Technologist/Instructor/Sales Person
I started my professional working life as an x-ray technologist. I spent a good part of this phase of my career as a clinical instructor. I don’t think the teaching bug ever left my system.
For just over 22 years I sold medical imaging products for a large multi-national corporation. For over half that time I was responsible for the interventional imaging product line. I did hundreds of sales presentations on those products. And dozens and dozens of lunch and learns and internal presentations We were very successful. In the years I was responsible for the business, we sold over 1/4 of a billion dollars in products.
The streak of success seemed to get rolling once I completely changed my presentation style (see The Moment below). I know that wasn’t a coincidence.
The Moment
One day in 2007 I walked out of a hospital board room into a busy hallway and stopped dead in my tracks. I had been experiencing and as well as giving presentations in one form or another for many years. And on that day I realized I had just experienced one of the most boring sales presentations ever. The problem was…I was the presenter! I had bored myself, never mind my poor audience. I knew there had to be a better way.
Since that day in 2007 I have become a passionate advocate and student of the “art of the presentation”. I realized that designing and delivering a “winning” presentation was a skill you learned. It was not a magical ability that people had. The major barrier to people getting better at presenting is the belief that they are already “good” presenters.
Presentation Consultant, Coach & Creator
For over 12 years I have been giving workshops and presentations on presentation creation and delivery. These sessions have taken me around the world, from Malaysia to the Netherlands and all across North America.
I have coached and advised all types of business professionals on giving presentations. All of these professionals believe that communication skills, especially presentation skills, are critical to successful careers. Yet most of them had almost no training in presentation design or delivery. I have also helped people design and create their presentations from the ground up. This includes the whole messaging and content selection process as well as creating complete sets of presentation slides.
Stray and Abandoned Cat Advocate
Along with my wife Cindy, I support the rescue, spay/neuter and adoption of stray and abandoned cats. You can get great idea of what we do by viewing a 1 hour documentary that was done on us as part of Vision TVs Creature Comfort Series. https://www.visiontv.ca/shows/creature-comfort/
Amateur Graphic Designer
I became a self taught graphic designer as a result of working on tons of PowerPoint slides. PowerPoint is a much more powerful graphic design tool than most people realize. I have used it to create hundreds of graphic design projects.
I support a number of animal focused charities and other non profit organizations from a graphic design perspective. For more information about this work please go to my JOE POPS DESIGN website.
