Matt and Alper interview Natalia Talkowska about the importance of putting some of your own story into your presentations, even if you feel a bit unsure about it, and how your audience needs that from you in order to connect with your message.

Also, Natalia challenges Matt to draw a stick man on LinkedIn.

Episode transcript:

Matt Krause
Alper today we have a guest, Natalia Talkowska. And Natalia is the founder and owner of a business in London called Natalka Design. Natalka Design does visual communications and in particular builds on Natalia’s years of experience with sketching to produce some pretty amazing sketches for their customers.

Matt Krause
And in fact, when I saw her sketches, I immediately thought we’ve got to have her on the podcast. So anyway, tell me about those sketches, Natalia, because you’ve probably been sketching most of your life. So when was the moment that you said to yourself, you know, I could probably make a living out of this?

Alper Rozanes
That’s a good question.

Natalia Talkowska
Sketching, all my life. Correct. You know, how they say 10,000 hours gets you into being a pro. Now, is that true? You guys tell me? I don’t know, I always feel like you can always learn more. And you can always continue.

Natalia Talkowska
When did that become a job that became a job in 2012 When I launched the business, stroke of luck, right timing, the right place, the right whatever. When I met my mentor then, Darren Robson, and he invested all his time and his money as well to kick start me on this journey and helped me out to just kind of go from nothing, just kind of knowing how to illustrate and maybe I had few little projects here and there on the side, to fully fledged communications for corporate workshops, corporate strategy meetings, anywhere that businesses needed to create a narrative that people understand high stakes message, something really big happening in the company, I started getting calls for.

Natalia Talkowska
And from just running around on my own to a team 12 years of business and working with pretty interesting people.

Matt Krause
And by the way, recently, Natalia interviewed Chris Do of The Futur and Alper and I were mentioning Chris Do on this podcast just recently, just a few weeks ago. Alper and I are both big fans of his work. So kudos to you Natalia for getting him on your podcast. It was a nice move.

Natalia Talkowska
Yeah, I was selfish about it, and I just asked if he wants to talk to me.

Matt Krause
Yeah, I was, I was I was very impressed that he appeared on your podcast, and it was for about an hour. It wasn’t a short period of time, right? He appeared for an hour and and talked to you on the podcast. Is that correct? It was about an hour.

Natalia Talkowska
Yeah, we have a YouTube channel. So that’s kind of where we posted it. Now everyone’s nagging me to do more of it and to start a podcast, so maybe you guys can give me some tips after?

Matt Krause
Maybe so we’ll be happy to. And one other question for you Natalia, just so I don’t forget to do this later. Tell our listeners if they want to get in touch with you. Where can they find you? How can they get in touch with you?

Natalia Talkowska
So everywhere online at Natalka Design, N-a-t-a-l-k-a Design. And if you want to find myself say hi on LinkedIn, always they’re always somewhere swimming as a social. So yeah.

Matt Krause
So anyway, Natalia, on to the burning question that we have for you today. Your company’s blog has a post, we all have a topic. And that post mentions that we all have a topic, a topic that we know well. And it’s always fun to talk about it.

Matt Krause
And I agree that yes, we all have a topic that we know well. And it’s always fun to talk about it. But presentation training is so much about the audience, the audience, the audience, you know, what does the audience want?

Matt Krause
And then here’s you on this blog post saying that we all have a topic and sometimes it’s just fun to talk about that topic. So I’m wondering why it’s important to talk about one’s favorite topic, and I’m wondering, can you unpack that for us a little bit? Why is it important to talk about one’s favorite topic?

Natalia Talkowska
I guess it comes down a bit to the mentor work that I do a lot with younger people and I meet so many talented humans who are amazing, but they hide behind what they do.

Natalia Talkowska
They’re shy, they’re not sure and mind not just young people, all of us at different stages in life some something is making us go like I’m not sure if I should share it with people care and what I believe in at least beyond even what I do with my work and it’s all about storytelling and the power of it because we all connect at the end of the day with stories.

Natalia Talkowska
And we all find ourselves in them, we can relate, we can understand other people better we can create a more open view of this world. And yeah, we all do, I would say a bunch of stories that we are that we could definitely interest some people in the room, make it 10 people make it 100 make it 200? I don’t know.

Natalia Talkowska
But there will be always someone who’ll be like, ah, yeah, that’s really interesting. Tell me more. And I believe truly, that any sort of connection between humans, again, beyond just making a business kind of related starts from a story.

Natalia Talkowska
So that can totally be then placed into a presentation place, into wherever you want that kind of medium to be. But whatever you want to share, turn it into a story because we will all connect with it so much more, and we will relate with it. And we will want to know more from you.

Matt Krause
Let me see if I am hearing you correctly, you’re you’re basically saying inject some of your personality, some texture into your presentation, don’t spend so much energy rubbing off all of the rough edges and put some of yourself into your presentation. Is that what you’re saying?

Natalia Talkowska
Also, I mean, at the end of the day, the calls that we’re getting is, guys, we have 30 pages of slides, and no one cares, we have a big presentation, can you help to as they call it, bring it to life, and help to tell a story.

Natalia Talkowska
So when we hear this over and over and over again, presentation can be anything that you can think of really it doesn’t have to be narrowed down to a box or a few boxes.

Natalia Talkowska
And you don’t have to you’re limited by what you think the tools that you use provide. So we always try to open our clients or network’s minds and say, Well imagine that people have no clue who you are. They don’t even speak your language, how can you get their attention differently?

Matt Krause
So I’ve got some questions in mind for Natalia. But Alper, do you have anything at this point that you would like to ask about?

Alper Rozanes
I have one question I really liked Natalia what you said about us connecting through the through the stories, and I would like to ask you, what do you think are some of the requirements for for the story that you’re telling to resonate with the audience who’s listening to you?

Natalia Talkowska
Make it short, and keep it genuine. So what I mean by that sentence, I feel like we try to dress up our stories too much, we try to say too much the posts on LinkedIn sometimes are confusing too long.

Natalia Talkowska
That’s why we even have tools that kind of can tell us the understanding of this message is, let’s say, very low rate. If you do these things, the understanding will go up and you will connect with more people. It’s purely because we all connect with simple we all connect with, we are all overwhelmed. That’s why the visual storytelling is so powerful, because I will get your attention much quicker if I show you something and talk through it, then if I just write or if I just speak.

Natalia Talkowska
Because naturally most of us, if we’re lucky enough to see, are connecting with what we see in front of us, and therefore we can make a meaning out of it. So I like to always challenge my clients like think about that someone in that room or when that presentation is going to be sent to them. They don’t even understand your language, will they understand what is your story, what you’re trying to sell what you’re trying to present what you’re trying to share, whatever that is.

Natalia Talkowska
And when you go kind of with that sort of exercise, they you know, they kind of look at it again. And they’re like, Hmm, I could have said there less, or I could not just show this graph and do something more with this graph. Or I could just not write five pages of text and assume everyone’s going to read it.

Natalia Talkowska
So it’s again, it’s all about challenging ourselves how we perceive the story and how others can perceive it based on their cultural background, historical, geographical, age, sex, whatnot. Simple, genuine, to the point.

Alper Rozanes
I really liked the thing you said about imagining doing the presentation in another language, did I get you right?

Natalia Talkowska
Yeah.

Alper Rozanes
I think it’s a big challenge. And I’m assuming that the results could be very beneficial. If I can I imagine myself speaking to an audience who doesn’t speak my language, yet understand my points. I like that. I really like that.

Natalia Talkowska
That is always a fun challenge. So I challenge you guys to think about your next big message. How could that look like?

Natalia Talkowska
It could be very stressful when you think that no one gets your language but what could that, what could be your tool that will help you to make them understand?

Matt Krause
Alper before we wrap up for the day, I have a question for Natalia. Is it okay if I jump in?

Alper Rozanes
Sure, go ahead.

Matt Krause
Okay, so Natalia, the sketches that you do, they’re they’re pretty amazing. And the artistic touch that you bring to them is pretty amazing. And so a question that I have for you is, could somebody like me who has a much more basic, childlike level of ability to draw? Does a drawing have to be good, does a sketch have to be good, in order to have this effect that you’re talking about?

Natalia Talkowska
No. Very quickly. It’s all about making meaning. It doesn’t have to be good. That’s what I always talk about our we have these doodle events for adults, that basically the strapline is I can draw, they’re called doodleledo, we run them around the world.

Natalia Talkowska
And the basis of it is basically because we heard so many people saying, Oh, you guys are so amazing. But I can’t draw. I can’t draw. What do I do? I’m stuck.

Natalia Talkowska
No, you’re not. Some of the some of the biggest bloggers out there, Instagram personalities, create literally stickman stories, dots, lines, I don’t care. It’s actually I think more one might claim, accessible and relatable and understandable, if those stories are simple. So I would say that, can you can you draw a stickman, Matt?

Matt Krause
Oh, yes, I can, I can do that. I can draw a stickman.

Alper Rozanes
That’s a low bar.

Natalia Talkowska
Add a stickman to your next LinkedIn post, whatever the story is, can I challenge you to that to do that?

Matt Krause
Oh, yeah, that’s a nice challenge. I could I could add a stickman to my next LinkedIn post. I like that challenge. I, yes, I accept your challenge.

Natalia Talkowska
Awesome. See, that’s the thing. It’s all about meaning and I beg you people will even quicker if we were to graded and rated they will quicker get it again thinking about they can’t speak my language, the stickman then sometimes this very kind of rich piece of material that, of course has a specific purpose, right. So I challenge you, I would love to see a post from you both guys next week. With a stickman doodle.

Matt Krause
Well, then my next post will include a stickman. And it’ll be there, it’ll be there, especially because I’m accepting the challenge from Natalia.

Alper Rozanes
And not because that’s the most we can do anyway.

Matt Krause
Yeah, and now, who knows? Maybe a stickman will become a regular part of all of my LinkedIn posts. Who knows?

Natalia Talkowska
Who knows? Maybe we’re looking at the birth of something new here. I’m excited.

Matt Krause
Yes, that could be. Well, thank you very much, Natalia.

Natalia Talkowska
Thank you so much, guys. Pleasure.

Matt Krause
Alright, we’ll talk to you later.