The other day I was working with a client on her PowerPoint slides. We looked at the first slide, then the second slide, then the third slide. She asked me what I thought. “Should we add this?” “Should we take that out?”

The thing is, she had an even more basic problem: her slides were interfering with the story she was telling. The slides had all the graphs and data and charts you “should” put in a business presentation, but all that average, “should be there” data was drowning the story coming out of her mouth. It was a fascinating story, a story the audience would love to hear. It was a story of brilliance and creativity and hard work, but the slides were saying, “Oh, by the way, there’s nothing special here. I am giving you exactly what everyone else does.”

In a presentation, you have a huge opportunity. A bunch of people are sitting in front of you, waiting to hear what you have to say. If you are about to rock their world with a brilliant story, do not sabotage your story by wrapping it in a soggy noodle of an average slide deck.