The Productivity Hacks Top Executives Use to Prepare Presentations Faster

Executives wear a lot of hats—visionary, strategist, mentor, decision-maker—and often all in one day. With limited time and high-stakes responsibilities, it’s critical for them to streamline their workflows wherever possible. One often overlooked productivity killer? Presentation design.

Whether it’s prepping for a board meeting, aligning internal stakeholders, or pitching to investors, executives are constantly tasked with building and presenting ideas. But presentation design doesn’t have to be a drain on your time or energy. With the right tools in place, executives can elevate their storytelling, reinforce their brand, and move faster with less lift.

At Beautiful.ai, we aim to remove the common bottlenecks associated with creating powerful, professional presentations. Here are five ways executives can use Beautiful.ai to cut down on design time and focus more on the big picture.

1. AI that breaks through the blank slide barrier

Starting with a blank slide is a creativity killer. Beautiful.ai’s AI-powered presentation maker allows executives to generate an entire presentation outline just by describing the topic. It’s the fastest way to brainstorm and structure ideas, whether you're building a strategic roadmap or crafting a quarterly business review. Simply input your topic and watch AI do the heavy lifting. This instant jumpstart helps execs skip the early inertia and move straight into refining content and insights.

2. Unlock reusability with shared slides

Why reinvent the wheel every time? Shared slides allows executives and their teams to reuse existing content—think company overviews, team intros, or standard KPIs—without having to dig through old decks. Instead of wasting time rebuilding or reformatting, execs can quickly copy and paste or recycle slide modules across presentations.

“We're reusing other presentations, recombining them in different ways. That's one of the most powerful pieces of Beautiful — being able to reuse content from other presentations you've already put together.” - McNeel Keenan, VP of Product Management, Cvent

It’s fast, efficient, and ensures content stays aligned.

3. Stay effortlessly on-brand with shared themes

Executives are brand stewards. But manually tweaking fonts, colors, and layouts can be a tedious (and error-prone) task.

Shared themes in Beautiful.ai remove that friction by applying pre-approved branding across every presentation. Set your brand colors, fonts, and logos once and they’re automatically applied to each new slide in the deck. 

“The ability to lock in brand elements like logos and colors was a huge draw. We needed to guarantee consistency across teams, and Beautiful.ai made that easy.” - Tyler Walsh, Director of Marketing, Economic Development Winnipeg

With shared themes, teams stay consistent, and execs can confidently present without second-guessing design choices.

4. Structure smarter with Smart Slides

Great design isn’t just about aesthetics—it’s about storytelling. 

“Those Smart Slides were a big thing. Creating guardrails around that content means that I can tell the story in a succinct way.” - Hugh Ujhazy, VP of Research Technical Operations, IDC

Smart Slides in Beautiful.ai help executives organize their content in a way that’s both visually compelling and logically structured. From timelines to charts to side-by-side comparisons, Smart Slides automatically adapt layouts to fit your message, all while maintaining symmetry and consistency.

“With layouts to choose from you can already cut 40% of the time out before you even really start because you don’t have to spend time staring at a white slide and say, ‘where do I take this?’” - Dani Nabors, CEO, OddBytes

Executives can focus on clarity and persuasion, not formatting grids and margin alignment. Not only do Smart Slides help them design smarter, they remove the tedious elements of design saving executives loads of time. 

5. Collaborate without chaos

Executive time is limited, but building a presentation doesn’t have to be a solo sport.

With Beautiful.ai’s real-time collaboration features, execs can delegate specific slides or sections to their team members. It unlocks a more seamless workflow, allowing teams to assign ownership, leave comments, and track changes all in one place without version-control nightmares or endless email threads.

“We think of this as more than just a presentation tool. It is a collaboration tool. It helps us communicate more effectively.” - McNeel Keenan, VP of Product Management, Cvent

This level of flexibility allows leaders to move quickly while still tapping into their team’s expertise.