153. Shooting Ourselves In The Foot

Robert Smith, an international tax consultant specializing in smoothing one's entry into the US market, goes into what a non-American needs to know when selling into America. We discuss things like slide design, accents, and more.

There’s so much talk about “authenticity” these days that we decided it was time to hear from an expert. So we called in Dr Nil Madi, someone who studied authenticity in the workplace for her PhD dissertation. Nil, a repeat guest on the podcast, goes into authenticity, what it is, where it comes from, and how we can achieve it.

Guest Sevda Özsönmez talks about the way she prepares for a conference appearance and the value of appearing at conferences. Alper, Sevda, and Matt also chip away at the old chestnut that goes, "I am an introvert, I can't speak in public."

Repeat guest Wes Wheless describes his own experience with writing and publishing that most ultimate in presentations, a book.LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wwheless/Wes’s best selling book The Expert's Privilege, available in paperback and Kindle: wesbook.comCoaching & services: weswheless.com

Matt goes deeper into the hard skills vs soft skills debate, and outlines why he, especially given his professional background before he was a presentation trainer, is a hater of the hard skills vs soft skills way of seeing the world.

Guest Necil Beykont, a negotiation trainer in Istanbul, goes into the differences between hard skills and soft skills, and recommends terms we should use instead, and better ways of thinking than we currently use.

Based on his book "The Damn Rules," Nick Richtsmeier describes his Rule #4 (The Customer Is Wrong) and Rule #5 (The Competition Is Your Friend), and Alper, Matt, and Nick begin to speculate on what these things might mean for your presentations.

In this episode, returning guest Nick Richtsmeier talks about his book "The Damn Rules," and that the audience distraction you, as a presenter, face is often not a lack in you, it’s just the world your audience exists in, and here’s what you can do to turn the tables.

US-based strategy consultant Joe Fromandi talks about strategy consulting and helps Matt on a Curse of Knowledge-related problem Matt has been having with one of his services.

Guest Brad Farris returns to the podcast to talk about the benefits of using humor in presentations specifically, and leadership in general. Brad and Matt also discuss some tangible examples of how you can turn this from an "it is good" theory into something that you use and do in real life situations.