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

Inside the $4.3B Quarter: What’s Fueling Black Banx’s Record Revenues

Published

3 days ago

January 16, 2026

Matthew Wiles

Every quarter brings fresh headlines in fintech, but few make the kind of impact achieved by Black Banx in Q2 2025. The Toronto-based global digital banking group, founded by Michael Gastauer, reported an extraordinary USD 4.3 billion in revenue and a record USD 1.6 billion in pre-tax profit, while improving its cost-to-income ratio to 63%.

These results not only highlight the company’s operational efficiency but also mark a pivotal moment in its journey from challenger to global leader. The big question is: what’s fueling such impressive financial performance?

Customer Growth as the Core Driver

One of the clearest engines of revenue growth is Black Banx’s expanding customer base. By Q2 2025, the platform had reached 84 million clients worldwide, up from 69 million at the end of 2024. This 15 million net gain in six months demonstrates both the attractiveness of its services and the scalability of its model.

Unlike traditional banks, which rely heavily on branch expansion, Black Banx leverages digital-first onboarding that allows customers to open accounts within minutes using just a smartphone. This approach is especially effective in regions underserved by legacy institutions, where access to affordable financial tools is in high demand.

More customers don’t just mean higher transaction volumes—they generate a compounding effect where network size, brand trust, and service adoption reinforce one another.

Real-Time Payments and Cross-Border Solutions

A major contributor to Q2 revenues is the platform’s real-time payments infrastructure. Black Banx enables instant cross-border transfers across its 28 supported fiat currencies and multiple cryptocurrencies, helping both individuals and businesses bypass the traditional bottlenecks of international banking.

For freelancers, SMEs, and multinational clients, this means faster liquidity, reduced foreign exchange costs, and simplified global operations. The demand for real-time financial services is growing rapidly—Juniper Research projects global real-time payments turnover to hit USD 58 trillion by 2028—and Black Banx is strategically positioned to capture a significant share of this market.

Crypto Integration as a Revenue Stream

Another key revenue driver is crypto integration. While many traditional institutions remain hesitant, Black Banx embraced digital assets early and has built infrastructure to support Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the Lightning Network. In Q2 2025, 20% of all transactions on the platform were crypto-based, reflecting strong customer appetite for hybrid banking services that bridge fiat and digital assets.

Revenue comes not only from transaction fees but also from value-added services like crypto-to-fiat conversion, staking yields (4–12% APY), and blockchain-enabled payments. For customers in markets with unstable currencies, these services act as a financial lifeline, further expanding the platform’s relevance.

AI-Powered Efficiency and Risk Management

Record revenues would be less impressive if costs ballooned at the same rate. But Black Banx has proven adept at balancing growth with efficiency. Its cost-to-income ratio improved to 63% in Q2, down from 69% a year earlier, thanks to heavy reliance on AI-powered automation.

AI now drives fraud detection, compliance, and customer onboarding—areas where traditional banks often struggle with cost inefficiencies. By automating these processes, Black Banx can process millions of transactions securely while maintaining profitability at scale. This level of efficiency is rare in fintech, where high growth often comes at the expense of margins.

Regional Expansion and Untapped Markets

Geography also plays a role in fueling revenues. Much of the Q2 growth came from Africa, South Asia, and Latin America—regions where demand for mobile-first banking continues to soar. In 2024 alone, Black Banx reported a 32% increase in SME clients from the Middle East and Africa, signaling the strength of its positioning in underserved markets.

By extending services to populations previously excluded from formal banking—migrant workers, rural communities, and small businesses—Black Banx taps into vast pools of latent demand. The strategy proves that financial inclusion and profitability are not mutually exclusive but mutually reinforcing.

Diversified Revenue Streams

Another factor behind Q2’s record revenues is Black Banx’s diversified business model. Income is not tied to a single service but spread across multiple streams, including:

Transaction fees from cross-border transfers and payments.
Crypto trading and exchange services.
Premium account features for high-net-worth clients.
Corporate services for SMEs and international businesses.

This diversification insulates the company against volatility in any single segment, creating stable revenue growth even in shifting market conditions.

Michael Gastauer’s Strategic Blueprint

Behind these results is Michael Gastauer’s long-term strategy: scale aggressively but with efficiency, innovation, and inclusion at the core. His vision has always been to create a borderless financial ecosystem, and Q2 2025’s performance is evidence that this vision is not only achievable but sustainable.

By balancing mass-market accessibility with premium features, and by blending fiat with digital assets, Gastauer has positioned Black Banx as a category-defining player in global finance.

The Road Ahead: Toward 100 Million Clients

Looking forward, the company’s goal of reaching 100 million customers by the end of 2025 will likely be the next catalyst for revenue growth. More customers mean more transactions, more data insights, and more opportunities to refine and expand its service offering.

If current momentum holds, the USD 4.3 billion quarterly revenue milestone could be just the beginning of an even larger growth story. The challenge will be ensuring systems scale securely while maintaining trust in an environment where privacy and compliance are paramount.

A Record That Signals More to Come

Black Banx’s Q2 2025 performance—USD 4.3 billion in revenue, USD 1.6 billion in pre-tax profit, 84 million clients worldwide, and a lean 63% cost-to-income ratio—is more than a financial milestone. It is a signal of how the future of banking is being rewritten by platforms that are borderless, crypto-inclusive, and data-driven.

What fueled this record-breaking quarter is not one innovation but a combination of strategies—scalable onboarding, real-time payments, crypto integration, AI efficiency, and expansion into underserved regions. Together, they form a model that doesn’t just challenge traditional banking but actively builds the foundation for global dominance.

For Black Banx, the road ahead is clear: the $4.3 billion quarter is not an endpoint but a launchpad for even greater scale and profitability.