Deck Builder

Talk Coach

What I do: independent data consultant. I help mid-size retailers make sense of their sales data.
Current project: a six-week engagement with a grocery chain, building their first demand forecast.
Talks I give: intro pitch to prospective clients, monthly status updates to current clients, and an occasional meetup talk about practical forecasting.
The one thing every talk should land: forecasting is not magic, it is plumbing. Good inputs, boring models, honest error bars.

What I present about

Client pitches: operations managers and finance leads. Smart, busy, allergic to hype. Lead with their problem, not my method.
Status updates: the people who hired me plus their boss. They want progress, blockers, and what I need from them. No filler.
Meetup talks: practitioners. They want the real numbers and the failure stories.

Tone everywhere: plain, direct, lightly dry. No buzzwords. Numbers over adjectives.

Audience and tone

Results I can cite:
- Grocery chain pilot: forecast error down from 31% to 14% on the top 200 SKUs in four weeks.
- Previous client (garden supply): cut overstock write-offs by about a fifth in one season.
- Typical engagement: six weeks, fixed scope, weekly check-ins.

Things I never claim: revenue lifts I cannot trace, accuracy below 10%, or anything about a client I have not asked permission to name.

Material and numbers

Direction: calm and confident. The deck should feel like a clear-headed memo, not a sales sizzle reel.

Background: near-black (#101418). Text: warm off-white (#F2EFEA). One accent: amber (#E8A13C) for the headline keyword and the progress bar only.

Type: oversized headlines, one short line of support text, generous empty space. No bullet walls. A slide with one sentence on it is a good slide.

Never: clip art, stock photos, more than five numbers on a slide.

Visual style

Traid

Turn your notes into presentations you give from a link. Slide decks built from what you already wrote, with coaching on structure, timing, and speaker notes.