Matt reveals a “controversial” opinion he fears is going to get him run out of town by an angry mob, and then he finds out it’s not actually that big a deal.

Transcript:

Alper Rozanes
You’re listening to The White Rabbit: Conversations on the art of presenting in a rather noisy world. Your hosts are Matt Krause and Alper Rozanes. Matt helps leaders of international companies speak, write and present with confidence. Alper is a communications trainer and a startup investor with a diverse portfolio of companies in Barcelona. If you like this podcast, please share it with friends and colleagues. Now, on to Matt and Alper for today’s conversation.

Matt Krause
Alper I’ve got a little confession to make.

Alper Rozanes
Oh, I love those.

Matt Krause
Tell me I well, you know, my podcast co-host has a background in visual design, and I’m in an industry where most of the people have backgrounds in visual design or are somehow involved with visual design. And I’ve got this opinion that sometimes I’m afraid to voice out loud because I think that people are going to get angry and run me out of town.

Alper Rozanes
Do I know this guy?

Matt Krause
Well, the opinion. And so I’ll go into it a little bit more and then if you have any questions about it, then maybe, maybe ask away, because maybe I’ll forget to clarify something. But the opinion that I’m afraid that is going to get me run out of town is that you should be able to do a presentation with no visual design at all.

Matt Krause
That’s the opinion. And by that, you know, people often hear that and they think, Oh, you know, Matt doesn’t think visual design is important, and that’s not what I’m saying at all. So when I say that you should be able to do a presentation with no visual design at all. I’m not I’m not putting down visual design at all.

Matt Krause
Not at all. I think visual design is extremely important, and I thank God that there are people who spend their lives studying it. But personally, I think I think that there are skills that you need before you get into the world of visual design.

Alper Rozanes
Great. That brings us to the end of this episode and no, listen, but like you said, I have I have my own background on visual design and some specific the slide design I started I started my whole business designing slides, but I’m not going to completely disagree with you on that. In fact, you might you may be surprised that I will be we will be more on the same page then.

Alper Rozanes
Then you might have. You might have.

Matt Krause
Well, it’s it’s it’s good to.

Alper Rozanes
Know a little bit more. Tell me more, Tell me more and then I’ll throw my $0.02 onto the topic.

Matt Krause
It’s good to know that you might not run me out of town. Okay, so I’ll tell you what I mean by that. You know how like last week you were telling a story about two entrepreneurs who were in a pitch competition. And you had.

Alper Rozanes
A technical.

Matt Krause
Problem audio there. Video broke down. They were having technical problems. It completely ruined their their their presentation. And then I think of another example. And because it’s a real life work example, there’s confidentiality. So I can’t mention the person, I can’t mention the name of the bank. I can’t even mention the country that was involved. Well, let’s just say it was it was ABC Bank and the country was Nepal.

Matt Krause
So ABC Bank and the country was in Nepal. So I get this call from a client is is an existing client. This was a couple of years ago. I get this call from an existing client and he’s going he’s been scheduled to to appear before the board, the ABC bank board, ABC Bank. Is there a big global bank, international branches, blah, blah, blah.

Matt Krause
And so I get this call from him and I go into his office and it turns out that he’s got like two and a half minutes to argue in front of the board about why they should keep the retail branches in Nepal open. He’s got two and a half minutes to do that.

Alper Rozanes
Just that? Two and a half minutes.

Matt Krause
So and the number of people who work in the real life version of this of these retail branches in Nepal, the number in the in the thousands and he’s and the board is considering closing these retail branches because they’re not profitable. And my client has my client wants to keep them open. He has business in other countries, not in Nepal, but he’s got business in countries around Nepal.

Matt Krause
And he’s afraid that if they close the retail branches in Nepal, that it’s going to affect the business outside of Nepal. And he’s so he’s so he wants to argue that he wants to argue that you shouldn’t close the branches in Nepal and he’s got two and a half minutes to do this. In both of these situations.

Matt Krause
You know, you’re let’s say you’re an entrepreneur in Barcelona and you are pitching your product or if you are this banker guy arguing about why you why they should keep the retail branches open in both of those situations, you cannot go back to your constituency and say, sorry, I tried my best, but in the end I failed because I had hardware problems.

Matt Krause
You can’t use that excuse. Like if you’re if you’re the entrepreneurs in Barcelona.

Alper Rozanes
What do you mean when you say you want to go back to your constituency.

Matt Krause
When you go back to your. But what I mean by that is that let’s say that the the entrepreneurs in Barcelona, they can’t go back to the bank and say, Hey, banker guy, we really would like to stay open. But we had technical problems and now we ran out of funding. You can’t say that the banker is not going to say, Oh, well, in that case, I’m sorry that you had technical problems.

Matt Krause
Here’s money for the next year. The banker guys is not going to say that you do that.

Alper Rozanes
Okay?

Matt Krause
And if you fail in your two and a half minutes in front of the board, you’re arguing for the branches in Nepal. You can’t go back to. But what I mean by constituents is the people who work in those banks, you can’t go back to the people who work in those banks and say, oh, you won’t be able to pay your mortgages or feed your children because my presentation failed.

Matt Krause
I had technical problems, so you can’t go there. That excuse is not good enough. I had technical problems, is not good enough. And in a presentation that’s so short, you know, 4 minutes or two and a half minutes, you don’t have time to fix it. A technical problem. Even if you have a technical problem and you have a ton of backups, a plan B and a plan C and a plan D, and the plan E, you probably don’t have time to implement them.

Matt Krause
And so if you have technical problems during your presentation, your your story needs to be so tight. It needs to be so good that you can get through your 4 minutes or your two and a half minutes. And I’m not saying that in the in the case of of these entrepreneurs in Barcelona, I’m not saying that, oh, you know, if your video breaks down, you should be able to tell your story so much so well that everybody knows your product and you don’t even need the video.

Matt Krause
They walk out of there having a good feel for what your product is, but your story needs to be so tight that you, the investors, can at least walk out of there and think, okay, well, I’ll let this guy talk to me again. I want to talk to this guy again. I want to I want to see what this product what that’s that’s how tight your presentation needs to be.

Matt Krause
That’s the standard that you need to need to get to. It makes me think.

Alper Rozanes
Of I’ve been listening to you speechless.

Matt Krause
It makes me think of this this, this show. It was on it’s an old show. It was on maybe ten years ago or something like that. And it was called Revolution. And in the show.

Alper Rozanes
I have seen the trailer.

Matt Krause
Oh, it’s it was one of my favorite shows. Unfortunately, it was.

Alper Rozanes
I didn’t watch it, but I thought it was interesting.

Matt Krause
Well, it got canceled after two seasons. It didn’t work out well at all. I thought it was personally, I thought it was a great show, but it didn’t do well in the ratings at all. And it got canceled.

Alper Rozanes
Apparently, our opinion didn’t matter in this case.

Matt Krause
Yeah, our opinion didn’t matter. So but the premise of the show is that all the electricity goes out, all of it. You know, planes fall out of the sky, cars stop working on the spot. They pull off to the side of the road and they never work again even. And it’s not just it’s not just the production of new electricity.

Matt Krause
That’s not it’s like all electric electricity, all electronics stuff stops working, even battery powered stuff. So cell phones stop working, iPads stop working, laptops stop working. Anything that uses electricity in any form stops working. And your presentation needs to be your story needs to be so tight that you can survive a situation like that. And I know that advice.

Matt Krause
Your story needs to be so tight. I know that that’s that’s not actionable advice. And and, you know, maybe in next week’s episode or some near future episode, we need to give these people some basic story structures that they can actually use. Because this advice that I’m giving right now, your story needs to be so tight that advice is completely not actionable.

Alper Rozanes
You know, what am I supposed to do with that?

Matt Krause
Yeah. And when somebody tells you, oh, well, you know, tell a story, it’s what do you do with that?

Alper Rozanes
There’s we’re going to have a we’re going to have an episode on storytelling and we’re going to poke some holes into that too.

Matt Krause
Yeah. Okay. So, so so rest assured that in the next week or in a near future episode, we’re going to give you some story structures that you can use. But that’s my that’s my that’s my opinion is that your story needs to be so tight that you can have a total breakdown of all things electronic and you still at least need to survive to play another day.

Alper Rozanes
Well, this concludes our therapy session. No joking aside, by the way, at the expense of a losing, maybe some future design jobs for myself, I completely agree with what you said. Oh, wow. And like I said, in future episodes, I’ll probably will probably talk more about this. We’ll try to put some holes into this into this into this idea.

Alper Rozanes
But you will be surprised at the level of agreement that I have with this, if not only speaking of, if things go wrong in your story should be solid, but I believe I personally believe after more than ten years of designing presentations and working in this field, that yes, you should be able to deliver a superb presentation without using slides, without using video or whatever, just just connecting with the audience.

Alper Rozanes
So we’re not finished. We’re going to keep talking about this just for sure. But like I said, he would be surprised at how more agreeing I am with you than than not as a as someone with a with a design background.

Matt Krause
Yeah. When I voices opinion, like before I say it, I think, oh, these everybody’s going to kill me if I say that. But then when I see it, I find out that actually a lot of people, including people with visual design backgrounds, say, Yeah, you’re not that far off. So then I feel slightly comforted because I’m like, Oh, these people aren’t going to run me out of town.

Alper Rozanes
But this conversation isn’t over, my friend. We’re running out of time, that’s all. Come back to this.

Matt Krause
Okay. So yeah, so we’ve got we’ve got some structures to give these people some story structures. You’ve got some questions to come back at me. Some challenges to make. So yeah, this is going to go on for a while. So we’ll we’ll wrap up the podcast for today and then tune in next hour and in the coming weeks and we’ll have well, we’ll dive into the subject a little deeper for you.

Alper Rozanes
Alright, alright, we’ll do that.

Matt Krause
So so Mister Psychologist, it was a pleasure speaking with you today.

Alper Rozanes
I’ll send you the bill afterwards.

Matt Krause
Thank you very much. All right. I’ll talk to you later.

Alper Rozanes
Alright, I’ll talk to you later. Okay. Bye bye.

Thank you for listening to The White Rabbit with Matt Krause and Alper Rozanes. You can subscribe to the podcast on Spotify, iTunes or through your favorite feed.