Spending energy to understand the audience and carefully crafting a message that resonates with them means making a commitment of time and discipline to the process.

Audience interest is directly proportionate to the presenter's preparation. You better spend time and energy on any presentations where the stakes are high. If you are trying to close a large sale or speak at a conference to an audience of potential clients, you better be ON your game. An audience can tell how much energy you spent on your presentation, which is a reflection of how much you valued their time. If they gave you an hour of their time, you need to make it worth it to them by treating their time as a valuable asset by making the content valuable to them.

Sometimes all it takes is a kind word of encouragement to get your heroes back on the right path.

All "bad" presentations struggle to keep the audience interested. The audience squirms wishing they could escape. The audience has given the presenter an hour of their life, so they want that hour to be useful. It's disrespectful of a presenter to not show up rehearsed and prepared with information and insights that will improve the lives of the audience in some way. Presenting will do only one of two things for you: it will either diminish your credibility or yield results. Most bad presentations hurt the presenter's credibility.

The future isn't a place that we're going to go, it's a place that you get to create.

Personal stories are the emotional glue that connects your audience to your message.

Practice design, Not Decoration: Don't just make pretty talking points. Instead, display information in a way that makes complex information clear.