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Nancy Duarte is a pro when it comes to presentations. Not just giving presentations, but starting them, finishing them, and every step in between. Author and co-founder of Duarte Designs, Nancy Duarte is a seasoned veteran when it comes to incorporating storytelling into speaking and creating connections with an audience.

The below video is the second part in a series of 10 in which Nancy shares the key components to making a successful pitch using creativity and critical thinking. Find out what she has to say:

Why Your “big startup idea” Is Necessary

Before you take your place on stage and deliver your message to your audience, you need to have a big startup idea.

What’s a big idea? Well, according to Nancy, a big idea has two parts:

1. Y...

We're burnt out.

There's no version where "just pushing through another day" is going to make us more effective. In fact, it's the opposite. We're becoming irritable, anxious, frustrated and unhealthy.

When we hit a point of burn out it's important that we understand what to do about it. If we ignore it, the problem only gets much worse. So let's take a look at what Founders do to deal with burnout head on.

How do I take a break when there's SO much to do?

Chances are we can't "afford" to take a break because if we stop working the whole machine implodes (or so we think).

The traditional "I'll take a week of vacation" may simply not be an option. Instead, we may have to take our break in increments, in the form of half days or full days ...

Entrepreneurs know the truth of the saying “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” The right relationship can make the difference between a struggling startup and an overnight success.

But there are a lot of people in the world, and most of them don’t know who you are. You can’t sit back and wait for your audience to find you. To help your company succeed, you need to make the first move.

Savvy founders know that thought leadership is the first step to earning trust among a specific audience. And the trust you earn through a thought leadership strategy can help you build valuable partnerships, attract amazing talent, secure funding, earn press, increase sales, and more.

Grow Your Business Through Thought Leadership Content

Thought lea...

Stories are always part of any successful marketing including social media. At the heart of all social media best practices lies the customer experience. In particular stories around their experience. So in producing social media content for your business, you need to look out for:

• What matters to your customers?
• Why do you matter to them?
• What is it that you do or sell that fascinates them?

In other words, stories that further the customer experience are ones which serve as enablers of brands. They help brands to build personality and create a connection with their customers.

But is it possible to narrate a visual story on social media?

In case you are wondering about the power of visual content on social media the infographic below sho...

For busy startup teams, the name of the game — today more than ever — is productivity.

FitStars CEO and co-founder Mike Maser sums it up perfectly: “When you’re building a vision, a team and a product all at once, time is your ultimate currency. Every day presents both the opportunity to break ground and the risk of losing ground. At the end of the day I’d trade anything for an extra hour to ensure we’ve taken a step forward.”

And when you’re a startup, working at the breakneck speed of startups, it’s only natural that things start falling through the cracks. Social media gets neglected, correspondence goes unresponded-to. Every startup has a laundry list of items they should be doing but aren’t — or things they are doing, but could be doi...

When we think of marketing it can sometimes be hard to look past buzzwords like “engagement” or “virality.” However, these factors don’t get at the true objective. The real factors to be considered are those directly impacting the company’s bottom line in a clear and measurable way.

To put this into perspective, in a study conducted by Econsultancy, only about 22 percent of businesses were satisfied with their conversion rates from online marketing campaigns, indicating that standard factors, such as clicks, likes and shares, do not necessarily translate to earnings. Moreover, another study found that if marketers had a greater ability to track return on investment (ROI), over 75 percent would increase their marketing spend.

Therefore, in ...

You have an idea but how do you make sure that it works? And people want to actually buy it? And would want to use your service?

How do you know that you’re actually solving their problems before you get started? How do you make sure that you’re not wasting your time building something that no one will give a shit about?

The answer is fairly simple: validate your startup business idea first.

I say “fairly” simple because none of this startup stuff is that simple or easy, but making sure your idea has some potential of working before you proceed certainly helps. When startups fail, it’s often because they built something that the market didn’t want.

Don’t be like that.

Here are four easy but powerful idea validation techniques to help substa...

Looking at startup news publications such as TechCrunch or Mashable, a new entrepreneur might think that every startup raises capital and walks away with MILLIONS in their pockets after a quick and easy overnight success followed by an acquisition by Google or Facebook. These sensationalized stories are actually very misleading and do not represent the daily grind of startup life.

Here are some of the common startup myths debunked:

1. You MUST Be Technical

Being technical is pretty important if you’re planning on starting an internet startup. So if you’re not technical, it is a good idea to learn at least some technical skills. Dennis Crowley, founder of Foursquare, was non-technical before he founded his first startup, Dodgeball, later sol...

When I first heard about DogVacay, it struck me as one of those “Airbnb of X” or “Uber of X” derivatives that swept through startup-dom over the last few years. I liked the founders, and I got the problem. There are millions of dogs and most owners leave them at some point. Current solutions to finding care for them is expensive, risky, and unsatisfying. But I wondered if this was one of those pitches that begins with a “This is a fill-in-the-blank billion dollar market…” but it’s a market so fragmented, so hyper-local, so hard to scale that there is a reason it’s so large and no one owns a meaningful percent of it.

Add to that, most of the venture-funded pet-related companies I’ve been pitched over the years, have wound up being financial...

What is a business grant?

A business grant is a sum of money given to a business in order to help them further their business. They’re usually distributed by governments, corporations, foundations, or trusts. Unlike many other types of business funding, grants don’t have to be paid back and business owners aren’t required to give up equity in exchange for a grant.

However, most small businesses probably won’t qualify for a small business grant, as they’re tied directly to US government agencies that have specific goals. There are some categories of business that are an except, though, including research and development companies, as well as some high tech companies.

State level grants are also tied to the direct economic or social needs and...