Let's talk about your deck

Your deck is one tool. Not the only one.

I saw an ad pop up on my Instagram feed promising to have your presentation polished and ready by morning. You send them your rough draft at the end of the day. They handle everything. You wake up, open your laptop, and it's done.

Very impressive. Thank you, AI.

Here is where I paused and got curious: a beautiful deck delivered by morning is still just a deck. And your audience will forget 75% of it within 24 hours.

People retain about 10% of what they hear. That jumps to 65% when you pair it with a strong visual. But when people do something and when they participate, touch, react, or hold something, their

retention climbs toward 90%.

The AI tools are getting better at the deck. That's not where the gap is.

The gap is in how you think about the room.

I have a friend who walks onto a stage with an old phone. The kind with the cord. He sets it on the podium without explaining it, starts his talk, and about eight minutes in, it rings.

He answers it and the entire audience loves it and they are now really leaning in!

He'd planned it, obviously. But for everyone watching, it felt like a moment. Something unpredictable happened inside a presentation. And they remembered everything he said after that.

That phone cost nothing. It wasn't in the deck. And it did more for audience retention than any slide could.

You are not beholden to your slides.

You have a room. You have a body. You have a voice. You have walls, and tables, and markers, and the people sitting right in front of you. You have props in your bag.

You have the audience's own phones in their pockets or back packs and purses. Skies the limit!

Most presenters treat their slides as the presentation. The slides are one stop on the journey and definitely not the whole trip. They are more like your supporting partner and sometimes you need to decide if you can go solo for this one!

Think about what it feels like to be in an audience where the speaker controls the room instead of the screen. Where you're not watching, you're in it. Where something happens that you didn't expect and your brain says, oh, this is different.

That's not magic, that is an intentional choice.

Here's a structure that takes your audience somewhere, using every tool in the room:

Open with you. Not a slide. Not a title card. You, in the room, being present. Maybe you share a story or ask a question, but there is no visual support needed. Let them land on you first.

Then bring in the screen. One image. One number. Nothing else on that slide. Let it breathe. If you're hitting them with a statistic, say it out loud before you show it. "Here's what surprised me." Then click. The reveal does the work.

Move to the flip chart for your first key takeaway. Write it as you say it. Don't pre-write it. The act of watching you write it in real time and in your handwriting creates a different kind of attention. The room follows your hand. They slow down with you.

Bring out a prop for your second point. It doesn't have to be dramatic. It just has to be real. A product. A printed page. An object that represents the idea. Something they can see and associate with the concept. Blake used a phone. I've used a script, a metronome, a victrola, a single printed email. The rule is simple: it should make the idea tangible.

Return to the screen for an image and not a summary. One more visual that reinforces the emotion of the room, not the content. A photo. A short clip. Something that says this is why it matters without using words.

Close with the audience. Ask them to do something small. Pull out their phone and answer a question. Turn to the person next to them. Write one word on a notepad. Whatever it is, make them the last visual in the room, because the best thing they can see at the end of your talk is themselves, engaged. That's what they'll remember.

Then bring up your CTA on the screen. Clean. One ask. And you stop talking.

Your deck is a tool. A flip chart is a tool. A prop is a tool. A question is a tool. The silence after you say something true is a tool.

Most presenters use one. The ones who are unforgettable use all of them.

You already have everything you need to take your audience somewhere they didn't expect to go. You just have to decide that the deck isn't leading.