Presentation Thinking

Inside InfernoGuard’s winning pitch and one founder’s plan to prevent wildfires.

Kevin Kaspar joins Presentation Thinking to discuss his founder journey for InfernoGuard—a device that detects and reports wildfire conditions to first responders and land-owners before they get out of control.

We are lucky enough to be connected to the Northwestern University startup competition called VentureCat—even luckier that one of GhostRanch’s designers (Lola Lopez) helped to create the WINNING pitch for InfernoGuard.

We talk all things pitching (and bombing) and what the plan is for such an important device to receive funding and awareness.

Only YOU (and InfernoGuard) can prevent forest fires!

Georgia O’Keeffe was a badass artist and desert legend. Dare we say…the Shakespeare of the Southwest?!

Writers aren’t the only ones that tell stories — there is much to be learned from the art world and Georgia’s impact on it.

In our Presentation Thinking journey, we want to understand & learn from storytellers of ALL varieties to better understand what about their work and the way they presented it is so memorable and important.

Join us in our obsession with this icon that inspired GhostRanch.

Look Ma, we did a webinar!

We dipped our toes into the world of webinars a few weeks ago and, thanks to the creative and strategic genius of GhostRanch Creative Director Dave Sheets, it went even better than we imagined!

We zero-ed in on a hyper-specific topic—Cover Slides. What to put on them, how to cater to your audience and why it matters more than you think.

None of us had any experience in producing a webinar, so in sharing our own process of piecing this project together, we hope to help those figuring out their webinar sweet spot as well.

If you’ve ever seen the first few minutes of the PIXAR movie UP!, you’re very aware that stories have the capacity to move you to tears.

PIXAR animator Matthew Luhn might be the one to blame for this.

Having worked on a few classics such as Toy Story, Ratatouille & The Incredibles, Luhn shares in a 2017 TED Talk what it is that makes stories like this so successful—and how we can we apply that to our own work and life.

For Mikey and Molly, this is a breakthrough episode. We’re seeing patterns in the story structures our favorites are talking about and connecting some significant dots.

A TED Talk not to be missed and a discussion that is sure to stir up your PIXAR nostalgia.

Full show notes HERE.

Part 3, the closing chapter, of our Made to Stick book report/breakdown/book club is HERE.

Frodo is ready to destroy the ring and we’re ready to discuss the “E” and “S” in Chip & Dan Heath’s “SUCCESs” checklist for a sticky story—Emotions and Stories.

These components are so central to storytelling that many examples often go hand-in-hand. It’s a bit of a “Chicken or the Egg” debate: What comes first—the emotions or the story?

How do you appeal to someone’s self-interest? How do you spot a good story?? Why is it that we all remember Jared’s Subway story???

Brothers Heath have the answers and Mikey and Molly have the spark notes.

Dear listeners, welcome back to Book Club. We’re making our way through Chip & Dan Heath’s Made to Stick — a book dissecting all the factors that make certain messages and stories STICK. And there’s a lot of unpack!

So, not unlike other greats such as JRR Tolkien or the makers of Die Hard, we’ve split this into multiple parts. (Listen to Part 1 on “Simplicity” HERE!)

Part 2 covers “Unexpected”, “Concrete” and “Credible” on the SUCCESs checklist for story stickiness.

Need help in one of these areas? Tons of great examples and Heath brother-approved insight await.

“SUCCESs checklist”

[Disclaimer: This is not a Nancy Duarte interview. One day it will be.]

Ever wonder what the SHAPE of a story looks like?

Our “Patron Saint of Stories” Nancy Duarte AKA CEO/Founder of Duarte, Inc. has done the research to show us just that.

In her first viral ~2008 TED Talk, Duarte shows off her analysis of several Communication Greats (ahem, Steve Jobs, MLK…) to prove there’s a science—an ebb and flow—in how information and stories are presented.

Memorable communication follows a pattern.

And for our humble Storytelling Study Club, we’re anxious to learn from those footsteps.

This week we're working through a hyper-specific Pitch Problem and there was no better man to chat to than our Technical Director at GRC, Mr. Steve Sheets.

Efficiency-obsessed, he wants you to have an easier time editing your decks.

He wants you to befriend the Notes tool in PowerPoint.

And he wants you to have something more than a file link to share for the inevitable "Will these slides be shared afterwards?" client question arises.

If you’re a Malcom Gladwell The Tipping Point fan, then you will definitely be interested in Made to Stick.

Brothers Chip and Dan Heath are a pair of smartie-pants siblings who have spent their lives trying to nail down the perfect recipe for why some stories are forgotten and how certain ideas STICK.

And as evidenced by this book, they’ve landed on an effective formula.

Their “SUCCESs checklist” makes up the flow for developing a Sticky Story.

It’s so chock-full of examples that resonate that Mikey and I decided to divvy up our chat about the book. In this episode, we discuss the first (and one of the hardest) parts of the sticky process—Simplicity.

We’ll talk about what a “Commander’s Intent” is, where it came from, and why Proverbs really are the Golden Rule.

Let’s read, together!

Breece Justice is one of our top-notch Presentation Designers on the GhostRanch Communications team.

When a client recently entrusted her with the task of traveling to an in-person conference to ensure their high stakes keynotes went according to plan, we couldn’t wait to hear the #PresentationThinking deets.

Taking slides from a virtual setting to the stage comes with its own set of design and storytelling challenges.

From a post-COVID perspective to tactical on-site tips, “Breezy” joins the pod to share how it all went down as the “Wizard behind the curtain.”

Full show notes HERE!