The Pedestal Group

Putting our clients where they belong

PowerPoint – In All It’s Glory

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As promised, here is a summary of a presentation I gave to the Greater Medina Chamber last week. PowerPoint is an incredibly powerful tool – when used well. When used poorly, it is just BORING. In the past, I was taught to put everything on a slide, including our logo and “all rights reserved” at the bottom. Each slide had a header and a footer, and then we would cram as much text as possible into the slide. The idea was, when they took the slides as the handout, they would have all the information. I now know that thinking is completely WRONG. Instead, your PowerPoint is to enhance your presentation. We all learn in different ways so the slides add a visual backdrop for your presentation. The key here is backdrop. YOU are the focus. YOU provide the content and the information. If you […] Continue reading

Just try!

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For the last week and a half I’ve been totally stressed out about something I needed to do for a client. It was very technical and just outside my reach, I thought. Very technical, very jargon-based, etc. So I looked at it a little, I talked to a couple people who should know more than me, I contacted technical support, and I stressed. Today, I took the plunge, logged in and really looked at what I needed to do. And you know what? 10 minutes later it was done and I knew it had been done correctly. So what? Well, I’m not the only one who goes through this. Sometimes when something feels daunting, the right answer is to just try. Make sure you don’t have anything that could really screw you up first (for instance, back up the source code before you start editing […] Continue reading

Read Like You Listen

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Last week I had a major revelation at lunch with Maia Beatty.  We say all the time to “write like you talk” but we never deal with the other side. Which is Read Like You Listen.  Think about that for a moment. That is seriously powerful stuff!  Instead of reading an email in your own “voice” if you will, you need to read it in theirs.  Still not sure what I mean?  Let’s use an example. A friend of mine sent an email to someone and said something sarcastic. It is difficult to be sarcastic in email but in her head, it was hilarious.  When it was received, the person took it at face value – in their head they weren’t being sarcastic. And the ensuing conversation was all kinds of trouble for no reason.  In fact, when I was shown the email I immediately […] Continue reading