The White Rabbit

In this episode, Max Traylor, consultant to consultants, goes into ways creative businesses can productize their services, other than designing templates and selling them on Canva.

One of the core points he makes is the importance of looking at your process, and the value in productizing your process, not just your output.

Also, another interesting point he brings up is that consulting is like the kid's game Chutes And Ladders.

In this episode, Memet Yazici, who runs a private investment advisory service, goes into a key part of the investment process, the management meeting, and in particular how the audience expectations are different in a meeting with venture capital people compared to a meeting with private equity people.

For our listeners who are not in the investment world: This episode is about more than a step in the investment process, it is a reminder that audiences that might seem to be very similar at first can actually be radically different. Even if we think we understand the audience, we might be completely wrong.

Matt and Alper debunk the 93% myth as it has been misapplied to communication, and give some alternatives about what key skills are needed instead.

And who would have thought that drywall anchor bolts had something to do with presentations. In this episode, we learn that there is, in fact, a connection.

Matt and Alper wish a Happy New Year to those celebrating, shoot down the idea of organizing this into seasons (after all, it's a podcast, not a TV series), and go into preparing for a non-linear presentation.

For all of you who were hoping our recent discussions of non-linear presentations were excusing you from the need to prepare, sorry, they're not. 

You know the feeling. The palms are sweating, the temples are wet, the mouth is dry.

Is it a heart attack, or is it just an old-fashioned case of the jitters?

In this episode, Matt and Alper lay into the misconception that nervousness is always bad, that it should be stamped out completely wherever it appears.

So grab a glass of water for that cotton mouth, kick back in a nice comfy chair, and learn why sometimes nervousness is perfectly okay.

BTW, in this episode, you'll hear that sometimes Matt and Alper hit their marks on the first take, but sometimes they, too, mess up. ;-)

Inspired by a recent guest's comment, Matt and Alper dig into Alper's patented 4-step process for presenting bad news, not just bad news to the board, but bad news to pretty much any audience.

The four steps are: 1. State the obvious (be upfront about the problem); 2. Tell them why you believe this happened; 3. Tell them what next steps you will be taking; 4. Give them a timeline.

Anybody who needs to break some negative news to someone else (and who amongst us hasn't been in that boat at some point) should listen to this episode.

In this episode, agency coach Brad Farris goes into the big picture of what a speaker is going through. Interestingly, he sees nervousness as not entirely a bad thing. He also goes into making mirror neurons work for you, how audience agreement doesn't necessarily mean everyone thinks like you do about something, and how to go about presenting bad news.

Today we talk about pitching to procurement. It's a department feared by many, and with a reputation for commoditizing all who appear before it, but Ebru reminds us that the procurement department is staffed by regular folks just like the rest of us, and the department is nothing to be feared. This episode is filled with ways to build a relationship with a company's procurement department so that when the price negotiation time comes, you'll be standing on better ground.

Matt and Alper go into one of Matt's favorite phrases, "Kill your darlings," including how to implement it, why it won't make your audience think you're stupid and simple, what it means for slide design, and more. A hot tip: It's an alternative, easier, "back door" way to achieve a potentially difficult and nerve-wracking style they've discussed in the past, the non-linear presentation.

Jonathan Stark guests on the podcast again, this time to tell us how to have a conversation that will uncover the real reason the client has called you in.

Jonathan outlines the three specific questions to ask, plus why it's so important to just sit there for a bit and let the client do the "brain dump." Also, the value of trying to talk them out of hiring you, and why they're unlikely to think, "Well, now that you mention it, actually, we don't need you."