Make a strong point when you next present

It’s Saturday morning and I’ve got mixed feelings about this job. My challenge is to remove the cement filler from a hearth in the front room so that we can replace it with parquet floor tiles to match the rest of the floor.

My mixed feelings come from the knowledge that I’m going to have to hire a Kango hammer to dislodge the cement (yippee!) But then the levelling of the site to give a good foundation for the tiles will be tricky.

So off I go to get the Kango hammer. For those of you unfamiliar with this tool, it’s a smaller version of the large pneumatic drills that road menders use to dig up the road.

And with the hammer comes a variety of ‘bits’. These are the tools that do the work. There’s a flat one like a fish slice (but much stronger) and a pointy one (like the end of a javelin). The fish slice looks like it’ll work so when I’ve worked out how to get it fixed into the hammer, with my plastic goggles on I start it up. It’s a real boys’ toy – heavy and strong, and it packs a punch.

No problem, I think, soon have this done.

But I strike a snag. The fish slice bit just slides across the top of the concrete. No impact at all. None whatsoever. When I examine the problem I realise that it’s got nothing to purchase on as the tool is too broad.

So I swap to the javelin bit. Immediately it makes a difference. Immediately it’s biting into the cement and dislodging it. In no time at all I’ve done the job.

The point is that when we’re presenting to an audience sometimes we can go too broad and give them too many ideas. As a result we lose the impact. So just give them one strong point. Then you’ll make an impact that will be memorable.