Business

5 Tips for Crafting Great Speeches and Presentations

Published

4 years ago

September 16, 2021

The ability to captivate an audience through your speech or presentation is a beneficial skill to have. Whether you are trying to climb the ladder at a company you work for or build out your own brand, great public speaking and presentation skills can certainly offer a lot of mileage. To help you make the most of the benefits that being a great public speaker has to offer, we’ll take a look at five presentation design tips for crafting speeches and presentations that are sure to wow your audience.

Tip #1: Know Your Idea and Your Audience

Before you can get started crafting an ovation-worthy presentation, you first need to form a firm understanding of the idea you are trying to convey and the audience that you are trying to convey it to. Every speech or presentation needs a point or a key message that it is meant to get across. Rambling on about various topics without providing your audience any key message(s) that they can take home with them certainly isn’t likely to win you any awards as a skilled orator.

In addition to forming a solid understanding of the message you would like to convey through your presentation, it’s also important to consider the audience that you are presenting to. A speech that is delivered to an audience of business executives, for example, obviously needs to be much different from a speech that is delivered at an amateur magicians convention – even if the message you are trying to get across is the same in both instances. By pinning down the message you are trying to convey and taking into account the audience that you are presenting it to, you can hone your presentation and message in a way that will be best received by your audience. A perfect business idea can enhance your business objectives.

Tip #2: Avoid Writing a Script

It can be tempting to write and follow a script when giving a speech. After all, a script ensures that you are able to deliver all of your thoughts without losing your place or getting sidetracked. The problem with scripts, though, is that it is easy to tell when someone is reading from one. Even if you happen to have a teleprompter that allows you to avoid staring down at a piece of paper throughout your entire speech, your audience will still probably be able to tell that you are reading from a script – and the quality of your speech is likely to suffer as a result.

If you feel the need to create something to help keep you on track during your speech, consider creating note cards that cover your speech’s key points and main ideas. Ideally, you will have practiced your speech enough times before you actually deliver it to a live audience that you don’t even need these note cards. Either way, though, they can still be a nice safety net to have and one that shouldn’t impact the quality of your speech in the way that reading from a script is prone to do.

Tip #3: Make Use of Visual Aids

Human beings are visual creatures. Visual ads increase your brand awareness in the mind of the audience more effectively. While it is certainly possible to deliver an amazing speech that only consists of you speaking to your audience, visual aids make it much easier to keep your audience entertained and engaged. If you are delivering a presentation as opposed to a speech, visual aids are a must. No one wants to watch a presentation that consists of slide after slide of nothing but written text. At the very least, you’ll want to include some relevant images on your slides. Sprinkling animations or short videos into your presentation design alongside the images you use is even better.

There’s a reason that television is more popular than radio. Even if you are gifted with a silver tongue and your speech is eloquent and captivating, your audience is sure to still enjoy something interesting to look at while they listen. Sprinkle some visual aids throughout your presentation and the quality of your presentation is almost certain to improve.

Tip #4: Inject Storytelling and Humor

Have you ever noticed that almost every speech – no matter the subject or the person presenting it – includes some degree of storytelling and/or humor? The reason why these elements appear in just about every speech (or at least the good ones) is quite simple – nothing keeps an audience engaged better than storytelling and humor. In fact, it’s even fair to say that most audiences are going to expect it from a speech.

Before you can inform your audience and deliver the point that you would like to get across that audience has to be engaged – and no matter how informative your speech might be, it’s difficult to engage an audience unless they are entertained. By telling them a story or injecting some humor into your speech, you can ensure that your audience is entertained and enjoying themselves. Ultimately, keeping your audience engaged and entertained is an important prerequisite for any great speech.

Tip #5: Learn From the Best

There’s no better way to learn a skill than studying the people who have mastered it, and public speaking is certainly no exception. If you would like to craft a speech or presentation that will be well-received, studying the tactics of master public speakers is definitely a great place to start. In some cases, you may be able to find resources written by great public speakers where they lay out their strategies for crafting a great speech. If not, even watching speeches from master public speakers is an excellent way to pick up tips and tools of the trade that you can apply to your own speech.

Research people who are renowned for their public speaking skills, watch a few of their speeches, and see if you can pick up on what it is that makes them great. Once you’ve pinned down some of the things that make these people so enjoyable to listen to, try and apply those same attributes to your own speech.

Business

High Volume, High Value: The Business Logic Behind Black Banx’s Growth

Published

6 days ago

June 16, 2025

Matthew Wiles

In fintech, success no longer hinges on legacy prestige or brick-and-mortar branches—it’s about speed, scale, and precision. Black Banx, under the leadership of founder and CEO Michael Gastauer, has exemplified this model, turning its high-volume approach into high-value results.

The company’s Q1 2025 performance tells the story: $1.6 billion in pre-tax profit, $4.3 billion in revenue, and 9 million new customers added, bringing its total customer base to 78 million across 180+ countries.

But behind the numbers lies a carefully calibrated business model built for exponential growth. Here’s how Black Banx’s strategy of scale is redefining what profitable banking looks like in the digital age.

Scaling at Speed: Why Volume Matters

Unlike traditional banks, which often focus on deepening relationships with a limited set of customers, Black Banx thrives on breadth and transactional frequency. Its digital infrastructure supports onboarding millions of users instantly, with zero physical presence required. Customers can open accounts within minutes and transact across 28 fiat currencies and 2 cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin and Ethereum) from anywhere in the world.

Each customer interaction—whether it’s a cross-border transfer, crypto exchange, or FX transaction—feeds directly into Black Banx’s revenue engine. At scale, these micro-interactions yield macro results.

Real-Time, Global Payments at the Core

One of Black Banx’s most powerful value propositions is real-time cross-border payments. By enabling instant fund transfers across currencies and countries, the platform removes the frictions associated with SWIFT-based systems and legacy banking networks.

This service, used by individuals and businesses alike, generates:

Volume-based revenue from transaction fees
Exchange spreads on currency conversion
Premium service income from business clients managing international payroll or vendor payments

With operations in underserved regions like Africa, South Asia, and Latin America, Black Banx is not only increasing volume—it’s tapping into fast-growing financial ecosystems overlooked by legacy banks.

The Flywheel Effect of Crypto Integration

Crypto capabilities have added another dimension to the company’s high-volume model. As of Q1 2025, 20% of all Black Banx transactions involved cryptocurrency, including:

Crypto-to-fiat and fiat-to-crypto exchanges
Crypto deposits and withdrawals
Payments using Bitcoin or Ethereum

The crypto integration attracts both retail users and blockchain-native businesses, enabling them to:

Access traditional banking rails
Convert assets seamlessly
Operate with lower transaction fees than those found in standard financial systems

By being one of the few regulated platforms offering full banking and crypto support, Black Banx is monetizing the convergence of two financial worlds.

Optimized for Operational Efficiency

High volume is only profitable when costs are contained—and Black Banx has engineered its operations to be lean from day one. With a cost-to-income ratio of just 63% in Q1 2025, it operates significantly more efficiently than most global banks.

Key enablers of this cost efficiency include:

AI-driven compliance and customer support
Cloud-native architecture
Automated onboarding and KYC processes
Digital-only servicing without expensive physical infrastructure

The outcome is a platform that not only scales, but does so without sacrificing margin—each new customer contributes to profit rather than diluting it.

Business Clients: The Value Multiplier

While Black Banx’s massive customer base is largely consumer-driven, its business clients are high-value accelerators. From SMEs and startups to crypto firms and global freelancers, businesses use Black Banx for:

International transactions
Multi-currency payroll
Crypto-fiat settlements
Supplier payments and invoicing

These clients tend to:

Transact more frequently
Use a broader range of services
Generate significantly higher revenue per user

Moreover, Black Banx’s API integrations and tailored enterprise solutions lock in these clients for the long term, reinforcing predictable and scalable growth.

Monetizing the Ecosystem, Not Just the Account

The genius of Black Banx’s model is that it monetizes not just accounts, but entire customer journeys. A user might:

Onboard in minutes
Deposit funds from a crypto wallet
Exchange currencies
Pay an overseas vendor
Withdraw to a local bank account

Each of these actions touches a different monetization lever—FX spread, transaction fee, crypto conversion, or premium service charge. With 78 million customers doing variations of this at global scale, the cumulative financial impact becomes immense.

Strategic Expansion, Not Blind Growth

Unlike many fintechs that chase customer acquisition without a clear monetization path, Black Banx aligns its growth with strategic market opportunities. Its expansion into underbanked and high-demand markets ensures that:

Customer acquisition costs stay low
Services meet genuine needs (e.g., cross-border income, crypto access)
Revenue per user grows over time

It’s not just about acquiring more customers—it’s about acquiring the right customers, in the right markets, with the right needs.

The Future Belongs to Scalable Banking

Black Banx’s ability to transform high-volume engagement into high-value profitability is more than just a fintech success—it’s a signal of what the future of banking looks like. In a world where agility, efficiency, and inclusion define competitive advantage, Black Banx has created a blueprint for digital banking dominance.

With $1.6 billion in quarterly profit, nearly 80 million users, and services that span the globe and the blockchain, the company is no longer just scaling—it’s compounding. Each new user, each transaction, and each feature builds upon the last.

This is not the story of a bank growing.

This is the story of a bank accelerating.