Roughly twice a year, each member in our BNI chapter has the opportunity to make a longer presentation to the tribe. With the size of our chapter – 45 as at the time of writing – we have two 5-minute presentations each meeting rather than the standard single 10-minute speaker. This enables each member to have a couple of opportunities to present each year.

There are no real rules for these 5-minute presentations, other than staying in your assigned classification. Members generally provide information on their background, family, and a personal insight or two, followed by a short collection of slides addressing some aspect of their business. These sessions are not intended to be technical, or ‘how I do my job’ type presentations. The goal is to capture the audience ‘s interest. My view is that it should lead to 121s to go into more detail.

This week (21 July 2023) was my turn. Here is what I presented.

My opening slide (above) was deliberately generic. Good morning. I am Daryl Webb, and I am a Mergers and Acquisitions Advisor. I have worked in this space for over 20 years, and I now apply what I have learned to the SME market. I do Business Valuations, and coach small business owners on their exit plans, preparing their business for sale, and buying a business.

I then posed a question: What do you think is the number one thing I get asked during 121s? I had actually stated in the previous meeting that the number one question I get asked by clients was What is my business worth? I was keen to see if anyone remembered that, and gave that answer.

The actual answer, which I provided, was Where do you get all you jokes from? You must spend hours online searching for jokes! An intentional misdirect. What appeared to be a presentation on my business pivots to something more amusing, the story behind my weekly BNI slides.

The reality is, I don’t need to spend a lot of time putting my weekly 45-second pitches together. The secret – if you can call it that – is simply preparation. A callout to the presentation coach in our group (and current president), John Maybury. He ran a BNI Pitch Workshop session a year or so back that I attended. My key takeaway from that session is to make sure you plan ahead. Don’t try and wing it. Prepare in advance, and rehearse. He also suggested doing a ‘series’ of slides over multiple weeks on a single theme.

So, that’s what I do. I prepare my slides sometime months in advance. I will occasionally reorder them or alter the topic I used the slide to talk about, but nothing is last minute. I actually select my slide and topic for the following week on Friday after this week’s BNI. I then have plenty of time to rehearse my pitch. Changing my slide weekly forces this discipline.

As I browse my feeds (mainly Reddit, Quora, and 9GAG) and see something that amuses me, I save it. As I am putting my slides together, I shuffle through the collection to find something that fits. Occasionally I create my own, and sometimes – rarely – I have to search for the perfect fit. I generally have 20 or more meme images queued up to select from.

And this, I explained, drives my selection. I want jokes that are clear and funny. And if I need to explain the joke, I have failed.

I then set up the next set of slides: some types of memes that I have learned don’t work for a 45-second pitch.

Like this one. When on a screen, the audience is likely to miss the (self-referential) joke because they mightn’t appreciate the meme is deliberately cropped that way. If I have to explain the joke…

And some jokes are perhaps too obscure.

This was presented as a two-step build on the screen, starting with the right hand image. I had actually used this in January of this year and received a lot of blank looks. Today I asked the room who got the reference.

I then revealed the movie, the classic 2004 Wayans’ brothers comedy, White Chicks.

And then this movie reference:

(again, a two-part build)

I think they are funny, but maybe its just me.

Then finally:

One of my favourites, but it does require a good appreciation of Star Wars lore.

(Stormtroopers were notoriously bad aims – but if you have to explain the joke…)

Another type of meme that doesn’t work is where the audience is expected to read too much.

A couple of examples. I have found people just stop reading.

Finally, another issue with visual jokes in the BNI setting.

The audience needs to be able to see the bottom of the screen to get the joke.

I then moved on to set up my next series, which I plan to run for the next few months. The series is titled Another Lens. This series is based on one of my favourite themes: bad logos. Well intentioned, but just ‘what were they thinking?’

Like these: The left is the Arlington Pediatric Center. On the right, the Catholic Church’s Archdiocesan Youth Commission. Need I say more?

This is a perfect examples of the different contexts the organisation (and designers) have versus the wider audience. The internal view can lead you astray, the external view can highlight what you don’t see. The audience is looking through fresh eyes – another lens. This links back to my previous 5-minute presentation, the Tapping Exercise.

Another example, presented as a two-part build (left then right):

The US Office of Government Commerce’s logo. A perfect demonstration of the need to look at things from different angles. I explained (to tie it all together) that Looking through a different lens is important in my business when working with clients. You’ll often be surprised by what you will find.

And that was my 5 minutes.