The Best AI-first Slide Deck Platform

Alane and Micah break down one of their favorite “unfair advantage” tools right now: Gamma.app — the AI-powered way to create slide decks, one-pagers, and client-facing docs without being a designer.

Alane shares how she’s using Gamma.app to turn a simple recording + transcript into a polished “next steps” one-sheet for clients—fast, reusable, and easy to edit. Micah shares how he used Gamma.app (plus voice-to-text) to crank out a ClickUp Masterclass one-pager in minutes, including layout, screenshots, and pricing—without the painful back-and-forth that used to take weeks.

If you’ve ever felt stuck because you’re not a designer, or you’ve avoided creating decks because they take too long, this episode is your permission slip: this is the new normal.

Tools Mentioned (hyperlinked)

• Gamma.app
  – AI slide decks, docs, one-pagers, and simple web pages
• Lovable
  – AI app and landing-page builder (more developer-oriented)
• MacWhisper
  – Voice-to-text transcription for fast prompting

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For more information, visit our website at biggestgoal.ai.

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Transcript

Alane Boyd (00:01)
Okay, Micah, I wanna start off talking about a pain point that I have that we've been able to solve with the software. And you and I were chatting this morning about how we're using Gamma the same way, but in different use cases. So my point-

Micah Johnson (00:17)
Yeah, I thought I was

actually sharing a tip with you that you were going to be like, that's awesome. You're like, I'm already doing that. Old news, Micah.

Alane Boyd (00:23)
Old news, old news.

But I have been having this conversation. So the software that we're going to be talking about is Gamma and it is for creating slide decks, presentations, docs. I think you can even do web pages with it too, because it's all digital. ⁓

Micah Johnson (00:39)
You can do web pages,

one-pagers. Yeah. And it's Gamma.app. ⁓

Alane Boyd (00:44)
Thank you. So my pain point.

Micah Johnson (00:45)
Not sponsored, but

Gamma, if you're listening, we would love to have you sponsor one of our episodes.

Alane Boyd (00:50)
Yes, we should say we,

this is an unpaid promotion, just a love of the software. So my biggest pain point that I have is I am not a designer. I do not have talent or skillset in design. I need tools that make me look like I can. And I get really frustrated and defeated when I'm trying to do things normally because I can't produce the result that I've envisioned in my head.

Micah Johnson (00:54)
Yes, that's right.

Alane Boyd (01:19)
But with Gamma, it does it all for you. You just need to have, plug it in with the ideas that you have.

Micah Johnson (01:24)
Well, now we can't say normally anymore, Alane, because this is the new normal. Like, if you're not using this, you're abnormal.

Alane Boyd (01:29)
That's true.

Yeah, I mean, I was even talking to another founder I was having breakfast with her last week and she was talking about how long it takes to create decks. I'm like, have you checked out Gamma? She's like, I just heard about it. Like you go all in, it'll save hours and hours of work and time and produces a beautiful, really clean result in just minutes.

Micah Johnson (01:57)
Yeah, like under a minute if you're doing it right. So let's talk about how we are each using this. Cause I haven't actually heard your use case yet. I think you know mine, but I'd love to kind of trade stories live.

Alane Boyd (02:13)
⁓ okay. whenever... It's not Dancing with the Stars.

Micah Johnson (02:15)
Do we need like the pre-recorded disclaimer?

No, not Dancing with the Stars.

Alane Boyd (02:25)
Okay,

So whenever I'm working with a client and I need to provide them with clear next steps, what do you need to do after our engagement is over to have a clear view of what you need to do? Because it can feel a little overwhelming when we're not holding hands anymore on the tricycle and they've got to now do things on their own. And so I've started plugging in from a recording. I'll record myself with my ideas that I have, and then I plug the transcript into Gamma.

to create a one page document of what I tell them should be their next steps. And now this can be reused. It's not for a specific client. This is, okay, I've been asked this a few times. Now I need to actually document it so they have it to reference later and not just have to like sit there and write it down, you know, while we're on the call.

Micah Johnson (03:15)
So hold on, you're not even typing. You're literally just talking out your idea, getting a transcript and putting that in Gamma to produce the one-sheeter. So it's like straight from your brain to a one-sheeter.

Alane Boyd (03:21)
Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Yes, because you can write a prompt. So this is very AI generated in Gamma. You can tell it different ways to do it. in the prompt writing process, I'll say, hey, this is a verbal trans, well, I don't say verbal, but this is a transcript from ideas that I have that I want to document. What are the clear next steps a client needs to take with this? And then I say, here's the transcript.

and it'll create, and then I use the document mode. So it looks like a really nice one page document and produce it. And then I go in and it takes just seconds to produce. And then I go through and I edit it. It's so easy to edit. One of my biggest frustrations, and I had a whole training at our previous company, Micah, on slide decks. How do you produce slide decks? Because I learned from you how to keep the same font.

keep the same alignment, all of those things. Well, you can't screw up in a Gamma doc on formatting. So it's very clear. And then I can just go in and make the changes I want. And it does such a good job of producing what I want. And then if I want to add anything, there's a whole little AI part where you can hit the little plus sign, add more details that you want to.

Micah Johnson (04:44)
Yeah, I would say that Gamma is probably the first that I know of. I think there were others that tried to do it, but Gamma did it so well, it's so easy to use. This AI first approach, where it's not just a wrapper around an AI model, it actually has so much functionality in it to boost your productivity around creating these decks. So like what you're saying, Alane, one of the things that I loved about Gamma right off the bat was that we could define a theme.

or multiple themes. And that what you were saying with formatting and text and fonts and sizes and all of that, you define that in the theme once. And it comes pre-configured with tons of great themes. But if you want it to match your branding, you design that theme once. You set that as your default theme. And then when you're doing your verbal transcript into Gamma,

Alane Boyd (05:21)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Micah Johnson (05:34)
It already knows what theme to use. already applies everything. And then it designs within that context, within those limitations, for lack of a better word, of the theme. So it's never like, holy crap, why did this thing hallucinate? And it's going way off course. And then I have to do all these edits. It brings it right into exactly what you kind of expect it to look like.

Alane Boyd (05:41)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, and you can toggle between themes. So we have a few different themes that we've built out with our branding and I'll play around to see well, which one am I feeling today?

Micah Johnson (06:08)
Yeah, yeah. Now you're using some of the AI image generation in there a bit too to give it some extra oomph on your slides or no?

Alane Boyd (06:17)
Yeah, it's so by default, it'll have like a little AI image thing that you can say like yes or no. I always let it and I'm just see what I you know, if it produces something that I like most of the time, it does fine. So other times I'm like, no, I'll drop in my own images. But this is my tip. Let it do whatever it wants.

Micah Johnson (06:28)
Yeah.

Alane Boyd (06:38)
because then it makes a placeholder for the image. So if you don't like what it created, it already has a segment with the image, then I'll go drop in what I want in the spot that already has a placeholder for an image.

Micah Johnson (06:49)
That's

pretty cool. I like that. I tend to not like the AI images as much outside of like accent images. Like I like when it produces an abstract design or some sort of accent for what I'm creating, but I prefer to really keep my decks super clean and maybe super empty outside of the main points. that's just personal preference.

Alane Boyd (07:13)
Yeah, yeah, super empty. But it's great

for a doc because you may not want a lot of ⁓ imagery on the doc. this really, might be like this is the clear outline takeaways. And Micah, you you shared this morning how you created a doc so you can share here your use case, but you don't really need a lot of images in that use case.

Micah Johnson (07:17)
Good point.

No, Yeah. I mean, yeah. I think what you're using it for, I love the tips that you gave the use a transcript. I didn't even think of doing that. I've been writing stuff out and then pasting it into the prompt and then working with Gamma to do the generation and then go from there. So my use case came across, you know, we have a ClickUp masterclass that we've kicked off and it's super fun to do.

Alane Boyd (07:56)
Mm-hmm.

Micah Johnson (07:59)
But of course, we want to do others. So we're promoting that we're doing ClickUp master classes. And somebody asked for more information. And I realized, wait a second, we didn't even make a one pager for this yet. We already sold a cohort. And we're already in the middle of it. But we actually never created information on this. And so I'm like, well, better load up Gamma, because I can put this together really quickly. So fortunately, we already had.

Alane Boyd (08:12)
Right.

Right.

I'm

Micah Johnson (08:27)
The week by week outline what we cover in each week, when the sessions are, Tuesdays and Thursdays, what times, the price, we had all of that. So I use that to copy and paste what we already have for our context into Gamma, ask it to create a doc, have it created in one slide, and it immediately produced a beautiful two-column layout with a header and a description and everything that I needed. Now.

Alane Boyd (08:41)
Mm-hmm.

Micah Johnson (08:55)
What you were mentioning a second ago was like the AI that could add slides. And that is super helpful. But what I started using was that they have an AI agent inside of Gamma. And so I'm looking at this one sheeter and I'm like, do I, I'm so lazy now. Do I really want to drag and drop and like select stuff and format it and do all of that? Or do I just want to ask.

Alane Boyd (09:00)
Mm-hmm.

Thank

Micah Johnson (09:24)
the AI agent to do this stuff for me. And so kind of like your transcript, I use Mac whisper. And so I can hold down a key on my keyboard. And instead of typing a prompt, I just talk. And then that translates it directly into words. And then I just hit Enter again. I'm sounding super lazy, but it's so much faster than typing. And it's a lot more natural when you're just speaking and then it comes out in the prompt. And so I asked it to do things like, hey, can you grab a cool screenshot?

Alane Boyd (09:33)
Mm-hmm.

Micah Johnson (09:53)
ClickUp that I could put in here and I think I had it rearrange just a couple things and then add pricing at the bottom and I asked the agent to do that and it thinks through the whole layout as if it was regenerating it But it it just adjusts what it needs it went to the web found a couple screenshot options asked which ones I wanted to use I told it it dropped it in there in the perfect place and I was done it

Alane Boyd (10:22)
That's so cool.

Micah Johnson (10:22)
took me five

minutes to create a one pager. Alane, I'm sure you remember, but in the early days of working together years ago, making a one pager was so damn painful.

Alane Boyd (10:36)
Yeah, it took weeks.

Micah Johnson (10:38)
weeks. We had designers, had copywriters, we had themes, we had revisions, we have feedback cycles.

Alane Boyd (10:46)
Exactly, go back and forth,

right. Like going back and forth, what you wanted to change, what you didn't like. ⁓ my gosh, I just want to erase that out of my memory. And if you're still doing things that way, please check out Gamma because you will save you weeks of work and get it done in 10 minutes.

Micah Johnson (10:55)
Getting heartburn just talking about it. It's so stupid.

Yeah. And honestly, there's a lot of interfaces that I get frustrated with. Gamma is not one of them. They have designed it so well. And this is one of those cases like Alane, you and I, worked on a project called Arvo years ago when we started this business thinking that, man, we need a way to like visually show ⁓ SOPs and all of this stuff. And Gamma came out and did it like 10 times better. And

Alane Boyd (11:34)
Yeah.

Micah Johnson (11:36)
It's just like one of those things where it's like, it's just so easy to connect with this platform.

Alane Boyd (11:40)
It is, it's so user friendly and I am a grumpy new user. really, like, so for me, so let's compare because Lovable is so popular right now. It is exploding. I do not gel with Lovable. I just, exactly. But it's different. And I'll tell you my biggest takeaway difference that keeps me in Gamma instead of

Micah Johnson (11:45)
Yes, you are.

Haha.

Yeah, and it's the same thing. You prompt it and yeah.

Alane Boyd (12:08)
using Lovable more is Gamma you prompt, you get the produced whatever it is that you're looking for and editing it is so easy. I can go exactly into the doc and edit. Lovable is clunky to do that. They want you to edit with prompts or within the code. Well, now this has taken me twice as long. So I gravitate.

back towards what is the easiest and Gamma is easiest to produce what I need to do.

Micah Johnson (12:37)
Yeah. Yeah.

And you bring up a good point, Alane, I think because we've in the, or I should say I've in the past created landing page with landing pages with Lovable and felt like, this is really cool. And I could connect with it, but I also come from a development background. And so some of the things that it would say, and I could look at the code and I could make the changes real quick. That was the audience that I think they're going for. But now that I hear you say that I'm like,

Alane Boyd (12:53)
Mm-hmm.

Micah Johnson (13:05)
Why the hell didn't I make landing pages in Gamma, which is faster, no code, actually provides website and landing pages features, and produces things so much more on point with the themes that we've already designed? Like, now I feel like an idiot. Not discouraging, Lovable to come and sponsor this podcast either. But it's great. I just probably should have listened to your advice.

that you're giving me in the future.

Alane Boyd (13:35)
Exactly. Everybody,

y'all just listen to me. You heard it from Micah. ⁓ But, know, okay, I'll love what you created though for the podcast topic writer with the agent and then you gave it a Lovable interface was so cool. It's so sleek looking. So there's a time and place for it. Yes.

Micah Johnson (13:39)
There we go. Yep, that's it.

Yeah, I think there really are like,

there are different use cases. So if you need to integrate with other tech platforms or write code or have a back end or anything like that, that's really what Lovable is all about. Whereas presentation assets, one-sheeters, decks, simple landing pages, that's going to be Gamma. So check out Gamma. And if you're

Alane Boyd (13:59)
Thank

Micah Johnson (14:20)
interested in ClickUp or using ClickUp and you or your project managers need to learn how to use it more than a glorified checklist. We have a ClickUp masterclass coming up in January, so reach out. Selfless plug.