Nobody Remembers the Slide Deck

This is the Minute Business Riff (MBR). Quick takes. Big swings. Leadership riffs you can read in less time than it takes to scroll LinkedIn aimlessly.

One minute. One idea. That’s it.

Today’s word count: 271

It took me 1 min 01s to read this.

A few years ago, we were prepping for a massive pitch.

Multi-million-dollar deal. One of those make-or-break-your-quarter kind of meetings.

The sales manager locked himself in a war room for 12 hours.

Slides on slides on slides. Fancy animations. Custom visuals. Every data point dressed up like it had a job interview with SpaceX.

It looked amazing.

We get into the boardroom. 7 people on the other side of the table. Everyone’s stiff, checking email, sipping conference room coffee like it owed them money.

Slide one. Slide two. Slide three…

Nobody’s reacting. Blank stares. Phones out.

So one of our product leads ditches the script.

She leans forward and says:

“Can I tell you why we actually built this?”

Then she told the story of a customer who almost lost her home because of how broken the old system was - and how our product gave her a shot to save it.

You could feel the room shift.

The VP who hadn’t made eye contact in 10 minutes suddenly put his phone down. Someone nodded. One guy literally said, “Damn.”

We never got past slide nine.

Two weeks later, they signed the contract.

Not because of the animations. Not because of the feature matrix.
Because they remembered the story.

The truth is: nobody buys bullet points. They buy belief. They buy emotion. They buy clarity.

Tactical Takeaway:

Next time you pitch, don’t lead with: “Let me walk you through the deck.”

Start with:

“Let me tell you why this matters.”

Slides support your pitch. But the story is the pitch.
Tell it well - and the rest takes care of itself.

Think this was a banger? Think I’m full of it?

Either way, hit reply and drop some truth bombs.

I read every email 😁

Great leaders are made in minutes. Not meetings.