Presentation Thinking

When it comes to messaging, every marketer is familiar with the following concepts: alignment, adoption, and performance.

But just how well your messaging gets adopted and how well it's performing with your audience is tricky to measure. Those are the questions that Austin Webb is after as a Co-Founder of Troupe.ai. 

A “messaging attribution and success engine,” Troupe seeks to “know the ROI of your story” by quantifying go-to-market messaging for the most clarity and success.

Austin joins Mikey on the pod to chat about what’s changed in our approaches to messaging, customer touchpoints, the future of messaging guides, and his new eBook, Closing the B2B Messaging ROI Gap.

This is an episode for: strategists, product marketers, and the entire GTM team.

What’s in the Spice Cabinet?

Need help with GTM messaging?

• Check out Troupe.ai

• Follow Austin on LinkedIn

• Check out the eBook! Closing the B2B Messaging ROI Gap

Sales deck pet peeve? 

• “Sales decks that get changed in local environments by one rep…a symptom of lack of adoption!”

Book recco?

• Simplify: Do 50% More with 50% Less by Jim VandHei, Mike Allen, & Roy Schwartz

What’s Austin’s walkout song? 

How Do You Like Me Now - The Heavy

We might say that Kara Zeiberg is a tour de force…of giving historical walking tours on Boston’s Freedom Trail! 

Have you ever considered how much world-building goes into a walking tour? Facilitating a group of wayward tourists through bustling Boston streets already presents tricky logistics. Presenting along the way, telling true and engaging stories—all while IN CHARACTER dang near deserves a presentation award!

Seasoned tour guide Kara Zeiberg joins the pod to discuss how she fell into such a niche career and how it’s sharpened her storytelling and presentation skills in ways most B2B folks never have to consider. 

From underdog anecdotes from our country’s unsung heroes to iconic stops along Boston’s Freedom Trail, Kara has a story for everything—and some fabulous world-building advice as her colonial character, “Thankful Rice.” 

This is an episode for: the theater kids, people building immersive experiences, and anyone that has to practice presenting in tricky situations. 

What's in the Spice Cabinet?

Where to find Kara (and book a tour!)

• The Freedom Trail

Boston reccos? 

• Beantown Pub - bite downtown

• The Green Dragon - drinks!

• Cheers (formerly Bull and Finch) - the Cheers bar

A few of Kara’s fave historical icons…

• Phillis Wheatley

• Elizabeth Arden

Walkout song? 

As a co-host of The Presentation Podcast, one of the original inspirations for starting our own pod, Nolan Haims is like a “Founding Father” to us. 

The Microsoft PowerPoint expert, data storyteller, and seasoned coach joins Mikey for a conversation around how to communicate as much as possible within short time windows and shrinking attention spans. 

With 10+ years’ coaching experience (and a former career as a magician!!), Nolan employs fantastic exercises to teach memorable data visualization lessons. From his “one second chart” to studying the original Casa Blanca movie poster to simply emphasizing that people don’t take away enough in their slides (get friendly with that delete button!). 

Whether you’re struggling to edit a deck or a graphic designer trying to maintain their edge, Nolan wants to help you guide your audience.

This is an episode for: graphic designers, anyone working through a deck, and the data viz nerds.

What's in the Spice Cabinet?

Where to find more of Nolan:

• Nolan Haims Creative

• The Presentation Podcast

PowerPoint Pet Peeve?

• “Too much content. Slides that aren’t glance-able. And slides that draw your audience’s attention away from you.”

Favorite speaker?

• Steve Jobs - “My favorite of his was the Macbook Air launch where he pulled the computer out of an envelope.”

Book reccos?

• Good Charts - Scott Berinato

What’s Nolan’s walkout song?

• You Make My Dreams - Hall & Oates

When Christopher Nolan released his latest film, “The Odyssey”, this summer, there was much discourse (too much?) about its historical accuracy, its casting, and how it held up against Homer’s beloved 3000 year-old epic.

For us here at Presentation Thinking AKA the “Storyteller’s Study Club,” we were thinking about another book—Christopher Booker’s The Seven Basic Plots—wherein Booker lays out 7 “shapes” for all stories. In one shape he dubs “The Quest,” Booker heavily relies on Homer’s The Odyssey as a reference point. 

Mikey and Molly get into how Nolan’s film rendition of “The Odyssey” follows (and doesn’t) the shape of “The Quest” that Booker so thoroughly laid out in his study of storytelling.—and how it can make for one of the most memorable stories ever told.

We also apply what we know about film and visual storytelling to discuss Nolan’s mise-en-scene, dialogue choices, and terrible sound-mixing.

This is an episode for: story nerds, students of the Greek epics, and Nolan fans and foes alike.

What’s in the Spice Cabinet?

The trailer, because we can’t link it in IMAX:

• via YouTube

Christopher Booker’s book we reference heavily:

• The Seven Basic Plots

• We discuss this story shape in further detail in Episode #33

Emily Wilson’s translation:

• Here 

• Her scathing review of Nolan’s film, “An Uncomplicated Man”

For further reading (Substack recommendations vetted by Molly)

• A great epics reading list 

• The different elements of horror in The Odyssey

• “Christopher Nolan ruined Circe”

• “How should an Odysseus be?”
  

Montana von Fliss is a master of distillation. 

From identifying a singular persona (AKA the “one”) that your talk will reach to honing your “secret sentence”, Montana’s approaches have cemented her as an iconic communication coach, keynote speaker, and maker of a millions-viewed TED Talk.

In this episode, Montana joins Mikey to chat about how soft skills pay bills, the power of pretending there’s an audience in an empty Zoom room, and how “Imposter syndrome is just a misalignment with reality”. 

We hear about how, in identifying her “one” person in the audience that could be moved by her TED Talk, she really got to the heart of what she was trying to say. 

Now, who is your “one”?

This is an episode for: speakers and presenters of all levels.

What’s in the Spice Cabinet? 

Montana’s TED Talk has 44 million views (and counting!) Why not add to that number? 

• How to Be Confident (even if you’re not)

Follow more of Montana’s work:

• MontanaVonFliss.com

• LinkedIn

• Her new YouTube channel!

Meet Montana at Story Camp!

• Get your tickets for November 3-6, Boulder Colorado
  

You’re invited!!

WHO: You! Marketers! Comms leaders! C-suiters! Sales powerhouses! PMMs! Anyone feeling like an “accidental” speaker coach! 

WHEN: November 3rd-6th, 2026

WHERE: Boulder, Colorado

If you’ve never heard about Story Camp, well, you’re going to.

Despite only being in its second annual year as a presentation skills conference, Story Camp is on track to sell out this year. 

How?? 

Story Camp Founder Mikey Mioduski joins, er, his own podcast to discuss the secret sauce behind this retreat unlike any other. You’ll hear WHAT to expect at Story Camp 2026, WHO should come and benefit from it, and WHY he brought this thought bubble to life in the first place.

This is an episode for: people invested in their personal and professional storytelling skills AND anyone looking to use that leadership development budget. 

What’s in the Spice Cabinet?

How to get your hands on Story Camp tix? 

• Get your whole team onboard here

Where you’ll be staying for camp vibes

• The Colorado Chautauqua

The headliners who will be there

• Will Storr

• Montana Von Fliss

• Benjamin Benichou

Still need more convincing? 

• Here’s 75 more reasons from Mikey

If you’ve ever felt transported to a different world or time period in a museum, that’s a sign of good exhibition design and curation working together. 

After finding an article written by Exhibition Designer Alya James from NYC’s Guggenheim (shoutout Substack!), our Presentation Thinking caps really started lighting up. 

From strategic placements for the eye to follow, to lighting and audio/visual components, presentation and exhibition mediums share many narrative-building elements in how something is meant to be experienced.

This is not to be confused with museum curation AKA the selection of pieces. Exhibition design tackles the how in which pieces are placed, lit and safeguarded so that the public may interact in a natural flow. 

Museum exhibition designers leverage presentation just like we do slideware, experiential marketing, and more!

This is an episode for: experiential marketers, art nerds, & museum lovers (and haters! Let us change your mind).

What’s in the Spice Cabinet?

Read Alya James’ Substack piece that got me digging:

• The Anatomy of an Exhibition

Exhibitions, museums, & art referenced

• Maurice Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things Are”

• ABBA Museum

• Lofotr Viking Museum

• Chicago Art Institute’s display of Georgia O’Keeffe’s “Sky Above Clouds”

• Stedelijk Museum: Roy Lichtenstein (Amsterdam)

Another cool piece:

• 
  How to visit a museum
  

Last month, GhostRanch CEO Allie Wilson and Founder Mikey Mioduski spoke together at the Gartner Marketing Symposium/Xpo outside of Denver, Colorado—and had a blast!

A busy exhibition hall where the audience wore headphones to better hear their presentation (think silent disco vibes), this conference setting and co-presenting together made for their most unique experience in presenting thus far. 

…Especially because their presentation stage was right in front of a restroom, ha!!

They join the pod to debrief and dissect their experience and how expectations won’t always match reality—in good, challenging and funny ways. 

This is an episode for: speakers, marketers and anyone that attends annual conferences. 

What’s in the Spice Cabinet?

Learn more about the Gartner Marketing Symposium 

• (And see you there next year?) 

Relevant reading

• The Influential Mind - Tali Sharot

• The Unpersuadables - Will Storr

Are you coming to Story Camp??

• Tickets on sale now for November 3-6, 2026 in Boulder, Colorado!!

Many have written about the shape of stories, archetypes, what stories do to the brain. But none have connected all these puzzle pieces in such a coherent and useful way as Will Storr’s The Science of Storytelling (2021). 

Will guides us section by section, understanding how character-driven stories are more memorable, why the brain tracks for changes constantly, flawed characters are most human and more.

For storytellers in both business and creative fields, Will guides every insight with science, interesting studies and universally recognizable examples (ie: Jaws, Frankenstein, The Odyssey).  

If, in Will’s own words, “To accept story’s challenge and win is to be a hero”, Will becomes one for storytellers everywhere. 

This is an episode for: storytelling and science nerds, anyone writing a book and members of our book club.

What’s in the Spice Cabinet? 

Get a copy for your own shelf:

• The Science of Storytelling

Learn more about Will

• Here

• Check out more of his books! - We’ll be reading A Story Is a Deal next

Learn from Will IN PERSON at Story Camp this November! 

• Registration and details here

Continuing our journey in analyzing every Steve Jobs keynote ever given, Mikey and Molly re-visit the talk that would change the way we consume music forever—the introduction of the iPod in 2001. 

Steve utilizes a classic Problem and Solution strategy in showing the various ways which 2001 offered music listening experiences (remember flash drives!?) and which route Apple endeavored to improve upon. For each pain point (memory, portability, etc.), Apple develops a clear and stylish solution. 

Most interestingly, he saves the reveal of the device itself until much later than he typically does with product launches. 

As the first music listening device of its kind, Steve first compares it to a deck of cards—a universal size and feel most people can understand—before pulling the device out of his pocket. 

The rest is music history. 

This is an episode for: keynote speakers, C-suite presenters and Apple/tech nerds.

What’s in the Spice Cabinet? 

Watch Steve’s 2001 introduction of the iPod, and explore Steve’s other keynotes:

• All About Steve Jobs

Other episodes where we’re talking about Steve’s presentation skills:

• #197 - Damage control at Macworld Boston (1997)

• #192 - Steve Jobs film (2015)

• #187 - Steve introduces iMac (1998)

• #72 - Steve Jobs’ Stanford Commencement Speech (2005)

Get your hands on some vintage iPods:

• On eBay!