269- Mastering the Art of Visual Storytelling
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Welcome everyone to Politically High Tech. This is the second to last episode of this season, 269 to be exact. I have someone here.

Who's going to definitely give you tips how to elevate your boring. I'm going to say like it is boring, dull, and even at worst case scenario, hideous PowerPoint presentations. You got the cure for that. Okay. Your PowerPoint is ugly. She's your girl. If it's boring, she's your girl. If it's just forgettable, she's your girl.

Okay, so we're going to cure the boring, the ugly, the forgettable PowerPoint presentations or even portfolios because PowerPoint can be used for so many things, instead of just presentations. And it's been, you know, it's an old, I won't say old, but it is a veteran player in the block. It survived many trends. I have used PowerPoint since middle school. Yes, I'm aging a little bit.

So my current job. All right. It has been stable. It's been stable, I should say, for a long while. And some of you let's look. A lot of us uses it. I don't care what country you're from. As long as you have access to a laptop, Wi-Fi, Internet, doesn't matter. You have access to the Microsoft PowerPoint. And it's such a great tool. I'm going to say just for my personal story, just a little bit, because I don't make it too much about me.

mastering this tool 10 years, not 10, 15 years ago, 2010, is different from mastering it now. So if you think your 2010 skills are great,

You've got another thing coming. That's considered boring and bland. It was amazing 15 years ago. No, no, no, no, no. You've got to put some designs, movie, make it interesting, and don't read the PowerPoint because I would get bored. I could read it faster. It's much clearer for me just to read what's on the slide, okay?

I'm just saying I'm a proud, harsh critic of that. I've seen that happen so many times. It's unbelievable. This tool has been around, but I doubt we have a lot of experts. Emily here is going to help you out with that. So before we get into it, Emily, what do you want the viewers and listeners to know about you?

Thank you for having me. I loved your intro to it. You're right. It is a tool that's been around, but the uses of it have evolved for how we engage with it. What do I want people to know about me? My magical knack is simplifying types of information. I love helping people better connect with their audiences, make more impact, be more precise, and just drive businesses forward. There's so many opportunities and conversations that we have in the business world, and PowerPoint is such a great tool to support.

support and enhance those conversations to create clarity, create alignment. And when it's done well, simple, consistency, you can really make such an impact and really drive

what you need in those decisions for it. And it's such a win-win. I love helping people build their confidence and with a strong presentation, I think, or when you have a strong PowerPoint slides, right, in your presentation to support your voiceover, you're not reading it. You're more confident as a presenter, as that key information share, and it makes such an impact. So it's so fun to share my zone of genius with everybody. I'm happy to be here and hopefully I can educate and give people some tips or get them curious on how we could partner and create

stronger impact together. And this is a message I'm going to say to the so-called boomer label. If you're young at heart, you're still willing to learn. You go overcome this because some of you kind of fear these changes and I get it. But have fun with it.

Play with it. Experiment with it. That's all I'm going to say before I get into it. And trust me, there are some, I would say, seasoned people. I don't want to even say elderly seasoned folks. People who are like 20, 30 years experience probably work to like the pre, like the bubble computer era, like 90s with black and green and black screen with green text and numbers. You could do it too as long as you're a lifelong learner. I want to encourage you. I don't want to make this into an accidental thing.

age this episode because that is not my intent and if i do that please cancel me because i don't want that to happen so you could be practically five years old to like i don't know centennial as long as you want to learn that's it it's the will and the drive i think that's one key thing i could um say

Before you catch computer phobia, I don't know what's the exact term for that, for lack of a better word, or AI phobia to be more exact. That's what's spooking a lot of people, not exactly computers, but AI phobia as well. So...

I'm not going to go with my normal model, you know, if you don't learn AI, your career will die kind of thing, because I'm trying to do something new in this new year's resolution. I'm trying not to be all doomsy about it or give you fear-mongering alarms about learning the AI. So I'm changing. I could evolve, you know. I'm trying to have a nice, nice, more gentle approach to this and just say, oh, if you don't learn AI, your career's going to die. All right? So I used to do that. This will be dramatic, get your attention, but...

I realized that has got to be a better way. And maybe you turned some of you off because I was putting that fear to your head even more. So my apologies if I have affected you that way. I own up to it. That's a mistake I made. So this is something for 2025 and for the future next season as well. Totally changed my tune with that. So.

First question I got, Kai, to start with the negative sometimes. What are the common mistakes people make when it comes to these PowerPoint presentations and how can they be avoided? I think I already listed a few, but I'm sure you got a lot more.

I mean, you listed like the top ones, right? I use the term death by PowerPoint. So are we over communicate where we have all the words on the slide and we read exactly where we don't, we don't focus on what the intent of the site is or the overall presentation takeaway. And we give everybody the kitchen sink or everything in the kitchen sink. I think part of what I've learned is, and through my journey, like you said, like with PowerPoint and just my career is that

I think sometimes when we don't feel confident, we think we need to over communicate. We need to tell all the details of the story, right? Even just in personal life, how many times have you had a conversation? You're like, I didn't need to know.

what time you showed up at the movie and who you're, who the person took your ticket was like, just tell me you were late. But when we over communicate, we think we're kind of doing more justice or we're, we're supporting that, but we actually create confusion. And so I find that the term of death by PowerPoint kind of covers it all. It's a mixture of fonts and colors, creating chaos. It's not creating this, this synergy and this flow and this,

And giving yourself even like the lack of preparation. It's really evident in PowerPoints. I think when we copy and paste, when things feel compiled, you know, even taking a bunch of decks and pulling them together, the content may be right. But if you don't make it look like it all goes together, you lose your credibility, you lose your trust, you lose your audience. There's so much neuroscience that goes into connecting and presenting and sharing with

um, your updates or your information. And so we have to be really cognizant about that. It doesn't take a lot of work. It just takes the right mindful and intention work to get there. Um, I think that kind of covers the general of it. Any, any other questions about like, I never like to focus on the negative. I'm always like, there's so much opportunity when I get really ugly. Um, but as a visual person who always saw and still sees the world as simple shapes and breaks it down to understand it, um,

I think that when we overdo that, when we don't take the time to simplify, you lose people so fast and it's so hard to bring somebody back in and keep them engaged once you lose them. So I think it's really important to create that connection, that authentic trust, and really take the time to build not only your story, but your slides that support your story. Yeah, that's don't put so many words. I used to be my big issue going in.

Back then, just like you said, I used to think, oh, I'm just giving I'm just generously giving people information. Here you go. But let's be honest. And I'm going to say this and I might get in trouble. Let's treat people. Let's treat everybody like they got ADHD. OK, that's a simple way to go about it. Let's just treat. Let's just assume everybody that has ADHD, they can't focus or OCD.

Try to cater to those folks. Let's just assume everybody has that. I like to say that we live in an intention-seeking economy. So we're used to always having all these things come at us at all the time. But if we over-communicate all the things, you don't register it. When it's simple, when it's one thought, when it's one, right? Think about like even just engaging with social media and like the short clips. They're short clips.

They show the words that people are saying so that so people who are audible, who are visual, who have sound, who have emotion. There's so much kind of connection that needs to happen when you present. And so you kind of to your point, you've got to you've got to be able to make sure that you're reaching each person.

based on their learning styles. And that's where like I geek out about the neuroscience. You know, we can sit there and we can listen to somebody present. And if we're not focused on what they want us to say, we have all the words on the slide or we're using a million fonts and colors and we don't know where to look.

We're taking the one thing that kind of we resonate. The first thing we read, the first thing we hear, we're tuning everything out, including the speaker. And we're creating our own story about, oh, I remember the time I rode a bike or I remember the time that data came back and it was wrong or it was right or it was really cool because we had so many right responders and you're not listening anymore. And so when you can simplify that and when you can focus on this is the data

that I'm talking about and that I want my audience to know, and you don't show any of the other unneeded information, you help to your point. You help those ADHD people. You help the learners who are visual or the audio learners. You really give them that clarity and focus. Simple is always better. That's one of my favorite tips to share is less is always more when it comes to presentation. Yeah, for the academics out there, and this is especially for the academics, business people get this.

Don't try to show off your intellect and put a whole essay in the slide. We get a tune out immediately. We might even be freaked out. So this is a good look at the wall. All right. You know, that used to be my big problem. I used to just always over communicate, over communicate. I said, why is it not being touched? My slide looks nice and pretty, but it had too much words. All of them told me to my face. It has too much words. You don't have to read everything.

the presentation and i know that sounds hypocritical but in my early powerpoint presentation days i used to make these same mistakes i'm being very honest so you learn from it don't take those feedback very personally or think that these people are attacking you because sometimes it's very easy to get defensive look i know it's easy to get defensive because you want to do your best but people don't see it well just take feedback they're giving you the answer

Might be a little late, but hey, you could do your next PowerPoint presentation and just get better and better from there. Oh, and a disclaimer, I am not a PowerPoint expert. Let's just say, even though I know a lot, I'm not going to consider myself a PowerPoint expert. I'm just an experienced PowerPoint consumer user. That's the most fanciest title I could give myself without cringing or feel like I'm lying to you.

because it is an amazing tool and it's going to stay there for a very long time. It's not going anywhere despite the canvas and even a copilot, even Power BI, which I actually love that tool. You can even incorporate it into that. Even you can attach a form. I mean, this is recent additions, like a few years ago. 2010, most of these things didn't even exist. Even the AI designer suggestion, I'm pretty sure I'm saying the name of the feature wrong,

But you know, we're talking about the way you go to your right, a little lightning green icon. They give you suggestions. Some may be good. Some may not be great, but if you're an expert, you don't need that. I would say use it as a draft. Maybe come up with a better design than just do it. That's all I could say for that. So anything else you want to add before I get to the next question? I was just thinking when you're talking about the idea of, um,

the slides and how we over communicate or how we use it. I like to use the analogy, I'm a big music lover. And so when you think about orchestra or just a band in general, right? They take the time as in an orchestra, you have the conductor, but in a band, you have the leaders or the key players. They take the time to spend, to prepare, to figure out what instruments need to play, how loud, how soft, how the beats come together and how these different parts work together to

to create this harmonious, beautiful experience. And as an audience member, as a listener, you're engaged, you listen, you feel something, you move your body and you stay in tune, right? And it's, I have young kids and they like pick up on music so fast because it's so easy to create that connection. And so when you think about your slides as that background harmonious music to your presentation, you remove all that extra content. You just focus on what you want.

you design it, you simplify, you highlight, you use imagery to create this emotional harmonious connection, you really get to elevate that experience and you really set yourself up not only as like a, you know, a more seasoned user of the platform, but as that leader and as that thought leader and as that expert on the topic. Yes, there are a million AI options out there. Canva has them, there's slide galleries, there's websites. I mean,

There's AI where you could create your own presentation. And like you said, PowerPoint has them. But what they don't do is they don't know at the heart of your presentation, what your point is, what your key takeaways are, who your audience is, who you are as a person, and how you create this harmonious connection. And that's where really focusing in on your presentation design will elevate that entire experience for you and your audience listening. Or

If you're sending it out, right, there's all PowerPoint is a tool that can be emailed. It can be a PDF. It can be an interactive piece. Like you said, it could link to other things. But if you're not focused on who it's for, who the audience is and why and what you want them to think, feel and do at the end, you're never going to make a difference. It doesn't matter if you use AI or not, because AI is the one that actually makes it feel less specific, right?

But you remove that. If you use it as a tool to help simplify my headline, to give me what kind of image should I use if this is what I'm talking about and I want to create an emotional connection, I want to keep people engaged. AI is amazing as a support tool, but it's not going to be the thing to actually build and press and return or press send from. Did you hear that, people?

You direct the direction of the AI. Don't let AI control you because there's a guaranteed fail. And I did that just an experiment. I read my own PowerPoint presentation. What the heck is this? This is all over the place. I mean, they're trying to help. You know, the attention is good, but you don't want to ask me to drive her. Not AI. That's an important tip. I want to say as an experienced AI user, again, disclaimer, I'm not an AI expert. Just don't let AI run you. You run AI. Okay.

It may be a pain in the neck sometimes, trust me, because when you type certain prompts, it's going to give you crazy stuff you didn't ask. Like, for example, if you're putting money, you might have a bank, like a bank safe. I didn't want a bank safe. I just want cash. I just want cash, you know? Mistakes like that do happen. So just make sure you're the driver, not AI. You're the boss, not AI, okay? AI is your partner.

at best and at worst it's a difficult co-work all right that's what i'm going to say about that um all right let's get to the positive there you go let's do 180 on this we already did the negative over communication designs all over the place using million fonts million colors looks like a kid just throw a bunch of paint on it no they gotta think you're childish irresponsible immature

Look, we humans, we judge quickly, like in seconds. And our attention span is no better than a goldfish today, which I knew that was going to come. I feared that, but it was going to come anyways. Because all the social media bombardment that you added really played a big part into that. Even me, my attention span used to be decent, but now I was like, oh, okay, let me go here, let me go here, let me go search. You went through like 15 different clips without even realizing, and you learned nothing. Really, really, I mean, it's...

I mean, it's great we have all this information, but it's how we use it, right? It's our guidance. What's our intention with it is what's important. So just what people call doom scrolling, that's become such a buzzword. So scroll, scroll, scroll, watch negative stuff.

Not good for you. And this is, you know, and I try to be more mindful of mental health. And that's definitely not helping you with that. I don't want to drift too much into that. But it's definitely impacting your brain. Your dopamine receptors are fried. OK, that's your little neuroscience I'm going to get. I don't want to make it all neurosciency unless it's relevant to this topic. But that's most I'm willing to go. What are successful elements? I think you already said it. Simple designs that have synergy.

I mean, I'm sure you got more. Yeah. So I like to preach three kind of principles, simplicity, consistency, intentionality. And really it starts with, and we've talked about, it starts with knowing your audience. It starts with understanding how and what

you're going to deliver and where that what that space is. So whether it's digitally, whether it's a keynote speaker in person, whether it's a small group, and you're in a small conference room, or, right, it's an email, understanding who your audience is, and knowing how much information is important based on who they are and what they need to know.

I have a one pager, a tip on my, I have a free resources tab on my website. So we can include that in the show notes that people can download. And I like to use a triangle.

As a visual example, right? I'm such a visual person. So the bottom of the triangle, those are your peers. Those are the people you work with on a daily basis. They're doing the same kind of work or very level, same level. And as you move up the pyramid, you're starting to elevate leadership and thinkers and leaders.

those really crucial decision makers, they don't need all the specific details of the day-to-day of that information. And so the tip of the pyramid is left. And when you think about it and you put an arrow next to it, it's how much information you're communicating. And so that is a starting point of how, of really of a successful presentation. It's not just what it looks like, it's what it's set up for. So

So knowing your audience and what you want them to think, feel, and do throughout and at the end specifically is like the first place to start. And then, again, I'm not a content writer, but I do help my clients refine their content. But it's crafting this narrative and it's telling the story. Stories have the traditional beginning, middle, and end. Use that to your advantage. We don't need to reinvent the wheel. Tell a story. But what you need to do that's different, I think, in a presentation,

is you have to start with the end in mind. So I kind of say, end, beginning, middle, end. You're not going to repeat yourself word for word, but you may show things again because you want people to know why they're there, what you want them to hear and do, and what your purpose is. If not, to your point, you jump in and we're just engaged. We're not focused. We don't know why we're here. I'm going to think about where I came from, what I need to do next, what's on my to-do list.

a story or something that happened to me, right? I'm going to start daydreaming about winter break, let's say, as I come back from work. And so it's really important to craft your narrative. My biggest tip on that is get the computer when you write your narrative. Get Post-it notes, get a Sharpie, put an idea on a page. On a Post-it note, start putting them up and seeing how they work together. It's such a brilliant creative exercise. I also recently heard, and I didn't know the truth behind this, but

The idea of when you think or when you learn or when you're processing and you're on the computer, there's something about the gamma rays and the ways our eye works with our brain. Again, getting into a little neuroscience, but I geek out about this. It doesn't work and it doesn't connect in the same way as handwriting or black and white paper are offline. I think you can kind of say when people read digitally versus non-digitally, when you write things down online,

or you're drafting something again there's something about that hand of mine action that's really powerful in telling your story and drafting it that i really recommend so once you know your audience and once you have your your narrative set now we get into fun stuff so it's your point design simplicity consistency intentionality um i break it down into three parts so slide intention overall your content and then your design um

I can go into details, but I know it's a lot. Do you have any questions or do you want me to clarify anything before we start talking about three parts of this? Oh, no, feel free. This is going incredibly fast. So feel free to give us more details. OK, great. So you think about slide intention again, simplicity, consistency and intentionality. They apply to all parts of this.

You need to have two or three key points that you want to make per slide. That's it. If it's more, it goes on the next slide. Nobody's going to sit there and be mad that you change slides, that your visuals change. To your point, they're going to be mad that I'm sitting on a slide for 15 minutes because I'm not going to pay attention. So two to three points per slide and limit and balance the amount of words.

and visuals and white space. Give your audience a space and time to digest the information. You can talk a mile a minute. They're going to retain that, but they're not. But if you just give them the right things to focus on on that slide that support all the things you're talking about, maybe don't talk a mile a minute. Sorry. But you know what I mean. You can talk at your normal speed. You really help keep them engaged. When it comes to content, the three things to be really important about, and this is when we talk about content, it's like the text on the slide. Headlines.

Keep them as headlines. Keep them brief. Think about a newspaper article. You can read a headline and you kind of know what the article is about and what my takeaway might be. Use your headlines and your subheads to your advantage. Make them short. Use AI. It's such a great tool to say, here's my copy. Brief it. Take your bullet. Make them bullet. They should only be like two or three words per bullet. They shouldn't be run on sentences. If it's a run on sentence,

It might be a whole slide. Or again, I love taking my longer formatted thoughts and going into AI and being like, help me make this really short and simple. It helps people stay engaged and it keeps them aware of what you're talking about. And what you also want to do with your content is you want to pick a font or two, colors as well, and you want to stay true to those throughout the whole thing. Because that simplicity and consistency along with

simplifying your headlines and your content overall. Again, we're having two main, two to three main topics per slide. We're having six to eight bullets, 30 words max. Ideally, again, this is all like in a hypothetical great world.

All of that really helps to keep your audience engaged and staying with you as you present and you tell this story. I am totally a fan of more slides, less on a slide. I think it does something. Again, when you change that slide, you're getting your audience to be like, okay, there's something new I need to listen to. It's different. I'm going to stay engaged.

And designing your text is just as important as designing the visuals that support your text. Text can be the visual. And so that leads into the third bucket of when you apply consistency, simplicity, and intentionality to your visuals, it's like a no-brainer. It's a win-win. So what does that mean? We kind of talked about using brand colors and fonts throughout, but it also is about

creating data and charts or designing your percentages and your infographics in a very simple and compelling way. I don't need to know if I'm telling you a year update, right? I don't need to know every single date that this data was collected in my Y or X access. I just need to know the key dates that you're talking about or focus in on just that one quarter.

You can give me a summary of the thing verbally of saying we had a great year. We started here, we ended here. And then you focus it on the data. You use consistent colors when you talk about like-minded subjects, front timelines, orders, whatever that may be. When you create a synergy and you pull colors through, our brains do this magical thing of putting the pieces together if you set it up properly. And that's where imagery is so important. Now,

Photography, icon, illustrations, right? Graphics. Those are all really important too when they're used properly, but they should be supporting what you're saying, whether it's a full image that's going to get this emotional connection across the whole page. Maybe you have one word that helps set it up. Maybe you have no words, but it's stylizing things and picking things again that are consistent. So go for a photo style. You try and use a similar style throughout.

illustrations, icons. Again, you don't want to mix different styling of things because our brains are going to get confused and they're not going to see that action. So anything you can do to simplify that for your audience to really leverage what you're saying and highlight those things, so critical. Well, audience, listeners, I really hope you paid attention here.

don't pretend to have adhd really the one pager has it all right now very simply yep and don't worry we're going to be sharing that website that's going to be in the links description especially some of the the freebies that she has trust me she has a lot of she has stuff that could definitely help you elevate your powerpoint presentation to the next level okay all that she says it makes complete sense simplicity simplicity simplicity

And coherent, synergic design, because, look, if you do, I don't know, a green slide on one and if you do, I don't know, an orange one flipping the topic, I don't know what people do. What is this? So my finances, I talk about oranges. How does that connect? I mean, we can make connections, but do we really want to use that brainpower to do that?

Or you're making them use their brain power to create that connection, and now they're not listening, and they don't know what you're actually talking about because they're trying to figure out how it's connected or why it's connected. So you're right. It's like you've got to do the heavy lifting for them so that their brain can put the simple puzzle pieces together. Less is always more. I mean, I think in life too, right? Less is always more. Yep. And that's what we've been learning. I mean, you hear that a lot. There's a reason why it's doing great. You know, simple...

It's best. Less is more in this case. I know it sounds like oxymoronic phrases to some of you that like to be analytical and super logical, but you do less to get a better impact and attention span. Okay? To get to absorb your message. There you go. I broke it down for you so you don't have to be a snob saying, I don't know if that makes sense. There you go. I broke it down for you.

Pay attention. I hope you're really listening to what she's saying. These are valuable, valuable tools. Not just tools, I mean, excuse me, tips on how to use the PowerPoint presentation to elevate your portfolio, your presentation, your storytelling, all of the above. Now for the how question. How do you integrate a storytelling element into a PowerPoint? Because some people just use it just for boring stats.

So I think storytelling or visual storytelling is the PowerPoint. It's when you take these tips, when you when you think about your audience, when you're cognizant and aware and spend the time to craft your narrative well. And then when you take the time to design it and lay it out and create that sequence and you give yourself again the time to do it. One of my requirements with clients is I need 10 days minimum from kickoff to delivery.

Because we both need time to digest, to feed back, to go back and forth, right? To iterate together. If it's done overnight, we're not spending the time we need to craft the story. So the story or that visual story is really part of a process. And when you, again, know what you want your audience to think and feel and do throughout this, you will then make every decision that aligns to that. And that is creating storytelling. Storytelling.

is a way to engage your audience, to get your point across and to allow them to understand it and to hear it. And to your point, and it's not just words or it's not just a slide or it's not just one thing. It's creating this harmonious experience so that we can stay engaged and feel something, think something and then do something.

You hear that elevated? That just shows stats. Oh, we achieved the second quarter's goal. Oh, we fell short of third quarter by 30%.

How do we get there? What visuals, text, and what synergic designs you need just to really capture, really get your attention, you know, to grab their challenging attention span. Because look, it's just getting shorter and shorter and shorter as time goes on. So you really have to do a lot of heavy lifting. I know that's annoying to some of you, but if you really want to build on a great PowerPoint and holding your attention, you're going to have to do the work. There's no way around it. Or start simple, right? Start with like

Picking one font and two colors to use and keeping your headline in the same spot every time. Don't even worry about content. Just worry about that and you'll feel, you'll see the difference. And then the next time, maybe it is about, okay, I don't need all this data. I'm talking about quarter three and I'm just going to highlight quarter three information on this slide or I'm going to have a second slide that's just quarter three. So I have my first slide that shows the whole year, my second slide that shows quarter three. Those little differences

will combine or compound to make a bigger impact over time. And you can make it easy for you to apply. It doesn't have to be all done at once. I agree. It's overwhelming. Again, my process with my clients, I start with three slots. Our first review is three to five slides. I'm not doing a whole deck because I want to make sure that I understand the story and that I'm digesting the information in the way that they're building it.

And so that I can become knowledgeable about their story and that it's lying. Right. And so I think you've got to you've got to do that same for yourself. Like, I don't know what I'm talking about or pretend that you don't and break it down for somebody who doesn't know and do one thing at a time. Yeah. One thing at a time. Start simple to fight this overwhelmed feeling because don't get me wrong. It'd be overwhelming, especially with all the options that we have more than ever. I mean, 2010 PowerPoint.

Pretty simple for me. 2025 PowerPoint, I still say I'm intermediate. 2010 PowerPoint, I'm master level. 2025, I'll say I'm intermediate because there's so much features that I'm sure I'm not utilizing to its, I don't say full potential, but to its high grade potential. And how to incorporate with such an engaging, elevated Microsoft PowerPoint presentation.

All right. So I'm just being honest. That's why I don't consider myself an expert. You want to say 2010? Okay. Yeah, of course. I almost know everything about that one, even the crazy stuff. Maybe even a little bit of developers tips and tricks. But other than that, 2025 is I'm still learning. I'm a work in progress. That's all I can say.

And it's different now, and I'm sure it's going to change in 2026, 2027, 2028, and so on. That's how it stood relevant to the tech market. That's all I'm going to say, because if you don't change it, just imagine PowerPoint 2010 version just stays there 2025. People are going to move on from it. Canva will get more customers. All these other competitors will get more, because in an alternative reality, they stuck to 2010.

They'll be gone off the market. Gone. Bye. Well, this is all 2010. This is 2025. Get it together. So products that evolve with the market conditions, they generally survive. That's just basic marketing economics 101.

Okay. And that's what I'm going to say about that. Anything else you want to add before we start doing a shameless plug? Are you ready to do a little bit of it? We're going to elaborate more on your shameless plug-in. No, I mean, I think we covered a lot of things. I just, like I said, simplicity, consistency, intentionality, start small, think big. And there's actually an amazing song by Michael Franti that's that. And I use that approach every day. It really makes such an impact. All righty then. So,

Listeners and viewers, go to her website. I am emilyschneider.com.

It's a nice purple font with a bolded Emily with a little high from the M. I don't know why the second M is talking to it, but that's the design. That's the official design. If you go to any other Emily Schneiders, I'm sure it's kind of common. That's not the real thing. I'm going to put in the link so you can go there, do a little heavy lifting for you. I'm going to provide a link, especially to her website.

And even though some of the it has some free resources, her portfolio, I really recommend you check out the portfolio. She is a woman of action. Just just look at look at a nice green agenda at a glance. I mean, I don't even know what the heck I'm reading, but I'm curious. All right. That's the power of design. Yeah. It gets you curious instead of boring. I don't care.

Or I know this, right? Or if I know this and I think I'm already an expert at it, I've tuned it out. I don't need to listen to you anymore. So yeah, stay curious. I love that. Yeah. So, I mean, this is a really beautiful design. So look at that. I'm Corvalius with the

But the rainbow, line them nicely with the crowns. Well, except for the light blue that's sticking out being the outlier. There's always one rebel. The light blue crown. Always one rebel. You see, I'm paying attention to that detail because I'm curious. I love it. I love it. I'm curious. Instead of just, oh, I don't care. Boring. I want to get this over with. Nice, nice, nice. All right. So just go to a website and...

It'll have her face right there saying, hi, I'm Emily Schneider, freelance PowerPoint designer. And she has not just amazing design, she has some videos and she does so many other things. There's even some free resources for you as well. Okay? So buy up this Master of Magic, there's some free tips. Listen to her other podcast she's been on, sharing this and there's watching this. There's past stuff.

I'm sure that I'll say at least some of it are relevant, okay, that we might have forgotten because, you know, well, it's just fan is short. Sometimes you got to go back to the past and just get that aha moment. Oh, I forget about how to be simple instead of just doing a bunch of crazy color designs just to impress my stakeholders while they are just tuning out already because they're bored and they're miserable. They got to think a child did it for you, okay? That's all. That's all I'm going to say. So I'm also...

There's some social medias as well, and she has her Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. I'll put all those in the link as well. Connect, talk. She's friendly. She's not going to go through the screen and just yell or whatever. She's a nice person. Marge, just talk to her. She'd be more than happy to help. I could tell. You can't fake authentic passion. Some people tried.

But even you detected audience, this one, you have some brains and you even have great discretion. Just tell you all this guest is a little phony. This was authentic. OK, so just check. So just check her stuff out. All right. Is there anything else you want to add before I wrap this up? No, I said send them to my website or also I'm super active on LinkedIn. I always love connecting and networking with people there. So Emily Schneider on LinkedIn.

So go to Lincoln if you want the fastest response possible. OK, I'm going to just emphasize that. Let's start doing that moving forward. So people like, you know, social media apps more than one more than, you know, than the other. Me, I personally like YouTube. OK, but YouTube is not the best, you know.

This is our best tool to socialize. Unless you want to comment on the video, curse somebody out, or compliment, whatever. LinkedIn is full of professional people. So you're not going to get people cursing you out. Less likely, of course. But YouTube, a whole other story. A whole other beast. Okay. That's all I'm going to say about that. The reason I'm saying that is because some people prefer different social medias. And that's okay. I'll just post all of them.

All right. And now a little gutsy questions. Anything you want to add before I really wrap this up? Reinforce simplicity, consistency, and intentionality. It really goes such a far way when it comes to presentation design. Okay. So whenever you have listened to this podcast, you have a blessed day, afternoon, or night. Thank you.