No one remembers a number. They remember stories—and context.

Recently, I had the chance to sit in on a client presentation, part of a series of talks on the topic of funding small businesses and creators.. Most were forgettable, except our clients’. Of course, we’re biased, but a group of audience members approached her afterwards to tell her they’d taken an informal poll and voted her talk #1.

Here’s what worked, what didn’t, and how to make sure your talk makes the impact you want it to.

What didn’t land

Data overload

One speaker projected slide after slide of “impressive” stats. I took notes, but I still barely remember the content.

Example:

“We’ve paid creators more than $70B over the past 3 years.”

Nice. But what does that mean? Big numbers out of context rarely land.

No heart

The same speaker also name-checked a long list of creators but didn’t focus on any one individual story. It felt cold, impersonal, and hard to grasp the tangible impact.

No narrative arc

Many of the talks provided good information, but lacked a clear storyline, making them difficult to follow and remember. Audience members, whether at a conference or in a movie theater, need to be taken on a journey; otherwise, their attention will wander. They’ll tune you out.

What worked: make it real, make it stick

Our client nailed it by leveraging some presentation best practices:

Use a well-placed analogy
Analogies can create sticky mental images. For example, to describe how her team’s internal resources had grown, our client said they’d gone from “using hammers and nails to power tools.”  Simple. Visual. Memorable.

Go deep, not wide
Instead of rattling off a dozen examples of businesses her org funded, our client spotlighted one: a chef who grew her business from her home kitchen to the Chase Center (The Warriors’ home court). The story covered it all—funding gaps, scaling challenges, and real-world outcomes. It made the impact feel real.

Use memorable language
A “call-to-action” is essential. But you can do even more than that. When our client was ready to make the ask, she didn’t just ask the audience to support equity (a vague, hard-to-grasp concept) she defined the term in a clear, relatable way:

“Equity means your corner coffee shop gets the same chance as the national chain.”

When you’ve got a captive audience, don’t lose them at the first slide.