It’s 4PM the day before your board meeting.

But, you’ve been so busy this month that you’ve not even started your presentation yet.

You’re dreading the time you are about to lose tonight copying charts from Excel, reformatting tables and aligning text boxes.

If you're like most finance leaders, you spent 5-6 hours on this, but it’s not sustainable.

What you really want is to spend that time uncovering insights that only you can find.

But instead, it’s another night where you lose sleep.

And another morning where you feel like a zombie talking through slides that don’t even make sense.

The good news is now there’s a much better way.

One where you’ll win back your time, and feel refreshed walking into your next meeting (prepared with the insight you need to impress your colleagues).

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Slide Mechanic

Every hour you spend formatting slides is an hour you're not spending on the strategic work that delivers value.

It’s also time that you’re not spending, practising your presentation to deliver maximum impact.

What happens is that you turn into a ‘slide mechanic’, more focused on fixing, than on delivering.

I have delivered 50+ events this year, and most of my time is spent on scripting, what I am going to say, and finding impactful use cases.

Not on slide design.

This is because people care about your insights, your recommendations and your ability to guide decisions.

Plus, the more senior you get, the more presentations you will deliver, the less time you will have to prepare.

So you end up choosing between two bad options:

Option 1: Spend 6 hours building perfect slides, but show up unprepared for strategic questions.

Option 2: Show up with horrible slides and hope nobody notice

Neither option is good, as neither option is very professional.

It’s ok for a mechanic to walk out of the workshop covered in oil.

But this is not OK for you who needs to show up flawless.

Business Magician

A friend of mine, Soufyan, has been training finance teams on storytelling for years. He's worked with hundreds of finance professionals across different companies.

In my recent conversation with him (YouTube link here), he told me the number one excuse people gave for not investing in better communication was always the same...

Time.

"I don't have time to deliver my presentations properly. I'm too busy building the slides."

Now that excuse is gone.

The solution is to use AI to handle the mechanical parts of creating a presentation so you can focus on the strategic parts.

By magic, you go from spending 6 hours on slide design to 30 minutes max.

What do you do with those 5.5 hours you’ve just found?

You model scenarios that’ll help the business make better decisions. You prepare answers for the three questions you know are coming. You think through what the data actually means for your next quarter's strategy.

You are becoming the partner the business needs.

The story. The insights. The delivery. The preparation for tough questions.

This is where finance leaders who adopt this new workflow get ahead.

To others, this will seem like magic: “How did they manage all of that? That was so well put together!”

But for you, it’s just a better workflow.

So let me show you exactly how to build this workflow, right now.

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Your AI Presentation Workflow

The Tools You Need:

• ChatGPT Business / Enterprise (or Copilot, Gemini etc)
• Copilot in PowerPoint (for slide creation)
• Rehearsal Coach in PowerPoint (for practice)

Let's go through this step by step.

Step 1: Generate Your Story Structure

Open ChatGPT and upload your financial data. Things like your management report, your variance analysis, your board pack, whatever you're presenting.

Then use this prompt structure:

The AI will generate an outline. Check if it follows the three what's structure. If it doesn't, just tell it: "Please restructure this using the three what's: What, So What, Now What."

In 5 minutes, you'll have your story structure.

Pro tip: The more specific your context, the better the output. Tell it you're the CFO, not just "a finance person." Tell it you're presenting to the board, not just "executives." These details matter.

Step 2: Create Your Slides

Now open PowerPoint online (not desktop - the online version has better AI features).

Click the Copilot button at the top of your screen. Select "Create a presentation about..."

Then paste this:

Copilot will build your slides automatically. It creates titles, content, even adds stock images.

This takes about 5-10 minutes depending on how many slides you need.

Step 3: Refine and Verify

Now you do the work only you can do.

1. Trim the content. Copilot can be wordy. So, cut bullet points down and remove unnecessary text. Make slides scannable, not readable.
2. Verify your data. Check every number against your source files. AI doesn't hallucinate as much when working inside your documents, but you still need to verify.
3. Apply your corporate theme. Go to Design > Browse for Themes. Select your company's theme file. Everything updates automatically - fonts, colors, headers, footers.

Step 4: Practice Your Delivery

Here's something most people don't know exists.

PowerPoint has a built-in AI rehearsal coach. And it's been there for years (yet still nobody uses it.

Go to Slideshow > Rehearsal Coach.

Start presenting to your computer. The AI watches and listens.

It tracks:

• Your pace (are you speaking too fast or too slow?)
• Your filler words (how many times you say "um," "uh," "basically")
• Whether you're reading slides (huge mistake - people read faster than you speak)
• Your body language (are you looking at the camera or away?)
• Your tone (are you monotone or engaging?)

After you finish, it gives you a detailed report. Not just "good job" - actual feedback like "You used 47 filler words" and "You were monotone for 60% of the presentation."

This is feedback you'd normally need a colleague to give you. But your colleagues are busy. The AI is available at any time (preferably not at 11PM thought)..

This is important because the slides don't make the impact. YOU do.

Your delivery, your tone, your ability to look at your audience instead of reading slides - that's what makes presentations effective.

And now you have time to practice because you're not spending 6 hours building slides!

Bonus: Handling Slides from Your Team

One more workflow that's super useful.

If you’ve not generated the presentation yourself, and your team just sent you 90 slides for your meeting. And you need to summarize this and prepare answers for potential questions quickly.

Open the PowerPoint file. Click Copilot. Ask it to summarize the presentation.

Copilot scans all 50 slides and gives you a summary.

Then you can ask it more specific questions to dig into the specifics (w

If the information is in the slides, Copilot will tell you. And it shows you which slide the information came from.

This is incredibly useful when you're and your team is offline. You don't have to read 50 slides manually. You ask questions and get answers with references.

So that's the complete workflow:

1. Generate structure with ChatGPT/Copilot
2. Create slides with Copilot in PowerPoint
3. Refine, verify and apply a theme
4. Practice with the 'Rehearsal Coach'

Total: 30 minutes for slide mechanics. 5+ hours for strategic preparation.

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The one thing to remember

You can spend 6 hours acting like a slide mechanic, and show up unprepared for strategic questions.

Or you can spend 30 minutes on slides and 5 hours creating magic.

Your value as a finance leader isn't in your ability to format PowerPoint slides. It's in your ability to interpret data, challenge assumptions, and guide decisions.

AI just gave you the time to do that work properly.

So take 30 minutes this week. Pick one upcoming presentation. Use the workflow I showed you. Build the structure in ChatGPT, generate the slides in Copilot, then refine them.

Then spend the time you saved preparing and rehearsing for the strategic conversation your business needs.

So next time you present, your turn up refreshed and ready to make an impact!

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Best,

Your AI Finance Expert,

Nicolas

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P.S. - What did you think of this edition? Hit reply and let me know (I read all replies).

P.P.S. - I’ve covered this with Soufyan, one of the best storytellers out there, and he showed us how he uses AI for Storytelling. ​Watch it now!​