Welcome to Stay On Course with me, Julie Riga. My life has been a roller coaster of highs and lows, but what I know to be true is that when we are grounded in our purpose and savor the sweet moments of life, we are truly a success. Today, you are going to get the ingredients for success because life is salty and life is sweet. Together, let's explore the possibilities of our own lives. and learn from thought leaders around the globe. Ready guys? Let's cook it. You were thriving on your own until leading others became your new reality. I'm Julie Riga, and I created Before I Lead for high achievers like you, CEOs, new leaders, and side hustlers who've hit that uncomfortable space from doing it all to having to lead it all. It's not just a skill gap. It's an identity shift. You're overwhelmed. You're doubting. You're stuck between growth and burnout. Let's change that. Join me at beforeilead.com or visit julieriga.com because it's time to stop surviving the shift and start owning it. Welcome, welcome everybody to the next edition of the Stay On Course podcast. Today I'm joined with Anthony Greider, founder of Agent and self-described technical translator on a mission to rescue scientific brilliance from the graveyard of boring, data-heavy presentations. Most experts think their data is the main event, but Anthony is here to flip that thinking and show us how your expertise is just the foundation and the real impact happens when you serve the human side of your message as the main course. Anthony, welcome to the Stand Course Podcast. Thank you so much for having me, Julie. I appreciate it. And what a tasty little intro you've just given me. Well, this episode is sure to be filled with flavor today as we are more corny than ever. Put your seatbelts on, everybody. Anthony's in the house and we are going to rock this thing and talk about how to make presentations better, more brilliant and more human. But Anthony, before we get started, what is your favorite food? You know how I like things to be spicy? gonna go with buffalo wings buffalo wings but it has to be with blue cheese yeah i love nothing more than some moldy cheese yeah anthony i'm so excited about that well anthony just so the audience knows a little bit about our history where do you want to tell everybody how we met oh julie how did we meet we met one day as we were both attending. Brandon Cessarone. Brandon Cessarone. That's who it was. It's Brandon. Yes. Yeah. His fantastic group that brings together people who focus on learning, training, development, and educating the future. So Julie and I met there and man, the rest kind of became a dangerous history of us working together, collaborating you teaching me you know one or two things maybe along the way just a few just just a couple well and your work that you do with scientific experts is tremendous and so what what are you working on right now that like what's the most exciting thing you're working on right now have a lot of exciting things i like to say in the hopper i'm in iowa right so we gotta we gotta throw some corny farm references in there as well there's a good dad joke for you uh one of the most exciting things though i think as you know julie is the before i speak program that you and i are putting together specifically for the scientific audience, for healthcare, for scientists, for researchers, to become better speakers, to put themselves out on stages and succeed in a totally different way than most people have defined success at conferences before. Yes. We want people to be more interesting than this please oh my gosh and it's a challenge i tell you what it is a challenge yes so today we gonna talk about why your data is not the star of the show anthony where do you want to start this conversation today Look I am a huge fan of analogies obviously And so let start with what happens in the kitchen. I mean, if we're going to look for ingredients for success, right? We have to have ingredients that build a foundation. And so I think my very first ingredient for success that I would give you is the base, right? This is the technical brilliance. This is how people get a seat at the table. It's how they get to the conference. It's how they get published. But it should be sort of invisible, in my opinion. Julie, what you may not know about me is when I was in college, my degree was French. And you're welcome for that little nugget of information. No, it wasn't. It sure was. What? I know. What was I going to do with it? Who knows? I was an 18 year old. I had great 18 year old logic. And I thought someone would pay me a lot of money to just run my mouth in a language that millions of people speak natively. Turns out that's not how the world works. However, my French foundation, if you will, brought to the forefront a lot of really beautiful food concepts. And as I was thinking about talking to you today and how I work with this invisible foundation of data, it brought up the concept of mirepoix, which is the French invisible base, right? It's the carrots, it's the onions, it's what gives your food flavor on a very deep level. And that is a true secret or ingredient to success for these researchers, for these tech innovators. They have to be building this foundation, but what they need to do is hide it. It needs to be somewhat invisible. Yes. Does that make sense? I mean, it makes sense to me because I... Sounds scary, though. Yeah, I've done a lot. I'm still thinking about the food, not so much the scientific part. But, you know, so this is something my father used to always teach me is the mirepoix, the the carrots, the celery, and the onion. It goes in the base of the soup. If you're making a bolognese, if you're making a soup, this is the stuff that you fry up before you put all the ingredients in. Yeah, but let me ask you this. Did your father ever serve a piece of celery plain as the main dish or a carrot as the main dish or an onion as the main dish, right? Nope, never, never, never. Because those are the base ingredients that support everything without stealing the spotlight. I love this. That's what the mirepoix does. That's what it does. And that's all the background, all the stuff you can see, all the years and the days of you reading books and sweating and taking tests and people questioning you, all that stuff. Yeah, you know, just like TV and movie show, the dimly lit scientific lab with bubbles and smoke and things happening. You know, it's where all the magic happens. Exactly. But we want to keep that down in that secret layer. What we really want to bring to the forefront when these researchers and these innovators come out and share their gold is the main course. We want the main course. We want what people focus on and remember from these talks to be the human voice. And that's what makes you you. And it's what makes you unique. It's the perspective you bring to the research, why you're doing it, why it matters to other people is such a key piece that people forget. They get so buried in the data, they forget to bring out who they are and why it matters to them and why the information should matter to other people. But that's truly the best way to connect with your audience is to be a human, not to be a robot, not to be stuck in tech mode, not to bury yourself in the jargon, but to bring out who you are as a person and to speak from the heart. We get to see the main course and that comes out as like the star. that's the star of the show and that's you the flea mignon or like i like a little duet you know maybe like a filet and a little lobster tail i like a slow servant turf so and then i in iowa we have to import all of our seafood so i don i don do that all right i stick to my steak my land animals oh that what you have there land animals right yes right so the people and the personality and that informs the data and helping people really lock into what you're saying. Yes. Flip that around, though. The data actually informs and then the human connection is what really brings people in, right? Transforms. The human connection transforms. Yes. The data informs. And then what did I just say? The human connection transforms. That's it. That's it. I love it. We need to coin that right there. I agree. I got so emotional in the moment that I forgot what I even said two seconds ago. That's okay. I understand. I have that effect on people sometimes. I see that. Okay. What's next? Okay. So there's one, one more huge piece that we're missing. We don't serve five course meals on trash can lids. I was going to say paper plate. I was going to say paper plate. Well, Okay. As long as it's sturdy and doesn't fold and bend and spill all over you, maybe a paper plate will do. Definitely not a trash can lid. So the plating is key. This is where I struggle with so many people that get up on stages. They may have rehearsed over and over and over again. They may have a great talk. They may have even brought the main course to the forefront and use their humanity to share this message. But they deliver it and they bury it in 12 point font and they bury it with hundreds of words on a slide. And if we're not focused on visuals as well, we lose our audience again. We don't want the collateral pieces to detract or distract from the message that the presenter is sharing. We also don't want them to be the notes for the presenter. We want the presenter to be able to speak without reading off of their slides. Julie, if there's one thing I hate more than anything in the world, it's when people do this. And next, we're going to talk about... No. So face your audience. Your slides are for them, not for you. Well, hopefully you have some sort of confidence monitor in front of you. Maybe. But do you need it? Oh, I feel like I need it. I feel like I need at least a, you need to see your slides. Most places have a confidence monitor. If you go to a big event place, you have a confidence monitor. something's on the ground where you can see it or sometimes it's even up in front of you right so let's get scientific conferences have a podium right okay and you have a laptop on the podium you get to see your notes page from powerpoint or whatever software you're using and the presentation is up on the screen okay i mean i think it's okay to look but you can't read correct yes oh totally fine to glance let's do a glance uh i feel like everyone will feel better if they're allowed to glance oh absolutely okay i'm i am guilty of glancing myself because it's not a crime so maybe i'm not guilty i don't know it's not a crime to glance okay no no no not a crime to glance at your slides so yeah i think those are those are the big pieces that i think hold back a lot of super intelligent people that have life-changing information world-changing information to share right they focus on the data instead of leaving that as the mere point the the invisible base they don't bring the filet mignon to the table. They don't bring their humanity, their personality to the presentation, and they serve up their dish on a trash can plate. They don't let the visuals complement the work that they've done. Yeah. And so that's what I work on with with my clients, with researchers and tech innovators across the world. Yeah. It's important that we connect with our audience because what we're doing in our presentations is we influencing and you can influence with data I feel like you can you can speak to the logic right But you can influence emotional response with data I think that is really important. It's so important for us to be ourselves, to be our authentic version of ourselves. And I think one of the things that we know about people with scientific brains is that they are on the more logical side. They do love the logic. And so we have to be careful because half of the people in the room, if you, I always go back to the Myers breaks, right? So half of the people in the room are going to be taking in information based on big picture and stories and connection. And the other half of the audience might be just taking in information based on data. But if you only do one and not the other, you're not speaking to everyone in the room. Correct. Absolutely true. It's a fine balance, right? And it's challenging for people to see. One of the recurring themes that I see with folks I'm helping is that they have been raised in a system that begs for them to focus on the data only. And that's how they prove their worth. That's how they earn the degree. That's how they get publications. That's how they get respect from their colleagues. But then we lose sight of the humanity and we lose sight of how to connect with humans on a human level instead of on a data level. And you're not trying to prove your worth and earn a degree when you're sharing your information out with the world. Yeah. You're trying to influence them to do something after. There's always got to be some sort of call to action for every single presentation that we do. And so we want to influence those people to have some sort of action after they watch and listen to you speak. Absolutely. I have an agent framework that I use with my clients. And the final letter, T, in agent, is about tracking change. Because the reality is a true measure of success in a talk is not if people can pass a test afterwards. It's if we've impacted change, if we've influenced them to take some action, then we've succeeded in the talk. Whether that action is partnership, you know, for people who are pitching to investors, it's a connection there. If we want people to go out and change the world, that's the action that we're looking for them to take. So, yeah, you're absolutely right. We are influencing for change. And that is built in directly into the agent framework that I use. I love this. What a great conversation, Anthony. How can my audience find out more about you and agent? Absolutely. I would love to chat with folks and connect with them. I'm on LinkedIn, Anthony Greider. You can also find us at learnwithagent.com. Anthony thank you so much for being a guest on the stay on course podcast thank you Julie my dad Annie Arrigo was not just a chef he was my hero from the hardships of world war ii to the heights of culinary excellence his story is nothing short of remarkable now this story lives on in stay on course a book that is very close to my heart it's filled with his own words his recipes and the wisdom he imparted to me just imagine four months before he passed he handed me his life story urging me to finish it in these pages you'll discover the secrets behind mouth-watering dishes and the lessons he taught me about leadership and perseverance. And trust me, there are some incredible tales in here, like the time he pulled off a birthday bash for Frank Sinatra with just 48 hours notice. So if you're hungry for inspiration and craving a taste of Ennio's legacy, go to julieriga.com. That's www.julieriga.com. Thank you for listening to another episode of Stay On Course. Please don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review this podcast so Julie can continue serving up delectable experts and appetizing content directly to your earbuds. And remember, right now you have the ingredients to be living the life you are meant to live. This has been a production of Stay On Course Studios. That's stayoncourse.studio.
