Ep. 23 - A "Just Us" Episode

March has arrived, and with it comes fake spring, real allergies, bracket dreams, and that annual daylight savings debate we all pretend will be resolved someday. In this "Just Us" episode, Kevin and Brody pull back the curtain on public speaking, storytelling, and why even seasoned presenters still get butterflies. Spoiler alert: the nerves never really leave, they just learn how to behave.

Along the way, they debate what makes a keynote soar or sink, share their rituals for surviving presentations, and confess to some truly vintage first music purchases. It’s higher ed meets March Madness meets mixtape memories. 

*The Pickup Meeting is a spinoff of the Adventures in Advising podcast!

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Have a question? Want to chat? E-mail us at thepickupmeeting@gmail.com!

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Transcript

Kevin Thomas  
And away we go. Welcome back to The Pickup Meeting. Hey, someone forgot to send the calendar invite to you, but you showed up anyway. We're so glad you're here. How you doing, Brody, I'm good. You're cracking me up today. Yeah, listen, this is gonna be fun, you know, like we haven't done a just us episode in a while, and here we are kicking off March, just us, and I'm excited to talk about all the things that are going on.

Michael "Brody" Broshears  
That's March is kind of an interesting time in higher ed, right? We're hitting spring break, daylight savings. It's there's a lot going on. What's your take on daylight savings? How you feeling about that.

Kevin Thomas  
All right, so if we're going to have daylight savings, yeah, that's a thing. And, and I feel like it's this time of year that there's always like, well, legislators are in full agreement that we need to change this, and then it never changes. Like, vote on stuff, and then nothing goes anywhere, right? If we're going to change things, this is my favorite shift. You know, we get a little more time. The days last a little longer. I enjoy that, so that when I'm leaving the work at five o'clock or 530 or whatever time it is, that it's not just dark as you're walking out of the office, I enjoy that there's more light, so you can go on a walk that evening or do some things, and it's not freezing cold, yeah?

Michael "Brody" Broshears  
Nothing says impending dune like darkness at four o'clock. 

Kevin Thomas  
And listen like there's also some things that are tied to it. It's spring it's spring break, it's it's the start of baseball season. It's also the start of allergy season. That's less good, but I think that you have some fun with the fact that you get a little more time to do a little more things in the day.

Michael "Brody" Broshears  
Yeah, I love the sunlight, there's no question about that. And I like the warmer temperatures to me, March, feels like you've survived the brutal winter. And it's been a brutal winter this year, for sure, where I've been, and even in southern Indiana, where my family is, it's been pretty terrible.

Kevin Thomas  
And as we're filming this today, or as we're recording this today, you know, it's one of those where the Northeast is just getting blitzed by some pretty extreme weather. So I know we have a lot listeners in in that northeast area of the country, and I'm guessing they're ready for March and April and May and June to get here as quick as humanly possible and and I think that's just the case with this timeframe, where sometimes it's nice in March and sometimes it's not, but hey, you're gonna have more light.

Michael "Brody" Broshears  
Yeah, fake spring March is like fake spring.

Kevin Thomas  
Did you do? And you said this, you know, did you do spring break as a college student?

Michael "Brody" Broshears  
Yeah, I think my senior year went down to Florida. We drove my car. My car. Took one for the team, the 83 Cutlass Supreme, and we went down to, like I want to say, Sanibel Island, maybe. And it was super fun. But we had to go down a different way because of weather. So we ended up kind of going down, and then across to get to where we needed to go. It took quite a bit longer to get there, but we had fun once we were there. I did that and I got married during spring break. So like March 12, 1994 it was the spring break of my first year of graduate school. Pretty special so even if I'm not doing something specific, there's always something fun. Catherine and I have planned for our anniversary. So that's cool.

Kevin Thomas  
So you got married during spring break and first year graduate school, and then essentially would have had to just go right back to

Michael "Brody" Broshears  
to school. Yes, that is accurate.

Kevin Thomas  
There were, there was no honeymoon in that was occurring other than you did this during spring break. I mean, it's a nice reminder and gift that you get in that time frame that like, hey.

Michael "Brody" Broshears  
We honeymooned, we went on, we went on a four day, three night cruise. That was kind of fun. And then we carted, tried to cart back all of the gifts that we got. And Catherine's car broke down on i 64 right before we hit Louisville, and so we had to send half of our stuff back home. My dad, I think her mom, had to come and we left the car on the side of the road the 90s.

Kevin Thomas  
Mm. Yeah, so you said 1994 I was like, Man, how come I wasn't your wedding.

Michael "Brody" Broshears  
You could have been the ring bearer.

Kevin Thomas  
You're a jerk. All right, that one's definitely going to come back. You know, I didn't Florida trips or like the beach trips. I'm not a huge beach fan, so that wasn't one of these things that just happened in college, either. I can remember going to the NCAA tournament for a spring break trip, like we went up and saw Murray State play. And I really want to say it was Georgia at the time, like Murray was a 14 and Georgia was a three. And that particular year, it was the year that Carbondale, I think, made a run to the Sweet 16, yes, Elite Eight, and knocked off Bob knights Texas Tech team there in Chicago. And so I got to see Bob Knight coach, as well as Bruce Webber. And, you know, so it was, it was, it was a good, you know, pot of games. But driving up to Chicago, a group of us doing that for a spring break trip, sure was a lot of fun. Yeah, I mean, you never know what the weather's going to be like. You have to kind of make it up if you're if you're not going south, for sure, but basketball is a good thing. There's no question about that. And depending on the timeframe, I remember going into Chicago and they were turning the river green because it was near St Patrick's Day. And so that was a cool experience as a as a college student, just to bum around in Chicago and find cheap hotel rooms that probably we would look at now and say, not so safe, not so great.

Michael "Brody" Broshears  
I remember at 83 I was 13 or 12 years old, the regional was in Evansville. It was Roberts stadium, and I remember the eight teams that were there. I think Georgia was there, Tennessee was there, and I didn't go, but man, Evansville was kind of excited about hosting a division one. Like being one of those cities that gets to host first couple of rounds of the NCAA tournament. That was pretty big news. But I like March Madness for sure.

Kevin Thomas  
For sure. Hey, so one of the things I know we wanted to talk about today this is called awkward transition. I thought it

Michael "Brody" Broshears  
was a pretty good segue, myself.

Kevin Thomas  
Public speaking. You know, I think that, because we're a little goofy, we have a lot of fun together. You remember this from a couple years ago at the administrators institute that people are like, Hey, you guys are the funny guys. And it's like, Well, depends how you're defining funny. But we have some fun with our presentations together. We have fun when we get to present. I think we do okay. I know you do keynote, keynote address. I do keynotes at different things. Do the nerves still get you? Or have they gone away?

Michael "Brody" Broshears  
No, they're there for sure. I think it's a I think it's a testament of being a really good speakers, if you're nervous. To me, being nervous is a part of it. I think because it brings some excitement to the session. It means you're going to be on and prepared. But you know, I did the AI session for the administrators Institute last month, and I'm telling you, I did not sleep very well. I know John and I talked the night before, but you know, sometimes it's about a topic too that's new to you. And so if it's a new topic. Or if you don't feel like you're an expert and who's an expert on AI, there aren't that many. I mean, you're learning so fast. Things are changing so fast, but you just I definitely had some butterflies that day, but it went swimming, swimmingly. I used some IU humor, right? Being the national champs got some folks excited at the beginning of the I think a good story to start with. You know, you and I have both been learning about the impact of storytelling and in terms of the work that we're doing. And I think always starting with a good story is really helpful.

Kevin Thomas  
I think I'm with you that I still get amped up a little little bit on the nervous side of things. I am doing a keynote this week at the Citadel. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, it would be a good time. And so on Monday, feeling pretty good, I do this Friday, I think, near the lunch hour. And so come Thursday night, the nerves are going to start to kick in, a little anxiety. What if I say the wrong things? What if I greet somebody the wrong way? What if I'm the only person not in military garb of some sort? You know, it's those things that get there. But I think there's, you know, I think there's this thought that whenever you're doing things like podcasts or that you present. Into lot that those go away and they just do not. I mean, I think you're right. I think there's a numbness to it that if you got to that point, you probably wouldn't be very effective at doing it.

Michael "Brody" Broshears  
Yeah, there's, there's no question that the nerves, I think, are helpful when you're doing the talking for sure, I don't really practice like you got some questions written here, one of the things like, what's my ritual? I don't really speak in front of a mirror and do any kind of practice before I present or speak. I know a lot of people do that, and it's kind of the way I write, like I think about the paper in my head for days, right? I'll organize it in my brain, and I do the same thing with a lot of my speaking. I'll put together the slide deck, and I'll use the slide deck to help me. But I don't really practice. I just go in kind of unscripted. I've never really scripted any of my talks.

Kevin Thomas  
Yeah, it's one of those where I will typically print my slides off. Yep, that's old school. I do that too, in that way. And then there will be three or four slides in the presentation that I know are standalones. If I get a little lost or feel like things are not going as well. I have power moments to bring it back that's awesome, which is it could be a power moment of like, I do a presentation on student success, and it'll be a quote about student success, or let's reflect on the two things at your institution that you feel need to be better regarding student success, so that people can talk and bring a conversation back into where they're at, in case I have lost them. Yeah, I always use crowd participation. Those are my breaks in most of the keynotes or talks that I do. I always give the crowd a chance to kind of talk about a couple of questions. I think that's a really good approach to break up your own whether it's a Keynote or a workshop. To me, that's been really, really helpful is that audience participation. One, it gives you a chance to reset if you don't think things have gone very well. And two, it's just, it's a time for a break, right? Like you can take a break and people feel good if you're giving them a chance to kind of think about things people feel good about that. The other thing that go ahead, do you have a worse moment like as you think about the keynotes or presentations or even things you've done public speaking wise, just in general, that is like a worst moment for me, the quick the first thing that came to mind is like doing a play back in high school, and I was supposed to be this, I don't know, I think the play was like duck tails and bobby socks. That sounds really familiar, and I was playing a football jock that was kind of dumb, and somebody from the props area was supposed to put my playbook on the table, and I was supposed to go back into the scene to get my playbook that I forgot, but nobody had put it out there, so I just tucked it in my jacket and was like, Have you guys seen my playbook? And then finally, I'm like, Oh, look, here it is. And I pulled it out from my jacket and then walked on stage. What year did you do that? Kevin, probably 1994 when you got married. What grade were you in? Were you in eighth grade? Probably freshman, sophomore year, somewhere in that range. 

Michael "Brody" Broshears  
You're never going to believe this. Our eighth grade play was DuckTales and bobby socks. And I was in that play. I was the same dope jock.

Kevin Thomas  
Oh. Are you kidding me? No, I am not. And what year was that? That was 1964 1984 maybe 83 that's unbelievable. Did we play the same person really?

Michael "Brody" Broshears  
Yes. Like said in the 50s, didn't you have to roll your jeans up really high and wear a white t shirt? Didn't you have cigarettes on your big tattoo on your arm or something like that?

Kevin Thomas  
Absolutely, and at that point, I had hair so it was gelled, and all kinds of things that's crazy, that is wild, that was coming.

Michael "Brody" Broshears  
My story is this, Kevin, and I think people are surprised to hear this, but I always like to remind people speaking in front of others is a skill that can be developed. And here's my nightmare story. My senior year I had my junior year, I had decided I was going to get my teaching certification. And and one of the things that my advisor had, kind of we both kind of forgotten, was I had to take speech. And so I took speech my first semester of my senior year, and the first speech that I gave, I went over on time, and the second I knew I was over on time I knew. My grade was going to drop from an A to a B, I just lost. I lost it, right? Like I started to break out in hives. I got really nervous. I mean, I fell apart on this initial speech that I gave. And the instructor brought me back after class and said, Hey, man, you seem to really be having some trouble here that we have these classes for people that have speech anxiety, and I think you'd be good for that. And I said, Oh, wow, really this bad. And I just remember being so embarrassed. And I just, I went back to class, and I told him, You know, I think I need to stick this out and do my best and just try to get better. And I really wasn't that much better, but once you connected that those speeches to grades who I did not enjoy that at all, at all, but I got better, right? Like you just keep doing it. You just keep practicing. You put yourself out in front of other people, and eventually, now you speak in front of large groups of folks all the time, and you learn from that. So it's a skill, if you're not great at it now, just keep working at it.

Kevin Thomas  
You can get better at Yeah, and I think it's one of those things. It's a skill that you're right. I don't think, and I don't know, maybe we can get some folks to to let us know what they think. You know, we post things on LinkedIn. Hey folks. We have a new email address. Oh, the pickup meeting@gmail.com if you'd like to send us some feedback, we would be glad to hear that. But I'm curious your thoughts only if it's really good feedback, yeah, if it's bad feedback, we don't want to hear it and let them know about our media. Any feedback is good? Yeah, yeah. We want to get better. We do. I know that I make age jokes to Brody. You don't have to tell me. I do. I don't think that any of you are old, just Brody, by the way, the thing I would, I'm just kind of curious about, is the ways to get better about this. Because I think that there are people and maybe this works for some that they do think, Hey, we should practice in front of the mirror. Hey, I should do this in advance, in a classroom. And for me, I don't think that would have ever made me better, but I also used to have a fear of flying, and I decided to start to fly more often, and that helped me with that fear. I kind of think some of the key here is what you just said, present. Keep presenting, yes, and you're going to get better at it.

Michael "Brody" Broshears  
Yes, I think that is the way.

Kevin Thomas  
Yeah. And another thing I'm curious of your thoughts on is, what makes a presentation Great? Is there something that's there that makes presenters genuinely wonderful at this, or is it that they just are competent in their knowledge and just good at it.

Michael "Brody" Broshears  
I think the best presentations are sometimes the simplest, right? You have to have maybe one or two things you're really trying to get across, and then your talk needs to really focus and hone in and attack those, those one or two things, what do we want to accomplish in the hour that we have? I think the sessions that get can get really messed up or not great is one, if, if you really have a lot of things that you're trying to cover, and two, you know there needs to be a Dynam dynamicism of sorts. I don't even know if that's a word, yeah, email, but, but I think that that storytelling piece really matters. There's a personal vulnerability that comes with some storytelling to me, that makes for compelling presentations. Generally, those are the two or three things that I think.

Kevin Thomas  
I really I have to self admit, I'm not a huge fan of keynotes. It's not my favorite thing to go to generally, it's not the fault of the person delivering the keynote. It is, I'm gonna use an example, and this is, you were part of this committee, so I don't know how it got there, the Chicago annual conference in 2008 eight, right? The keynote, stop it. I was 28 the keynote address for that particular event was, I think, like the Gatling sister from the Gatling brothers. Do you remember this?

Michael "Brody" Broshears  
Is this? Right? The Statler brothers, Statler, right? Okay. And so this was not in charge of this component of the annual conference.

Kevin Thomas  
All people that were in charge of it are either not listening to this or not going to be still in the field. And so there's that part. And so this was the keynote that was chosen. And I kind of remembered the one from the year before that in Baltimore, where it was taranzini and pascarelli, yeah? And I was like, awesome, yeah, they were fine. There was, it was really, a lot of it was really, really heavy in in their their data and their work, yeah. But the the next year, when it was Statler sister, and you're going through and she starts to sing, but she also has no clue what academic advising is, none whatsoever, zero at all. So like all effectiveness is lost. I remember looking over at my my supervisor at the time, Dr Ellen Banagher, as she starts to sing her second song, which was pretty religiously heavy at that moment. And she looks over and she says, Yeah, this is weird. Like, yes, thank you very much. Because sometimes that's just the thing that's there is, like, for me, the keynote has to hit the event, and so the preparation is a big part of that, I think back to Mike Ditka being the ending keynote at an AC T conference. And I'm sitting there going, listen, I'm sure that this is really great for some Bears fans. I don't know what this has to do with ACT, right, right? And so like, those things have to connect. So I think that there are things that can make it really great and really not and most of the time, I think it can be really great when the presenter actually understands the audience that they're talking to.

Michael "Brody" Broshears  
Yeah, we sometimes have to endure those moments. There is one that I would share that I think had a different effect. Al Gore spoke in 2006 at the ACPA NASPA joint and talked about his movie, Inconvenient Truth. And while that didn't automatically connect to higher ed, I was mesmerized by his session. He did a great job. And so that maybe is one exception to that rule that the person has to and of course, Al Gore knew about higher ed and those kinds of things, but, but the topic really was more about, maybe how we think about the environment in higher ed. And it was, it was really impactful. I remember that session pretty, pretty well.

Kevin Thomas  
After presentation, are you a fired up, crash, self critiquing, and like, where are you at after a session?

Michael "Brody" Broshears  
Oh, I do think about it, right? Like, I'm definitely one of those people who loves having people come up afterwards, or a couple couple sessions later and go, Oh, your talk was really great. I'm just, I'm such a nerd that way, right? That makes me feel really good. 

Kevin Thomas  
I'm in the high energy part of this, I think. But yes, I also enjoy the feedback.

Michael "Brody" Broshears  
But I think hearing from folks like the faculty about whether or not they enjoyed it and what they took from it matters. Specifically, if you present in the the administrators Institute, to me that that feedback is really useful. Look, I'm always interested in seeing what the evaluations look like. I definitely want to see what people had to say. I think it's the only way you get better, really.

Kevin Thomas  
Because I'm an introvert in nature, which people are like you are. Yeah, I have to turn it on right like in because it's performance. There is a crash that comes after a presentation, but my initial is that I'm pretty high on the experience, and, like, lot of energy, a lot of just, like real excitement on where we're going and and I do love that experience. And then I get to this point where I'm like, Hey, was that any good? Or did I just wander on for an hour? You know, you do have that self doubt, or I get that self doubt when it comes to these presentations. Yeah, we've talked a lot about presentations, I know, and so I really think we have to transition. Because this is, you know, a just us episode. It is. We've got to transition to things that no one that's listening really cares about, but they all kind of laugh about at some point, which is our top three? Oh, that's great. Let's do it all right. So listen, you, this was my idea. Yeah, this was your idea of top three record, CDs or cassettes. I noticed you didn't say eight tracks. I did not okay, then that we first three that we ever owned or bought in, and I was struggling on this, but you had this pretty wrapped up, and we'll see how it goes.

Michael "Brody" Broshears  
Yeah. I mean, it's easy. I remember it even though I was only 12 years old, maybe, yeah, 12 years old. Christmas of 80. Two, I got three cassettes along with a brand new boom box that set up in my bedroom, that I shared with my three brothers.

Kevin Thomas  
For our younger audience, could you define a boom box?

Michael "Brody" Broshears  
It's a cassette player, like a cassette deck, I guess.

Kevin Thomas  
For our younger audience, could you just grab it? Was helpful with it. It was a way to play music, okay,

Michael "Brody" Broshears  
Yeah, boy Gen Xers, they had it rough, eight tracks, cassettes, CDs, streaming. And now back to CDs and records and vinyl. Golly, all of it, three, the three that I had first i got for christmas minute works, business as usual, the stray cats rock this town and John cougars, American fool. Those are the first three tapes I ever got.

Kevin Thomas  
All right, so I have this vague recollection of certain things. And so in a shocking turn of events, I think the first two that I got were records. And I remember, yeah, I remember getting them in a time frame that they would have been like, I can. I remember getting in front of the record player and opening up the full old school record. And the one that strikes me as from the most familiar, and I think I got it for Christmas. Was the Thriller album by Michael Jackson.

Michael "Brody" Broshears  
Let's go. That's great. I think that was the first one I bought with my own money.

Kevin Thomas  
Yeah, and so that would been very young. So how cool were my parents in that two to five year old range? I don't know that I should have been listening to those songs at that point, but I like them. There wasn't social media for my parents to be judged on that at that point. And then I would say Billy Joel, like one of those albums in that timeframe were there. And then after that, it gets a little hazy for me. For these first ones, I just remember buying a lot of Do you remember this, the cassette singles? Yes, right? And so I remember buying a lot of movie soundtrack cassette singles, like I didn't want the whatever the movie was that had end of the road in a boomerang soundtrack, although it was a pretty good soundtrack. But I did want end of the road by boys to men. And so I can remember that being maybe that third one that was in that, that range.

Michael "Brody" Broshears  
Okay, that's awesome. 

Kevin Thomas  
I think those, those are good ones. I think they show off our diversity of experience.

Michael "Brody" Broshears  
They certainly do the minute work. Business as usual still holds up pretty well.

Kevin Thomas  
Yeah, I don't think any of those were bad. No, I I'm hoping, right, that my uncle doesn't listen to this for this story, but for there was a many years period of time that my uncle, every year for Christmas, would give me a pocket knife. And then I remember, like, I think that maybe somebody said, Hey, maybe get him something different than a pocket knife. And he bought me a Pearl Jam album. And, and that was good, except for, I think it was one of those, like, after Pearl Jam had some good albums, and then it was the album that didn't have anything good on it. And, and it was like, well, that, that one wasn't quite the the hit, but it wasn't a pocket knife. So there was, there was an adjustment and a goodness in that.

Michael "Brody" Broshears  
Golly, speaking of pocket knives. My dad had tons of pocket knives, and my wife has one of my dad's pocket knives. My daughter carries around one of my dad's pocket knives, but my dad never gave me a pocket knife. That's maybe because I'm useless. I don't know. All I can do is podcast and speak in front of hundreds of people.

Kevin Thomas  
That's right, and do it with such energy and perfection.

Michael "Brody" Broshears  
I think it's the imperfection that makes this show what it is to be fair.

Kevin Thomas  
I think the imperfection is probably why he didn't give you a pocket knife.

Michael "Brody" Broshears  
All right, folks, we've made you suffer long enough. That's it for this edition. We made it. We're done already. We we did. We're under 30 minutes even, I think this, we talked about the least amount of important stuff in this episode of the pickup meeting, than any pickup meeting we've done.

Kevin Thomas  
Hey, in fairness, though, we think presenting is something that you just do, and I think letting folks know that even in doing it, we have struggles in it as well. Like this isn't just we do it and we love it like it's this is nerve wracking. And whether you're new or experienced or whatever it is, I think it's good to know that people all are going through some anxiety when presenting.

Michael "Brody" Broshears  
Well, and the fact that the podcast, in and of itself, is a presentation, right in many ways. I mean, Matt Markin did a great job presenting on this at the Fall Nakata presentation about even what we talk about being an addition to the scholarship and the work that is academic advising and higher education. So maybe. Just being out here today is is contributing to the scholarship of higher education. Who knows?

Kevin Thomas  
Kevin, thank you for contributing to the scholarship of education today. You too, Kevin, thank you. He thanks, Brody. Send us out of here. 

Michael "Brody" Broshears  
That's this edition of the pickup meeting. We hope your own meetings formal or pickup style, or as meaningful as fun as this one, until next time do Good and be nice.