Making Business Matter (MBM)

About Making Business Matter (MBM)

World’s Stickiest Learning: We are the soft skills training provider, partnering with clients that are frustrated by their people returning from training courses and then doing nothing differently. Our clients choose us because we achieve behavioural change through our unique training method, sticky learning ®.

Publisher

Darren A. Smith

Category

business · education · education

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

28 Sept 2018

Latest episode

24 Apr 2025

Latest episodes

162 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   24 Apr 2025

   Alexander McWilliam – Presentation Anxiety | MBM Expert Interview

   Performance Psychology Consultant, Dr. Alexander McWilliam, Talks Presentation Anxiety and Performing Under Pressure with MBM CEO, Darren A. Smith. Join Darren as he asks; 'What makes Dr. McWilliam the best person to talk Presentation Anxiety?'. With perhaps the only PhD, globally, that specialises in why and how we feel nervous when public speaking, Dr. McWilliam has the utmost knowledge and expertise on how to combat presentation anxiety.  Watch or listen to the podcast episode to experience Darren and Alexander exploring the ins and outs of this subject. Click the Image Above to Watch the Full Episode on YouTube. Read The Full Episode Transcription Below: Darren A. Smith Welcome to the world's stickiest learning. My name's Darren Smith, and more importantly, I'm here with our guest. Thank you for coming. Alex, how are you? Alexander McWilliam I'm very good. How are you doing? Darren A. Smith Hey, I'm good. I'm good. We've both got our funky shirts on and striped. You're in check. We better not go to the same party. We'll clash. But hey, we're good. We're good. Let's get back to you. We're going to talk about presenting and about being nervous and speaking up and those types of things. We'll get to that in the nicest possible way. Why should we listen to you when you talk about this topic? Alexander McWilliam Well, we said my name is Alex, which is true, but my full title is Doctor Alexander McWilliam. I've got a PhD in public speaking anxiety and performing under pressure. To my knowledge, the only person in the UK potentially globally with a PhD specialising in this field, and I've been coaching presentation skills confidence when presenting for almost  decades, so a wealth of experience. It makes me feel old, but. An expert in the field of anxiety and performing under pressure. Darren A. Smith Two decades we haven't even got any grey hair. What's that about? OK, so you're the only one with the PhD potentially in the world in this. So just tell me about that. How long did you study for to get this? Alexander McWilliam So my PhD took  1/ years in total, so it was three years. Multiple studies I looked at AI looked at all the interventions available for public speaking anxiety into reduction. That was one area of study. I developed a questionnaire to help identify specific public speaking concerns because there's so many in the world. But actually when we're coaching, we need to identify what it is specifically. Darren A. Smith Yeah. Alexander McWilliam And then a last study was using acting and improvisation to help reduce public speaking anxiety. So over the three years, there was all of these studies going on with multiple participants trying to figure out why they get anxious. How do we overcome that? And as there's so many interventions available, can something alternative, like acting in improv, which hasn't seen many mainstream sort of interventions, you see CBT, you see exposure therapy, things like that. But acting in improv, that was the unique route I wanted to go down and bring on my own expertise of being an actor and being an improviser. Darren A. Smith Yeah. Yep. Alexander McWilliam With that so 3 1/2 years of lots and lots of studying, lots of reviewing, lots of writing, and if anyone's doing it, if anyone's done it, they know that it is a mammoth of a task. But so rewarding once it's done. Darren A. Smith Impressive. OK, so 3 1/2 years doing that and and just would you just paint a picture for us? So what did you do? You did some research, not some. You did research.

2. 

   28 Mar 2025

   Clare Walker – Personal Values Coaching Cards | Expert Interview

   Discover the Personal Values Coaching Card deck with Expert, Clare Walker Dive into a great discussion between Clare Walker, expert in Personal Values and Darren A. Smith, MBM CEO. Here, the pair talk about why Clare is perfect author of this deck, due to her expertise, training and extensive career experience, how the deck works and what you can do to improve your coaching whilst utilising Coaching Cards. Watch the full podcast on YouTube by clicking the image above. Read the full Personal Values podcast transcript below: Clare Walker, Vodafone   0:04 Yeah. Darren A. Smith   0:06 OK, so the whole thing is probably, I don't know, 3-4 minutes, 5 minutes. You know, it's not a long video. It's as much as you want to say. Really the idea is we're helping people to understand and use them. Clare Walker, Vodafone   0:20 Well, no, I'm not. I'm gonna go the personal values. They just look at the opposite way around for the simple reason I built those as very bespoke, not bespoke. But yeah, I built them quite bespoke. Darren A. Smith   0:34 OK. Clare Walker, Vodafone   0:36 Yeah. OK. Let me go personal wrong. Darren A. Smith   0:40 So the first question coming up after I ask you who you are and what you do is what are these personal values cards all right. So we're just doing the what the what the why in the how. OK. So let me make sure you're OK with that. Clare Walker, Vodafone   0:58 Let me completely blame and just push my credit First off. I'm gonna be on video. Darren A. Smith   1:05 And then afterwards I got a different question for you. Nothing to do with the video, just something I've had your opinion on. OK. All right. I'm ready when you are. Clare Walker, Vodafone   1:13 OK. I'm ready now. Darren A. Smith   1:20 Talks, it looks real. It's good. Love the dunks. Hi, my name is Darren Smith. I'm from the world's stickiest learning. I'm here with Claire Walker from Vodafone. Claire, how you doing? Clare Walker, Vodafone   1:33 I'm very well. Thank you, Darren. Darren A. Smith   1:35 And Claire, what do you do at Vodafone? Clare Walker, Vodafone   1:38 I am the coaching and mentoring lead, so it means that I look after all things for external coaching, internal coaching, coaching resources and also training people how to have a coaching mindset as opposed to be coaches. Darren A. Smith   1:53 OK. And how long have you been doing coaching? Not necessarily just a Vodafone, but how long have you been doing coaching things for? Clare Walker, Vodafone   2:02 I started my professional or my my more structured career back in 2016, but actually through conversations and interviews like this, I realised I've pretty much been coaching all of my life. Darren A. Smith   2:14 Love that, love it. Love it. OK, OK, now we're here talking about these coaching card things. We have a number of coaching cards and you kindly collaborated with us on a particular deck. So I'm going to ask you a few questions to share with the folks that are watching. What are these things? Why did you create it and how to use them? So let's start with the first question. What did you create? What are they? Clare Walker, Vodafone   2:41 I created a deck that our personal values cards and I have them all here. Darren A. Smith   2:47 Oh yeah. Clare Walker, Vodafone   2:48 And there are 80 of them that help people to understan...

3. 

   24 Mar 2025

   Ruth Taylor – Parenting Coaching Cards | Expert Interview

   Parenting Coach Ruth Taylor Talks the What, Why and How of our Parenting Coaching Cards with MBM CEO Darren A. Smith In this exclusive discussion, Ruth touches on why her experience as a parent herself and her training as a soft skills facilitator makes her the perfect coach to have written our deck of 80 parenting coaching cards. Ruth and Darren cover the what, the why and the how of this deck of coaching cards, together with a few key pieces of advice and guidance that can be found in this brand new deck! Click Here to Watch the Full Podcast on YouTube. Read the Full Parenting Coaching Cards Podcast Transcript Below: Darren A. Smith Welcome to the world stickiest learning. My name is Darren Smith and more importantly, I'm here with Ruth Taylor. Ruth, how you doing? Ruth Taylor Pretty good today. Thank you. When I say today, for me it's night time. Darren A. Smith Good. It is. Where are you in the world? Ruth Taylor Well, I decided to move from the UK all the way to the other side of the world, so I'm currently in New Zealand. Darren A. Smith Right. OK. So it's 9:00 AM here. It's probably about 9:00 PM there, isn't it? Ruth Taylor 10:00. Darren A. Smith Oh, right. OK. Thank you very much for coming in. We've got 3 short questions for you about the cards that you created, which I can see on the right there. So the first question is: Why, in the nicest possible way, should we talk to you about parenting? What do you know about parenting? Ruth Taylor When I came to New Zealand, I had toddlers and now I have two adults who I'm very proud of. They're in their 20s now. I was very fortunate. I did  parenting courses before I had parents. Darren A. Smith OK. Ruth Taylor Parents? before I had children. Before I had children and that's something that most people don't get the chance to do. But I was trained as a parenting coach and a facilitator for courses by health promotion at the time to work with parents, and I thought this is awesome. I've got this and then what I found was the reality of having your own children is. Darren A. Smith Yeah. Ruth Taylor Not quite as simple as they made out. But there were things which I was able to consider before having children, which maybe other people weren't, because obviously having gone on the courses, there was things I could talk to my husband about going. Have you ever thought about this? It was like, no. So those questions where I was thinking, well, how can we encourage other people to be able to ask those questions either before they even think about getting pregnant, when they are pregnant. And all that. So that's really kind of where the coaching clads came from and also where the sort of sections of the the cards came from. So and in my life I'm a facilitator. I I facilitate soft skill courses, communication skills, conflict management, leadership skills. Emotional literacy. A lot of things like that. So I've worked in schools, I've worked in hospitals with leaders, with parents, with children. So I guess I have a different insight as well as. How how we often think about children isn't actually how children think, and sometimes we don't think of the impact of our actions on our children. And therefore having again having card which encourages to reflect before we open our mouths or before we make certain decisions means that hopefully we'll get more of the behaviour we're looking for. Darren A. Smith That that makes perfect sense. I know. When Gabby was born 25 years ago,

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

YouTube views

194,221

Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

1 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 75 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

95

Social presence

0

YouTube

86

Engagement

50

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Guest appearances

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Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.