Tag: coupon codes

Presentation Tips: Coupons and Outlining Are Essential

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Hot Tip For Presentations: Give Out Coupon Codes!

This is a neat trick we learned. We were speaking at a technology conference and we decided to give everyone in the audience something that would help their business. But we didn’t have any budget for something expensive. What could we give to this group of 2,000 people that we could afford, but would give them something of value that could save them lots of money. Then we realized: you can use Coupon Puppy to save money.

Most of these people had websites, and these websites all have web hosting. Hosting tends to be one of the most expensive expenses for a website owner, so we realized that we could copy down some coupon codes from a site like this: (update: here’s a new site that we recommend:

print it off on little cards and give them to the audience. If they used the coupon, then they would save 40% off renewal costs of their hosting plans and domains. That’s a real benefit for all those attendees looking for some kind of business edge. And best of all? It cost us nothing! You can find coupon codes for pretty much any kind of merchant for your presentation by searching on CouponJournal.org.

Preparing a Presentation? Here’s Why You Need to Outline First 

If you aren’t a natural speaker, preparing a presentation can be stressful. While using PowerPoint as a brainstorming tool seems like a great way to outline, this can backfire. If you want your talk to be engaging and exciting, you need to outline your talk before you make your slides; here’s why. 

Outlining Improves Your Messaging 

If you develop slides before you know what you’re going to say, you’ll wind up with a vague message. Your talk might not convince the audience. To get the message right, take a step back and think about how the content you are creating relates to the overall branding.

Outlining Creates a Natural Flow

Your initial thoughts may not be very organized. As you create an outline from these scattered thoughts, you risk creating a talk that does not flow. In the worst case, this could create a talk that fails to convert audience members or impress a potential new client. When your business depends on making an effective presentation, you need to sit down and create that talk first. 

Outlining Helps You Create a Strong Presentation 

As you draft, you might grab image and video content and drag that onto the slides. Since you are still in the create mode and you are not clear on the message yet, you can end up creating slides that look messy or don’t really go with your talk. You’ll need to spend more time editing these down or you’ll end up with a cluttered, weak presentation. 

Outlining Shortens Your Time on Task

If you delve into using your professional PowerPoint design as a drafting tool, you will inevitably end up spending more time reworking the content to a polished draft. So, if you want to do the best job possible on your PowerPoint without spending a lot of time on it, outline your talk and then create slides from your template. 

Hopefully, these points have convinced you to take a step back next time you need to deliver a talk.

 

Three Reasons You Have Bad Memory and a Free iStock Promo Code!

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The average person can hold seven distinct items in their short-term memory, and keep them there for around 20 seconds. So how do competitors in memory sports manage to hold hundreds of items in their memory? Are they just gifted? The answer is no — researchers have found that memory experts do not possess special brains. Instead, they use techniques and principles that allow them to anchor information into their long-term memory more easily. Here’s why they are better than you.

1) You don’t encode memories in meaningful ways.

Memory works through association. Try to process the information – what is it similar to, different from, and why? For example, if you’re trying to memorize a certain philosophical theory, compare it to another one. If you’re trying to remember someone’s name, think of other people with that name, and picture them all having a “Brian Party.”
For memorization of things like lists and digits, you’ll need to use a system like the link system or the memory palace. These involve making ridiculous mental images out of the list items, hence making them more memorable.

2) You only have one path to the memory

Say you receive a new four-digit PIN in the mail: 1429. You look at the slip, repeat it a few times in your head then throw it away. The mistake is you were only exposed to the memory in one context. Memory experts create multiple cues by which to recall information. They make their cues meaningful, novel, or ridiculous to make them easier to remember. For example: • Create two mental images based on those four digits. Maybe the 14 is a local bus in your area, and you know a sports player who wears 29 on his jersey. Imagine that player in his full sports gear driving the 14 bus in whatever area it goes.• Visualize a bright light moving across a keypad, from the eight to the four, to the two, and to the nine.• Imagine you wake up in the morning and your partner (or imagined partner) is holding a lottery ticket shouting “We one! We one!”. You open your bedroom door and there is Tiger Woods shouting “Four!” as he drives off. William Shakespeare is at the top of your staircase saying “Two be, or not two be!”. You go downstairs and try to get into your kitchen but Hitler blocks your way, shouting “Nine! Nine!”.

3) You don’t practice recall

If you want to memorize something, you must practice recalling the information. Even if you create several meaningful paths to the information, you need to test these paths and make sure they work.
You can use one of the many flashcard apps available like Anki or Mnemosyne, or you can go low-tech and use actual, physical flashcards. If you get the question wrong, go over your mental cues, make them more interesting and ridiculous, and try again.
It’s a good idea to test yourself every few hours at first, but you can reduce this to every day, every week, every month etc., as you improve. Try to focus on speed, and being able to recall the information more quickly.

Practice

Memory champions have proven that good memory isn’t something you have, it’s something you do. If you practice these skills regularly, you’ll have no problem remembering phone numbers, shopping lists, people’s names, and even complex, abstract ideas.
What was that PIN again?