, okay, we can sprinkle in little things and have like tie in things there.

Kaitlyn Hines (12:54)
Let's see. Let me look back real quick. Really just the overall essence of how we're using our typography and line work, hierarchy, the radius, the corner radius, even things like that are just nods back to the original ⁓ branding. ⁓ But yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (13:15)
Mm-hmm.

Kaitlyn, when the creative brief dropped for like that climbing was gonna be the, you know, Halloween costume, the theming, what did you think about, ⁓ like I heard, when we did, before we recorded, you were saying how they didn't want there to be any, you know, the process of climbing was that we're always climbing. There's never like a peak, like there's not an end because we're always just striving for kind of greatness and stuff. How did you kind of integrate that into the climbing theme story and that like?

Mikey Mioduski (13:40)
Hmm.

Molly Geoghegan (13:48)
they're not going to necessarily reach the peak. We're always climbing.

Kaitlyn Hines (13:51)
Yeah,

yeah, so that was definitely an interesting ask because when you're climbing, you immediately are like, we're going to throw peaks everywhere. that's where we're getting to our goal for this year or whatever. But this time they wanted to focus more on teamwork and how as you're climbing ⁓ people. And I guess I'm not a climber myself.

Molly Geoghegan (13:54)
Yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (13:57)
Summit. Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (13:58)
Yeah,

totally.

Kaitlyn Hines (14:15)
But I did look into it a little bit. They were kind of saying that like as you're climbing you you have some people that are taking breaks and the other people are kind of like helping take the load off and away with climbing ropes or something, but yes Just in the awards that we kind of just looked at like you notice We never reached a peak like we were moving up the whole time But yeah, like the idea was kind of that you can see you can count on your team members ⁓

Molly Geoghegan (14:27)
Yeah, yeah, totally.

Mikey Mioduski (14:36)
Yeah.

Kaitlyn Hines (14:44)
as we're keeping that forward momentum, you do need to break yourself.

Molly Geoghegan (14:47)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (14:51)
Can I ask you a question about ⁓ the mechanics or the workflow for award shows? I know these have to be super top secret because they never want the names to get revealed. ⁓ Did you have a pretty normal time frame to work on these? Or were these sort of a last minute, add the headshots, finalize the names, check for typos in the names? Because I know that would be a horrible mistake is to spell somebody's name wrong when you're honoring them.

Kaitlyn Hines (15:19)
Yeah, I would say like creatively, we we get a little bit more time on these to like kind of come up with that, you know, mini branding for the thing. then as far as the content coming in, we are like running alongside like parallel with them, kind of getting information up until the buzzer and like those award slides specifically that we just talked about.

I was like making little climbers on the mountain and I was like, you know, women, men, like, what should I do? Like maybe they're wearing a helmet. And then of course they're like, we would actually like them to match. And so I'm putting ⁓ ponytails on climbers like last second. But what's funny, yeah. So we were going to talk about Molly, kind of that LinkedIn engagement that we saw, but.

Mikey Mioduski (15:51)
Mmm.

Molly Geoghegan (15:54)
Mm-hmm.

Mikey Mioduski (16:01)
No way.

Molly Geoghegan (16:01)
Right, yeah. It's these funny details.

Mikey Mioduski (16:06)
Yeah.

Kaitlyn Hines (16:13)
specifically, she was one of the ones where I'm like, glad I added that ponytail because that's the one that she had posted on her link.

Mikey Mioduski (16:20)
She posted

one of your slides. ⁓ Yeah, because she received the award. That's so cool.

Molly Geoghegan (16:21)
Yeah, got some public shout out.

Kaitlyn Hines (16:25)
the award. Yeah. Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (16:27)
Mm-hmm,

yeah. And that becomes like, that's, ⁓ you know, like we've had webinars about billboard slides, like that's something, almost a souvenir, right? Where someone, if you get out, like at that point in the talk where there's people pulling their phones out and taking a photo, they're like, my name's on the thing. Like, that's like a souvenir, you know? That's getting to take home and kind of keep on your little printout at your desk or something. So that's really like a special moment to be part of.

Kaitlyn Hines (16:50)
Yeah, it definitely felt really cool to see that and like something I didn't even think of like that I would be possibly impacting like some award winner that like doesn't know us at all but is like, wow, like I feel good about winning this and look at how cool it looks like it's it's linkedin, you know, aesthetic approved.

Mikey Mioduski (17:01)
Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (17:01)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, totally. It got some major traction on LinkedIn too. That was a really fun, like organic. I mean, that's just like the power of, yeah, visual storytelling. You get to pull something from that and like show it off. ⁓ As far as the types of slides, because we have gone as in the past we've done, hashtag every slide counts, a whole webinar series about different types of slides. Like we have never done awards slides, but that's really interesting in sequence. But, Caitlin, if you could pull it up one more time, because I'm just...

curious about your kind of billboard slide is almost what I would call it. And I'm curious what you would call it. And by that I mean like it's so gorgeous and it's just like stands on its own with like one line of text and it's bringing in a whole new section of the talk. And I'm just curious about like some of the other types of slides that you worked with for the SKO. I'm sure there's like also mile markers, like agenda setters. Mikey, what else have you seen it? It goes.

Kaitlyn Hines (18:05)
Were you thinking this one, Yeah. Okay. Yes.

Molly Geoghegan (18:07)
Yes, yes, yes, yes, you're so beautiful. my gosh.

Mikey Mioduski (18:10)
Yeah,

that like these anthem slides or just, yeah, like Molly said, billboard moments in between maybe different awards?

Molly Geoghegan (18:15)
That could be 10.

Kaitlyn Hines (18:20)
Yeah, so this one specifically, I mean, as far as like slide dividers go, this was kind of how those looked. But then this was actually the end slide. And then there was one that was very similar to this and it was the title slide. it something kind of interesting is that we had this like in pretty far into the design process and the client was happy with it and everything. And then they were building out some other assets for SCO, including a video.

Molly Geoghegan (18:25)
yeah, there's the bill.

Mikey Mioduski (18:27)
Mm-hmm.

Kaitlyn Hines (18:48)
And they had kind of given that team like where we were at with this and we're like, try to match it. And then there were some like ⁓ kind of areas where things weren't matching up and they already had the video done at that point. we were like, can you guys now adjust? Yeah. And it was like, OK, how am going to do this? And it happened to be this like main kind of view that we were looking at and the colors were different.

Mikey Mioduski (18:49)
Mmm.

huh.

Molly Geoghegan (19:03)
⁓ kind of work backwards.

Kaitlyn Hines (19:17)
So what I ended up doing is the beginning slide ⁓ had the colors that matched the video, which was a lighter green. And then as we went through the presentation, it got darker. ⁓ So that's why it kind of have almost a nighttime feel. ⁓ We were able to adapt and adjust there, ⁓ which was cool. But yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (19:30)
Mm.

Yeah, silhouette.

Did this have

any transition to like come into it or does it pop like with the layers of the mountains moving?

Kaitlyn Hines (19:47)
⁓ there were certainly parts of the presentation where there were the mountains were morphing in and out, ⁓ shifting. There were some really, really cool transitions that we had built out. I don't have them in this sample, unfortunately.

Molly Geoghegan (20:01)
No, no,

no, that's okay. I don't even think they'd load on the riverside, on the riverside recording. But I just want to point that out because it's such a, it's such a, like it seems simple. It's like a, you got text background, but when you really break it down, like you have a couple layers of images there, the text, the cartography, the color gradient. And I think that people forget that with a couple of simple elements and morphing them together can be something really like, you're like, ⁓

Kaitlyn Hines (20:07)
yeah!

Molly Geoghegan (20:29)
It arrives. It can just look really professional and slick without much going on, you know? It's really cool. I love it. So that's your closer. That was the closer.

Kaitlyn Hines (20:34)
Yeah, absolutely. ⁓ Yes, this was the closure that tied

back in into the beginning.

Molly Geoghegan (20:43)
climbing higher

together. ⁓

Mikey Mioduski (20:45)
trying

to figure out how you did the inset ⁓ mountain. Is that together? Does that have a second together on top of it that's just an outline? Yeah, okay. That's sick. Yeah. All right. That's dope.

Molly Geoghegan (20:48)
Yeah, that's

Kaitlyn Hines (20:55)
Bonchonja!

Molly Geoghegan (20:56)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, so cool. Okay, this is our best video episode so far.

So cool. Okay, Caitlin, I know that climbing wasn't the only theme in this monster of a project. Racing slash F1, the sole pop, it's I think having a moment right now. And that was another ask. And even though you weren't the main designer on that, you helped with a very key slide. Do you wanna show us that one?

Kaitlyn Hines (21:24)
Yeah, yes, I'll bring that up now.

Molly Geoghegan (21:31)
and we've all driven race cars, so this was really familiar to us, right? This wasn't too far out of the box.

Mikey Mioduski (21:33)
Yeah, right.

Kaitlyn Hines (21:39)
I know, I was like, it was like, yeah, based off of an F1 steering wheel, and I was like, like, how, how hard could that be? And I like look up an F1 steering wheel and I was like, that is not an F1 steering wheel, that is not my picture.

Molly Geoghegan (21:43)
Yeah, I totally know what that's like.

Yeah, like this, yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (21:51)
Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (21:54)
This looks like a video game to me. It's total, like, PlayStation Gone Wild. I can't believe people are actually doing this.

Mikey Mioduski (22:02)
Yeah, this is a beefy slide. So, Katelyn, the prompt was, obviously it's about probably controls and different levers. I imagine that's something, yeah, ⁓ some part of the story behind this one. if you're listening, we're looking at this gorgeous 3D-ish branded F1 steering wheel. That's the center focal piece visual of this slide.

Molly Geoghegan (22:05)
Yeah, what's going on here?

tools.

You

Mikey Mioduski (22:31)
beautiful typography behind it, around it, like with call-outs. I imagine this one built, but curious, like how the hell did you make this one?

Molly Geoghegan (22:38)
Yeah.

Kaitlyn Hines (22:39)
Yeah, yeah, so I definitely did use some help from AI, but basically kind of going back to what we're talking about with like the brand dressing up. So in this way, I was kind of like, if this company sold F1 steering wheels, like what would they look like? And so that's what I kind of started with. And I went and grabbed one, you know, off of a stock photo site of just a real F1 steering wheel.

Mikey Mioduski (22:57)
Wow.

Molly Geoghegan (22:58)
Or would it look?

Kaitlyn Hines (23:08)
And then I started using AI, ⁓ specifically Copilot ⁓ to kind of start coming up with some iterations of something closer to what I wanted. And I was able to get pretty darn close. And then I used Photoshop to get myself the rest of the way there. ⁓ Like with these, buttons that are kind of there and they've got like the little toggles and switches. Like I couldn't get that. So I found like

Mikey Mioduski (23:37)
Mm-hmm.

Kaitlyn Hines (23:38)
a shutter stock kit of buttons and overlaid them over the glass looking structures that I was able to get AI to help me with. And then obviously came in and overlaid text and these little call out bubbles. ⁓ But yeah, so that was a fun one and it was also like a time crunch. So yeah, that was the quickest F1 steering wheel I've ever produced.

Mikey Mioduski (23:41)
⁓ sick.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Molly Geoghegan (23:52)
Mm-hmm.

Mikey Mioduski (24:04)
Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (24:07)
Guys, I just Googled, yeah, it really does. Yeah, I love the like 3D feeling and the colors match into the brand. I like, I just Googled an F1 steering wheel because I was like, surely this is like maybe a bit of an exaggeration and it's absolutely not. It's, I did not think they were looking like that. It's really nuts. ⁓ Very interesting for those that are F1 fans listening, like, yeah.

Kaitlyn Hines (24:07)
and only one.

Mikey Mioduski (24:09)
It

looks like you could just touch it. It looks so nice.

Kaitlyn Hines (24:26)
No, this is the simplified version.

Mikey Mioduski (24:29)
Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (24:37)
That's cool. But such a cool, I mean, the visual storytelling of this, like it's cool to have, yeah. And it's cool that the client already came with this like kind of imagination, right? Because sometimes this is what we help clients with it being like, if you can, it's almost like a metaphor of being like this part of your team does this and this part of your team does this. And if we're fitting that into the racing world, then yeah, let's put it on a steering wheel. What does it look like when the team is like changing tires? But it's really cool that the client came with that creativity already happening. What do you think like as a designer?

like those kind of like visual storytelling tools, how does that like help you as a designer rather than just being like, here's a list of the teams that we have, you know, like it's a lot, it lands a lot differently.

Kaitlyn Hines (25:19)
⁓ I guess can you rephrase it a little?

Molly Geoghegan (25:22)
Yeah, totally. just, I'm kind of

like, ⁓ I'm just kind of amazed at the ability for this to be part of the story of the brand. And as a designer, how does like something like a metaphor like this help you instead of just kind of rambling with texts about like a team, I don't know, a team's capabilities on the slide, you know?

Kaitlyn Hines (25:41)
Whoa, yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's just more engaging, more impactful. The audience is going to remember this more and want to pay attention to it ⁓ kind of fitting in to all the other pieces that are going on. ⁓ And as far as like when we're starting to build the narrative and they're like, OK, we want a racing deck. And it's like, where can we find the parallels between racing and

you know, having a good year of sales and where. Yeah. And it's like, like you mentioned, like the team putting on the tires and doing all that. It's like, OK, that's going to be a visual for sure. And like just how we leverage that ⁓ into the presentation. So, yeah, kind of like with the climbing one and the awards, it's like, OK, like I want to do this like somebody climbing a mountain. And I have this idea for the animation. Where can I fit that in? And it's like, the awards, that would be perfect.

Molly Geoghegan (26:11)
they do, yeah.

Connect.

Mm-hmm.

Mikey Mioduski (26:39)
Mm-hmm.

Kaitlyn Hines (26:39)
And so like this, it's like, clearly a steering wheel is a great metaphor for, you know, steering the direction of this year, et cetera. Where is that going to have a good match? And I think in this case, it was sales fuel. And then there actually were like the logos of some of their case studies in each box. So it was like, these, you know, are the things fueling this new direction is what was kind of going on there originally.

Mikey Mioduski (26:50)
Mm-hmm.

Molly Geoghegan (26:50)
Mm-hmm.

Mikey Mioduski (26:57)
Mmm.

Molly Geoghegan (27:05)
Smart.

Mikey Mioduski (27:09)
Yeah, that's sweet. the memorability is huge. This one, like, because the climbers, I think, you know, we've seen climbers in presentations, but it does evoke a feeling. And this one does that as well, but it's also really functional. And I could totally see this being one of those, this is like one of these like state, almost like a talking point slide where this

Molly Geoghegan (27:09)
That's so cool. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mikey Mioduski (27:38)
slide could be up on a screen for like several minutes and they could still build through it and like each button on this advanced steering wheel empowers and enables the sellers in the room to do something different to like hit their goals and this one does this and this. So I could see this one having been up there like kind of living and breathing and blinking you know but like building on it and years from now this would be like one of those where the CMO is like hey Caitlin remember that remember that one slide we did?

Molly Geoghegan (27:43)
Mm-hmm.

Mikey Mioduski (28:08)
Like that's the ultimate testament of memorability in a slide is when executives come back or sellers are like, hey, remember that steering wheel slide? I want to use that. So I could totally see that this is like that slide. Such a piece.

Kaitlyn Hines (28:24)
Yeah, thank you. Yeah, definitely a lot of fun working on the themed stuff, for sure.

Mikey Mioduski (28:29)
Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (28:31)
Would you get to say, Mikey, for SKOs specifically, it's working towards a lot of moments too. You want to build up, it's a totally a hype opportunity and yeah, you want people to walk away being like, okay yeah, I have this kind of arc and excitement to work towards for the year and I can point to a few of those slides as yeah, that was relevant to my team or my win or whatever it was, you know.

Mikey Mioduski (28:52)
Totally, because you could go so far over to rah-rah land and then people are fired up, but there's no sort of substance to it. They're no better off other than they're excited, which is great. But ⁓ blending and balancing the function and the training is really important so that they're actually becoming better sellers, driving revenue.

Molly Geoghegan (28:57)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm, like a container.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah,

such a cool vehicle. ⁓ Mikey and Caitlin, as designers, I'm kind of curious, zooming back out a little bit, if a client comes or someone's listening and they're like, don't have a good, I don't have the F1 theme, I don't have the climbing theme, I'm trying to figure out how to work out my visual storytelling in a container like that. ⁓

What's been your experience like working with clients and even yourself as a designer trying to put the visual storytelling to slide, like pen to paper if you will? How do you kind of help someone tease that out?

Mikey Mioduski (29:53)
Kaelin, I don't know about you, kind of, Molly has to go back to their, their goals and their narrative, you know, if they're not, if they're kind of all over the place there, ⁓ we might encourage, we might ask a series of questions to help them get to like, what the hell are you trying to do? Like, what's your goal for the year? Yeah, because, you know, we can come up with.

Molly Geoghegan (30:08)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, a little story mining for sure, yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (30:21)
fun, crazy ideas all day, but if it's not rooted to something that you're, to your goal. So I think it is sort of like, we'd probably start with a bit of a narrative strategy exercise to help them distill their ideas into one singular idea. If you're really going for a theme. I don't know about you, Kaelin, what do you, what do you think?

Molly Geoghegan (30:24)
Yeah, yeah, totally something random.

Mm-hmm.

Kaitlyn Hines (30:40)
Yeah, I think that makes sense. mean... ⁓

I don't know, I feel like this is a tricky question. If they are coming to you and they don't have a theme and then I see what you're saying is like kind of help figure out what that that message is. Like is it, you know, in the one was climbing higher and I don't exactly know exact racing one, but. ⁓

Molly Geoghegan (31:02)
Mm-hmm.

Kaitlyn Hines (31:11)
Sorry, I feel like I need like a refresh.

Mikey Mioduski (31:12)
Yeah, and Kailin, sometimes

Molly Geoghegan (31:12)
Yeah, I'm kind of

Mikey Mioduski (31:14)
it's in their brand book too, right? Like I imagine if they're going like the more corporate route, maybe it's like playing off of an existing tagline or like some of the goodness that's already in their big corporate brand book if they're not really trying to do a hard pivot for the year. ⁓

Molly Geoghegan (31:33)
Yeah.

And that's a good sign of like, it's already built within the brand too, Mikey. Like you want it to not feel, suppose there's always the danger with themes of like feeling random. Like where did this come from? Like you're just pulling in whatever's trending or something that feels, I don't know, cooler, exciting. But I think the ability to have a good visual story within the brand, like you said, the little mini brand identity, Caitlin, ⁓ is like something that feels still connected and rooted to the brand.

but it's like telling a little micro story, a little vignette within the wider umbrella.

Kaitlyn Hines (32:06)
Yeah. And I don't think like it has to be climbing or space or racing, like sea diving or whatever they do. I think it can literally just be like moving forward. And then maybe the small branding tweak is like, we're incorporating these aero assets throughout the presentation. Like there's other ways to kind of tie things together if, if they're not wanting to go as far as a theme or something like that.

Molly Geoghegan (32:12)
Yeah, Olympics. Yeah. ⁓

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (32:35)
I'm gonna, yeah. And they are, Molly. And ⁓ so I've seen all sides of this. I've seen the theme was, for like several years for this one company in biotech, it was just GSM, global sales meeting. And it was just like, they weren't like, man, we don't really wanna, we're just calling it GSM. And that was like on everything. ⁓ But then I feel like if there's five different SKOs across five different companies,

Molly Geoghegan (32:35)
Themes can be feelings. Yeah.

Yes.

Whoa.

Right.

Mm-hmm.

Mikey Mioduski (33:05)
Three of them are gonna call it Elevate. And two of them are gonna call it Connections or something. You know what saying? Going forward, Kaitlyn, like you said. Yeah, so there's like a handful, I think. But again, it's probably about the feeling that matters. ⁓ They can get a little played out. So I would love if there's any listeners who have had something really out there, really funny or funky. I think we've seen it from smaller companies who are just like,

Molly Geoghegan (33:12)
Yeah, what have you seen the most? Word, word tally.

Kaitlyn Hines (33:16)
Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (33:21)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mikey Mioduski (33:35)
a little bit YOLO, and they just want to kind of party. I think we've seen some just throwback themes, really funky. If they're going into Nashville, they just really embrace that. So I think it can be, it maybe depends on the size and agility of your company and just the culture of your sales organization.

Kaitlyn Hines (33:37)
Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (33:38)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah,

yeah. And like, we're not just showing this one off too because like, we're like, cool, Caitlin did the racing and the climbing one. As from a designer standpoint, it really does tell a great story. Like it's connected to it. You're obviously giving the designer a fun thing when it's more than just, yeah, we should start tallying the, what should we call those, Mikey? Feeling words, feeling word themes. Because I'm sure there's quite the tally of.

Mikey Mioduski (34:10)
Totally.

Yes.

Molly Geoghegan (34:18)
of regular jargon that pops up, yeah, it just like adds a little more tactical options and ⁓ creativity for sure. So it's fun. I wonder how many of those we've done at Ghost Ranch. Elevate, let's bring it. For sure. Yeah, yeah. I love it. ⁓ Caitlin, what's the first thing you do like when starting a big project, you start to collect stock, like are you just going to the drawing board and doodling a little bit? What's your first kind of, what's your process?

Mikey Mioduski (34:29)
Elevate. Yeah. I mean, it works. It works. Yeah.

Kaitlyn Hines (34:31)
Thank

Yeah, just in general when it comes to like this project coming up for me. Yeah, so I would say I definitely go inspo searching, you know, first of all, I see like what's been done before, what's similar, what have we personally done in the past? ⁓ Some, a lot of times the client has a mood board and stuff like that. So I review everything and kind of get this like full view of what's going on.

Molly Geoghegan (34:50)
Yeah.

Kaitlyn Hines (35:15)
And then I would start to kind of draw those parallels like we were talking about earlier. It's like, okay, what elements from racing are going to be useful here and which are not. ⁓ And sometimes it's even like researching a little bit because I did one F1 deck last year and I like had the wrong types of flags and stuff in there. So like we sent it to the client and they were like, that's not enough one tire. That's not enough. They wouldn't use that flag. So.

Mikey Mioduski (35:36)
Mm.

Kaitlyn Hines (35:44)
that's something to be aware of as well, or like these little tidbits that you have to be aware of. I mean, that's kind of what I like being a designer actually in general, is all the stuff you learn that's weird, but.

Molly Geoghegan (35:44)
Ha

A little content expertise, yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (36:00)
Mm-hmm.

Kaitlyn Hines (36:01)
Yeah,

so kind of just getting that research, getting a framework set up, maybe work out one or two, three slides to then get in front of the client and kind of get a temperature check on what they're feeling and then adjust from there. And then we just keep iterating away as we get content. ⁓ And then.

Mikey Mioduski (36:23)
Yeah.

And Caitlin, we might be in the spice cabinet here because this is a very tactical question. But I'm curious, what tools are you using for inspiration, ⁓ gathering, and collecting these days? Is Pinterest still the thing? what you like? OK.

Molly Geoghegan (36:29)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Kaitlyn Hines (36:38)
I love Pinterest. I

I know some people like awards or dribble or yeah, things like that that are more like specifically designer tools. But to be honest, Pinterest, I use it for my DIY and I use it for my design thinking. So it's pretty versatile. And I mean, if you went in and looked at my Pinterest right now, you would see like

Molly Geoghegan (36:42)
Another one.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mikey Mioduski (36:55)
Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (36:58)
No.

Kaitlyn Hines (37:05)
Boards for specific clients and overall just design boards. ⁓ I use that. It's just the easiest to stay organized. and then I'll of course use for ideation, like AI tools, co-pilot, chat, chubt to kind of like, what are, you know, main like symbols of racing and like to get me started or, or, you know, start thinking about that. Like, I don't know.

Molly Geoghegan (37:30)
Mm-hmm.

Kaitlyn Hines (37:35)
what is the life of a climber? like, who knows what kind weird stuff i type in to try to help get myself closer

Molly Geoghegan (37:37)
Yeah, literally. Yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (37:38)
Haha.

Molly Geoghegan (37:42)
Belayon, ropes, carabiner. I feel like getting all the pieces fitting together. Love hearing that. I know you're not alone. Our other designer and creative director, Tamara Jarvey, also uses Pinterest. I'm trying to, I was trying to prove a Pinterest point last month and tell Mikey that people still use it. Yeah, yeah, it's true.

Mikey Mioduski (38:01)
⁓ yeah, I liked it. I mean, I could see them being

in a total interesting spot right now, as you kind of indicated with just the influx of like AI and our people turned off by, you know, just like all this crap that's being created. ⁓ Or are they, you know, kind of injecting it into their tool on the back end and making it easier and more fun and more powerful to like tweak and kind of like rebound off of stuff and find.

Molly Geoghegan (38:09)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mikey Mioduski (38:30)
new interesting things. So it's

Molly Geoghegan (38:31)
Yeah. So, so cool.

Mikey Mioduski (38:33)
cool how long it's been around and how many different types of people are able to use it for all sorts of things.

Kaitlyn Hines (38:39)
Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (38:41)
Caitlin, do you have any favorite designers or ⁓ people you follow, or like podcasts, that kind of thing, Design Inspo or otherwise that you ⁓ follow and would recommend to listeners?

Kaitlyn Hines (38:54)
Yeah, so as far as designer slash artist, my favorite right now is Stephen Harrington. ⁓ He's kind of more of like an illustrator and just comes up with some really cool graphical ⁓ characters. They're surreal, psychedelic. ⁓ It doesn't really have anything to do with presentation design, but just as far as an ins... Yeah, I really love his work. And then...

Molly Geoghegan (39:18)
What? Inspo?

Kaitlyn Hines (39:23)
As far as a presenter, more relevant to presentation design, Aaron Draplin has always been one of my favorites. He's like Michigan based. He's a great designer and a killer presenter. Like I just remember I saw him live. came to my school when I was in college and just really impactful and just minimal words on the slides, like very large typography, ⁓ really bold, bright color palette. ⁓

Mikey Mioduski (39:37)
Mmm.

Mm-hmm.

Kaitlyn Hines (39:53)
seemed very like sure of himself and just very, I don't know, stuck with me so...

Mikey Mioduski (40:00)
That's sweet. That's a bucket list. Presenter, that's so dope. He came to your school. Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (40:01)
Aaron Draplin, love it. We'll add him. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Kaitlyn Hines (40:05)
Yeah. Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (40:07)
It's always nice when you get the kind of, as a student, you're like, you might not even realize it in the moment. You're like, this person was actually amazing. It really clearly sticks with you, you know? Love that.

Mikey Mioduski (40:12)
⁓ Yeah.

And Stephen Harrington's

work is wildly cool. I love it. I hadn't seen it. Did he do the Olympics LA, like official branding or maybe just some side pieces, but it looks pretty cool.

Molly Geoghegan (40:20)
Yeah, we will link these. ⁓

cool.

Kaitlyn Hines (40:31)
Yeah, he does lots of collabs. I always like, he does like drops and stuff. So at one point I had like everybody in the office like, like get this piece of art, but it didn't work. It's like sells out instantly, but someday I'll get something from him.

Mikey Mioduski (40:38)
⁓ Yeah.

Ugh.

Wow. Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (40:47)
Yeah, that's

a good goal. ⁓

Mikey Mioduski (40:48)
He will. All right. Maybe he's listening. I don't know. Yeah.

Kaitlyn Hines (40:52)
Yeah, maybe.

Molly Geoghegan (40:53)
Steven, reach out.

⁓ Molly at Ghost Ranch, Caitlin at GhostRanch.com. Okay, well, Erin Draphelin is a great presentable plug, but do you have any favorite, specifically, Ted Talks? You know, Mikey and I go deep on the Ted Talks series. ⁓ you can say no, and we'll cut this out.

Kaitlyn Hines (40:55)
Yeah.

Hmm. I don't think I

have any specifically, and if I did, they would probably be animal related.

Molly Geoghegan (41:19)
Yes, love. Yeah, love. Perfect. Yes. Yeah.

Is there a cat in the room? Should we have a quick cat show off? Yeah.

Kaitlyn Hines (41:30)
They're always pretty quick to grab.

Mikey Mioduski (41:32)
Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (41:32)
They're always,

yeah. They're all around or they're not. All seven or not. yeah, tuxedo? Yeah, tuxedo cat.

Kaitlyn Hines (41:37)
Here's one. This is... Yeah. This is

Mikey Mioduski (41:42)
Da!

Kaitlyn Hines (41:42)
Doodle.

He's got a calming collar on because there's several clans going on, so we have to keep them all happy.

Mikey Mioduski (41:45)
yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (41:46)
Hey, Doodle.

Mikey Mioduski (41:52)
in the purple clan?

Molly Geoghegan (41:53)
He's in the purple clan.

Kaitlyn Hines (41:54)
Yeah,

he's in ShadowClan actually. Yeah. ⁓

Molly Geoghegan (41:57)
The name, I love it. It's so cute. Doodle

Mikey Mioduski (41:58)
Hahaha

Molly Geoghegan (42:03)
also, very nice, very creative name.

Mikey Mioduski (42:04)
Yeah.

Kaitlyn Hines (42:05)
It's named

after Doodle Bob, which could segue into my walk-up song, which is...

Mikey Mioduski (42:10)
⁓

Molly Geoghegan (42:10)
perfect,

yeah, Doodle Bob, SpongeBob reference? Yes, yes. Great, great SpongeBob episode, underrated.

Mikey Mioduski (42:11)
go for it.

Kaitlyn Hines (42:13)
Yes, we mostly call him Doodle, but he-

He

is evil like doodle Bob too. That's why he has the calming color

Molly Geoghegan (42:22)
Yeah, exactly. Mikey, if you are you familiar,

this is where SpongeBob accidentally creates like an evil alter ego as a drawing and it like just destroys stuff. It's this little like sketch of SpongeBob that just destroys stuff. It's so funny. We'll link that. I've never linked. I've never linked a SpongeBob episode in the Spice Cabinet, but there's a first for everything on the cast, so.

Mikey Mioduski (42:30)
gosh.

Kaitlyn Hines (42:37)
And black and white and yeah, was just food.

Yay,

Mikey Mioduski (42:47)
Thanks for doing that, Caitlin. Yeah.

Kaitlyn Hines (42:47)
I'm glad I was able to help with that. Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (42:50)
Final question, most important, Mikey, take it away. I've been dying to ask.

Mikey Mioduski (42:54)
Okay,

it's Caitlin's, your keynote moment. Is that your walkout song?

Kaitlyn Hines (43:03)
What?

Molly Geoghegan (43:03)
the SpongeBob SquarePants theme song. That was, oh, sorry, sorry, that was the walkout song, yeah. Yes.

Mikey Mioduski (43:04)
Is that the one? Okay. Was that the question, Molly?

Kaitlyn Hines (43:05)
Yeah, yeah.

Mikey Mioduski (43:10)
Yeah, okay.

Kaitlyn Hines (43:11)
Yeah, this old-time superhero-fan

Steve song. was like, what else is happening?

Mikey Mioduski (43:12)
We would, yeah. You're like the one we just established, yeah. Okay, so that one. Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (43:16)
So sorry, sorry.

I was like, tell us, us in a dramatic way. Okay, we've never had that I don't think. The SpongeBob SquarePants theme song is a walkout song. So fun. Who lives in a pineapple under the sea? Kaitlyn. Kaitlyn the Ranchero.

Kaitlyn Hines (43:21)
I'm

Mikey Mioduski (43:22)
Yeah.

Yeah, that's brilliant. Aww.

Let's get-

Kaitlyn Hines (43:35)
I

do have, um, I don't know if you'll- oh yeah, I got a little spongebob tattoo here. A little flower. What?

Mikey Mioduski (43:39)
Whoa, I can't see it. Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (43:42)
Riverside is a take it. Yeah there. Yeah. Yeah. that's awesome. ⁓ my god. Hell yeah. I didn't know you were such a fan ⁓

Mikey Mioduski (43:42)
Okay, okay. yeah, yeah, yeah. That's dope. Well done. Yeah. All right. Well, Caitlin Hines, ACD, Ghost Ranch Communications, incredible artist, designer, caretaker of animals. ⁓ Thank you for joining the show. Talkin' SKO design, presentations, and more. Do have any parting shots you wanna leave Presentation Nation with?

Molly Geoghegan (44:04)
Visual storytelling.

Kaitlyn Hines (44:08)
No.

Mikey Mioduski (44:12)
Yeah. Yeah.

Molly Geoghegan (44:12)
I think you nailed it. visual storytelling, Sko Creator,

we'll get you next time on your next enormous F1 steering wheel project and climbing mountains.

Mikey Mioduski (44:22)
Yes.

Kaitlyn Hines (44:24)
Yeah,

there will be a couple next year. I'm positive.

Molly Geoghegan (44:27)
Climb every mountain. Thanks

for joining, Caitlin. And presentation nation, until we meet again, keep on pitching.

Mikey Mioduski (44:36)
Keep on pitching!

Kaitlyn Hines (44:38)
Alright, thanks guys.