"Your audience has three to five seconds to focus, to read one slide. What is your message in three to five seconds?"

I had the pleasure of talking to Daniel Hill on the Unscripted Small Business podcast about the importance of capturing your visual message and keep your audience engaged.

Key Takeaways:

• Start with the end in mind: Always define your desired outcome first—what behavior do you want to change and what action should your audience take? Then work backwards to craft your story.

• Embrace the "word dieting" approach: Strip away unnecessary text and focus on key words that can be transformed into visual elements like icons or simplified graphics.

• Follow the 3-5 second rule: Your audience can only process one slide in 3-5 seconds, so make your message immediately clear and don't make them do mental math.

• Avoid bullet point overload: Audiences automatically tune out when they see traditional bullet points—find creative ways to present information through visuals and strategic spacing.

• Quality over quantity: It's better to have more well-designed slides than fewer jam-packed ones that overwhelm your audience.

• Tailor to your audience: Engineers process information differently than investors—customize your message and design approach based on who you're presenting to.

• Use animations sparingly: Effects should enhance your story, not become the story—save flashy transitions for high school presentations.

• Pitch decks should be 10-15 slides: This gives you enough space to cover the problem, solution, market, and call to action without losing investor attention.

• Prepare speaker notes, never read slides: If you're reading directly from slides, you might as well send an email instead of wasting everyone's time.

• Specialize to become an expert: Focusing solely on PowerPoint design allows you to master the craft and solve specific problems that general marketing teams often can't address.

For the full transcript, keep reading!

The Unscripted Podcast: Transforming Presentations with Oreet Kaufman

Interview Introduction

In this engaging conversation with Daniel Hill on The Unscripted Small Business Podcast by Save Fry Oil, Oreet Kaufman shares her journey from corporate training and development to becoming Chicago's go-to PowerPoint presentation designer. With 20 years of experience in crafting compelling visual stories, Oreet reveals the secrets behind transforming boring, cluttered presentations into powerful communication tools that captivate audiences and drive results.

From her unique "word dieting" approach to the psychology behind effective slide design, this interview offers invaluable insights for anyone looking to elevate their presentation game. Whether you're a startup founder preparing a pitch deck or a corporate executive delivering a keynote, Oreet's expertise will help you create presentations that truly connect with your audience.

Killer Quotes

"I help companies take complex information and drill it down to the real simple messaging and I pair it with great visuals to tell that story."

"What is the least amount of information that sellers need to know before they go in and have that conversation with a customer? So I used to call it parking lot training—that at the very least, if they're sitting in a parking lot, what do they need to know?"

"I always start with clients and say to them, what is your desired outcome at the end of this presentation? What behavior do you want to change? What do you want your audience to know or do? And then we work backwards from there."

"Your audience has three to five seconds to focus, to read one slide. What is your message in three to five seconds?"

"Don't make me do math. Just say 66% because now you've taken up brain space in those three to five seconds."

"As soon as we've all been conditioned to kind of zone out as soon as we see bullets."

"I'd rather 45 slides of a well-made presentation than 10 slides of jam-packed three to five seconds."

"It's to help enhance your story. It's not the story itself. It's not a show and tell of all the different functions and features that PowerPoint can do."

The Full Interview

Daniel Hill: Welcome to the Unscripted Podcast. I'm Daniel Hill and today on the show we have Oreet Kaufman. Oreet, welcome.

Oreet Kaufman: Well, thank you. Thank you for having me, Daniel.

Daniel Hill: Oreet, for people who might not be familiar with you, can you tell us who you are and what it is that you do?

Oreet Kaufman: I'm Oreet Kaufman, I'm out of Chicago and I'm a freelance PowerPoint designer. So I think we've all seen presentations that you just fall asleep at or you're just overwhelmed at right when the speaker starts. You know, that first slide comes up and you're like, no, this is going to be a long presentation.

So I help companies take complex information and drill it down to the real simple messaging and I pair it with great visuals to tell that story. I make those amazing presentations where audience members are just like, wow, I get it. I know what you want to say and I know what I need to do at the end.

Daniel Hill: I love that. Can you tell us the name of your company and how you chose that name?

The Company Name Story

Oreet Kaufman: Sure. So the company's called OC Presentation Designs. My initials are OK, and I was very conscious of not naming it OK Presentation Designs because really who would hire someone that just does OK Designs?

So I was very conscious that when I got married, my mother reminded me to make sure people knew that was my initials—I wasn't authorizing things as OK, even with my kids' homework. So I use C as my middle initial. So it's OC Presentation Design.

Daniel Hill: How did you get into creating presentations for other people?

The Origin Story

Oreet Kaufman: So I've spent 20 years in corporate doing training and development and one way or another, especially the last six years, I worked primarily in PowerPoint. When you're creating training, it was a sales organization. So when you're creating training for sellers, it's gotta be engaging. The information's gotta be short and quick and straight to the point.

So I designed a lot of training in PowerPoint and my skill set of being able to cut down on the clutter came from the approach of what is the least amount of information that sellers need to know before they go in and have that conversation with a customer. So I used to call it parking lot training—that at the very least, if they're sitting in a parking lot, what do they need to know?

So that really helped me kind of save the communication piece to make it simple and understandable and that they can absorb it and get what they need to know to have that conversation.

I just always enjoyed the design piece and when I left that company I didn't even know this was an industry till about two or three years ago. I remember saying to my husband I would just love to make PowerPoints all day and my niece googled it and found a whole community of designers that are out there. I set up a company and started pursuing this.

I'm not a graphic designer or website designer or any type of marketing. I solely do PowerPoint presentations because it's the most universal and it's the most adaptable and everybody uses PowerPoint one way or another. And that way by specializing, I've become an expert in that field. I don't stretch myself too thin. I've become an expert and I've seen all the problems that we hate with PowerPoint. I've sat through the same boring presentations. And so my experience has allowed me to kind of sleep and create that vision and how to fix those problems. And that's what I do for companies.

The Ideal Number of Slides

Daniel Hill: I love all of this. I have a few questions. Some of them are, I'll say pet peeves about people who make specific PowerPoint presentations that I don't like. Is there an ideal number of slides that you use to tell a story? Because my thought is, less is always going to be better. When I see someone open up their deck and it's 50 slides, inside I start cringing. But I've seen where people roll in with one slide and I think, wow, did you prepare this or what? So what's kind of the sweet spot that you see for the number of slides?

Oreet Kaufman: So it obviously depends on the topic and the audience. You can have a keynote that is five slides. You can have a sales call that is 140 slides, but that's appropriate for that medium. I agree with you that when someone opens up a PowerPoint, my eyes immediately go to the lower left corner where you can see how many slides there are, and that will determine my attention span or not.

For pitch decks, it typically is about 10 to 15 slides for a pitch deck. You're talking to investors and they also don't want to—they just want to know the basics. What is the problem? What is the solution? How are you fixing it? What's your market? So I would limit that to 10 to 15 slides.

Less is always tends to be better, as you said, but it really depends on the audience and how you decide to tell that story. You could at the same time have 30 slides and it's the most amazing, compelling presentation because of what you chose to put on those slides.

That is my next reaction when I open it up, but I also give benefit of the doubt to people to say, let's see how they did it.

Animations and Transitions

Daniel Hill: That makes sense. Where are you on text animations where the text slides in or slides up? I feel like that was so cool back in the day and now it just looks a little bit dated. What are your thoughts?

Oreet Kaufman: It's kind of like when you buy a new car—you want to get in and press all the buttons and see what everything does. So I think a lot of people sometimes still do that with PowerPoint. You have to do it selectively. I tend personally not to do text animation, but any type of animation really has to be done well and professional and effectively.

So it's to help enhance your story. It's not the story itself. It's not a show and tell of all the different functions and features that PowerPoint can do.

I'd say the same thing with transitions. You have to transition minimally and effectively. The days of using the curtain transition where the text disappears like a show—save that for the high school presentations.

Daniel Hill: That absolutely makes sense. It's got a place and sparingly it sounds like it's going to be the way to go.

Working Across Industries

Daniel Hill: One of the things that I know you mentioned is that you work with a variety of different kinds of companies and verticals. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Oreet Kaufman: When I first started, I thought, well, I'm going to pick an industry that I'm going to stick with. And I came from industrial manufacturing. I thought, well, that's where I'll start. But really, it's become through my outreach and clients that come to me across all different verticals.

So I've done some manufacturing. I've done food and beverage. I've done health care. I've done startup. The messaging, the way you craft a message, unless it's like a specific niche—the design and the storytelling that you bring to the presentation, the principles of that are the same no matter the industry.

You need to know your audience and how they process information. So if you're speaking to engineers, that's a very different audience than if you're speaking to investors. So my ability to customize that message, but the principles of storytelling essentially are the same no matter the industry.

Principles of Storytelling

Daniel Hill: Can you tell us a little bit more about those principles of storytelling?

Oreet Kaufman: So I always think about it as an arc. So even if you're telling an oral story or a visual story, it's how you set the stage, how you prepare like a background and a context and how you present challenges or the peak of a story and overcoming those challenges or the solutions that you bring, and then ending it with really kind of pulling it all together.

I always start with clients and say to them, what is your desired outcome at the end of this presentation? What behavior do you want to change? What do you want your audience to know or do? And then we work backwards from there.

So depending on what those outcomes are, it's setting the stage, reaching that peak of the problem solving piece, and the call to action is at the end. So they really understand from a flow perspective where you started and where you need them to go. And that's what I help clients do. I transform their messaging from—I ask them, where's your audience now and where do you want them to be with those desired outcomes? And then I take them through that journey to get them to the end.

Daniel Hill: That's actually kind of the opposite way I would have thought about it. And I think that's just because my brain works when I'm reading a book. You start at the beginning, the hero is by themselves or something happens and now they're in a bad situation. How are they going to get out of it? What happens next? What happens next?

But you're starting with the end and saying, okay, where do we want to arrive? Now how are we going to get there? And I think that's really smart because it shows that you have to have the outcome in mind. You have to know where this is going. You don't just figure it out on slide number 18 and then we hit them with the link to the website where they could buy. Have we been building to that all along? And if so, how did we ensure that that's what we actually want them to do in a way that makes sense for the person watching or listening or whatever. So I actually really like that approach.

Oreet Kaufman: Thank you. And my background in creating a development really crystallized that for me. So when you're creating a training curriculum, you want to know what are the objectives? What are we trying to accomplish with this training? Same philosophy when it comes to presentations. What are the desired outcomes at the end? And how do we help you get there through those slides?

Competing with Marketing Companies

Daniel Hill: Now what if someone says, we would love to work with you but we've already got a digital marketing company, we've already got a branding company. Do you mind sharing what kind of brings your unique approach to specifically doing this that other agencies might not specifically have?

Oreet Kaufman: I find a lot of times I reach out to marketing companies and part of my pitch is if it's not already part of your marketing workspace. So marketing is a great department, obviously, when it comes to branding and getting ads and the websites. But you'd be surprised at how often this specific skill set most marketing departments don't have.

I've worked with VPs of marketing where they're like—the other aspects of marketing are phenomenal. But then I looked at their PowerPoint and it was from the 90s. So it's just not a skillset that every marketing department has. And I can come in and fill that kind of crack in that marketing space.

Daniel Hill: That makes complete sense. If you haven't had tons of experience doing this or you're a company that says okay well we're gonna invest in the conference we're gonna get a really good booth and a really good banner and all that but skimping on the presentation part that's actually gonna draw people who want to know what you do and meet you personally that makes a lot of sense.

Oreet Kaufman: And you'd be surprised how many company overviews that I do with marketing departments. It's just something that either they don't think about, they don't get to—a lot of clients hire me because for several reasons. Either they've got somebody that does this, but they just don't have the time and they need to save their resources to do other things. Or it could be deadline panic, or it's just not a skill set that they have. Or they just know it's okay, but needs to be better and they need to wow.

So again, it's more often than not, not a skill set in most marketing departments.

The Impact of AI

Daniel Hill: I'm curious how you see AI impacting both your role and presentations and sales in the future. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Oreet Kaufman: It's a hot topic as we all are experiencing. So there's a lot of sites out there and I think AI might be a good starting tool for small, local, internal projects. But I think you need a presentation expert when it comes to large scale projects and more complex ones.

Because what AI can't do, at least for now, is that you always need that human critical thinking aspect for decision making and to understand your audience and understand how your message will land with an audience.

As we talked about earlier, the principles of storytelling might be the same, but your audience has different needs. So that ability to make decisions, change decisions, adapted to your audience, that human critical thinking element, I think right now will not be replaced by AI.

And certainly if somebody—I mean, I'd be surprised if somebody wants to spend time on AI creating a hundred slide deck. At that point, after two, three hours, they might just say, forget this. Those large projects.

So I think for small ones it's a good start. If you're just dabbling your fingers in presentation and you really don't have time or the resources to pay an expert, I think it's a good start. But once you start getting to more complex ideas and company presentations, I find that most people turn to an expert and want that human element into it.

Success Stories

Daniel Hill: I understand that. Do you mind talking about some success stories that you've had from clients or presentations that you've worked on that you're very proud of?

Oreet Kaufman: Absolutely. So last Thanksgiving, I usually source a lot of my clients through LinkedIn, and I have a services page. And on Thanksgiving, somebody reached out to me that five days later, she's going to be a keynote speaker at a conference in California, and she didn't have a deck.

Now, as a presentation designer, what got me excited was that I had free creative reigns with colors, design. Her only instructions were it's about AI and I want it bold and I want it great—I want it like big and bold and it's to be better than the other person's keynote speaker. So obviously I didn't see the other person's but I know she wanted to make it better and I got really excited.

Now let me ask you Daniel—if you were gonna be speaking on stage in five days, how far in advance would you prepare for it?

Daniel Hill: I would say I would prepare two months so that I could really give myself six weeks. I'd prepare it in two to three weeks and then I'd spend the next two to three weeks practicing it so I knew it cold, backward forward, and my family would be tired of hearing me practice it. That's just my personal approach.

Oreet Kaufman: She had a deck, but it was one of those old 90s decks and she was a wonderful person to work with and I said, okay, if you're thinking in five days, that means you need at least a day to practice it. So that gives me four days and it was, I think it was the weekend. And so I wanted to get it to her obviously as soon as possible.

So it was AI, which is a fun topic to kind of find photos about. And I had free range with colors, like I said, and within 48 hours I delivered a deck to her with maybe one or two comments, and she had the confidence to get up there and speak and make herself look good and the organization that she was speaking for look good. And it was a great success story and a quick turnaround time.

There's an aspect of doing keynotes on a large stage that are different than webinars. You need to think about how the imagery and the colors, how they portray in a large screen, if it's a light room, if it's a dark room. There's different considerations when it's on that size of a screen. But it was fun, it was great, and she was happy, and it just came to me totally random. And so she did a great job.

Daniel Hill: That's a really great story and I think it speaks to your ability to quickly focus down right—like you didn't take three months to come up with an idea or anything like that like you literally just okay what do we have to do what's the deadline let's work toward it so I like that approach.

Optimizing for Time and Impact

Oreet Kaufman: Well, and thank you. She also had about 30 slides and only 30 minutes to talk. So now we typically say one slide per two minutes per slide, but then she wanted to do activities also. And I was like, from a keynote perspective, this is not a time for activities.

A lot of her slides were very complex, like something they would go in an appendix. So I was able to make recommendations as well for my experience in training to say no activities. No interaction with the audience right now. In 30 minutes, if you want to focus on your message and these other slides really should go in appendix for the audience later, here are your most effective 15 to 16 slides with two minutes each that will fit within 30 minutes that will give your message a wow and a bang.

So I was able to help her with my understanding of what's the critical messaging that you can deliver in 30 minutes, not to overload it. Because the worst thing is, keynote speaker gets up there and she doesn't get to finish her message. She runs out of time. So I'm helping her prepare to give her best presentation possible.

Avoiding the Dreaded Slide Reading

Daniel Hill: Do you find that people, when they have you prepare their presentations, they want to read the slides? They want to be able to reference those in case of panic and how do you kind of handle that?

Oreet Kaufman: So there's always speaker notes—I love speaker notes. I've recommended to people in large calls with an audience, have a teleprompter that you can see your speaker notes and speak along with, but nobody should be reading off the slide. I think we've all been there and said, you know what, just send it to me in an email. If you're gonna read it off the slide, just send it to me.

Daniel Hill: I've been on webinars where you can see the person is sharing their screen and the notes and you can see what they're reading and it's a really bad experience just like you said this could have been an email just send me the email I'll take a quick look at it.

Oreet Kaufman: You're wasting everybody's time. In talking about wasting people's time, I always say that your audience has three to five seconds to focus, to read one slide. What is your message in three to five seconds?

So I've said before, like, if you have numbers or charts on your screen, don't—and it's like two thirds, don't make me do math. Just say 66% because now you've taken up brain space in those three to five seconds that I have to convert that number to a percentage to resonate. And that's now all I'm thinking about in three to five seconds instead of your message. So I love to say don't make me do math.

Daniel Hill: Yes, I love that.

PowerPoint Pet Peeves

Daniel Hill: Do you have any pet peeves of PowerPoints, presentations in general?

Oreet Kaufman: I think they're probably what everybody's pet peeves—as a perfectionist it's probably more but bullets, bullets, bullets—there's got to be no bullets and if you have...

Daniel Hill: As someone who has been using bullets, what should we be using instead?

Oreet Kaufman: So first of all, you need to, with my word dieting approach, really look at to see what are the key words and pull out those key words from the bullet. Listen, sometimes you end up with bullets. That's just the reality. What are the key words? Can you represent those as icons? Can you represent them in a different visual way? Whether it's different spacing, whether it's animation.

But as soon as we've all been conditioned to kind of zone out as soon as we see bullets. And I think the common pet peeves of just too much information, whether it's charts and tables on the same page, whether it's charts with a lot of irrelevant information where you just are like, just tell me the key data. Is it one third of people hate reading PowerPoints? Just say that.

So, just so much information, everybody loading everything because they don't want to have more slides because they're more concerned with what we said earlier—oh, I don't want people to think as soon as they open the deck that it's 45 slides.

But I'd rather 45 slides of well-made presentation than 10 slides of jam-packed three to five seconds. I don't know what you're talking about or where my eyes should go, and now you've lost me from slide one. So it's just people thinking, throw the kitchen sink on there.

Outdated photos, also pet peeves. No more photos from the 80s or 90s. There's certain photos we all use that we've all seen. Just be smart about the photos.

And that's why you hire a professional to really understand what's current, what's relevant, what's at a good balance—a good balance of information, storytelling, and how to really tell that story well.

Where to Find Oreet

Daniel Hill: Oreet, this has been great having you on. Can you tell us where we can find you online and what we can look forward to you creating in the near future?

Oreet Kaufman: So my website's ocdesigns.info and you can see my portfolio and some client success stories. And there's a page there also called Word Dieting that I've been talking about a little bit about. And there's a downloadable PDF with some best practices of how you can start to word diet your own work with some examples. And really it helps communications all over.

I look forward in the future to—I'd like to host a master class on word dieting and take audience members through some examples on how to do that in your own work. So that is currently in the works.

Daniel Hill: I'll put your website in the show notes so that people can get there directly and find the PDF that you mentioned about the word dieting. Oreet, this has been fantastic having you on. Thank you so much for your time.

Oreet Kaufman: Thank you so much for having me, Daniel. It was a pleasure.