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Pop-up Pitch Book Review

The Pop-up Pitch by Dan Roam is a fast method for tapping into your visual brain to organize any pitch into a compelling hero’s journey story in 2 hours or less. If you prefer the content as a video, you can find it here. If even this is too much work, he’s made software to make the pitch even easier.

The first main step is getting the components of your story on paper using the 6 simple sketches in the folded blank sheet of paper that is the Visual Decoder. Quickly identify the main players and actions in your story and feel like a kid again.

The second step is to arrange the components into a Hero’s journey using his 10-Page Pitch Storyline.

Act one- Opening

Title page- clearly establish who and what (#1 payoff the who wants) by (Insert action you want the Who to take.) Trigger phrase- There is a way to get what you want…

Common ground – show them you know them for real, build trust with positive statement. Either establish the problem in the best possible light or that you are intimately familiar with the awfulness of the problem and are willing to face it with them. Trigger phrase – In our world of X, Y is going really well. As your colleague, I find that the best part of our job is to…, I’ve only been here a short time, but I can already see how effective X is. Or We’ve all been suffering with the shifts in our industry. Recent news hasn’t been good for any of us. (in the mix and willing to talk about the hard stuff. Can’t fake this part. Must know your audience through experience or research. We are in this together and we know these things are true. What is the common ground we all share? What do you know that they don’t know I know? What is a goal/ opportunity/ or challenge? What is a memorable shared experience?

Coming problem – Facts and numbers no one really wants to see. Things are about to get a lot worse. Real fear as an extension of common ground. Clear eyed assessment solidifies trust. Only by boldly meeting the truth and addressing it realistically will we find a way to redefine it and thrive within it. We can’t meet a truth that is not said. You may or may not know this, but… It’s scary, but this turmoil is not going away. Using honesty about undeniable scary truth invites aspiration to do the right thing. What wakes you up in the middle of the night? Big problem on the horizon is We might not want to think about X right now, but we can’t wait any long because Y.

Emotional win- What it will feel like to have solved the problem. Hope and shared Joy. Imagine a world where… it feels like … Picture how it will feel when this is all over and we are safe and free. On the other side of this problem is the world we’ve always dreamed of. Visual Happy tomorrow state map.

Act 2- Things get real

False hope- Conflict between desirable easy path and why it won’t work. Avoidance. This time around the safe approach isn’t safe at all. Misplaced trust in business as usual. What got us here won’t get us there. Despite what people might thing, business as usual won’t solve this problem because… The easy answer that everyone defaults to here is… What makes this problem thornier than usual is… Visual decoder – Today state in disarray

Audacious Reality – What will work. Problems as puzzles. To solve this once and for all, we will.. The real solution we need. What if there were a way to … (something counterintuitive)? Reluctant hero turns Instead of the old way, here’s what we need to do instead. Name new solution and it’s uniqueness (2 -3 features). Visual Decoder -Today step simplified.

We can do this – Scariest operational details with proof we can do this. Trusted experience and solid plan. Experienced based reason. High level plan (5 steps maximum). We’ve done this before. If we approach this with the same rigor as …, we can do this. When we break the whole thing into three phases, it is actually straightforward. (first page audience goes back to) Insight or technical change that supports bold new reality. Visual decoder – timeline

Act 3: Close- Future can be even better than the best of the past

Call to Action – Make 3-5 point action plan, show commitment by taking personal responsibility for 2 points and ask for help with the other 1-3. You have skin in the game, but can’t do it alone. Handful of steps to first milestone with deadline. Phrases: Suggest how the team can find early suggest. All you need to do to get started is… The first steps are as easy as 1,2,3. What is this new path we are committing to? What are the steps we need to commit to…, The first 3-4 things we need to do is…, Visual decoder- zoom in on beginning of timeline

Early benefits >= 2 near term quick returns, realistic timeline, ease transition to bigger steps later, justify time and money spent, lays foundation with incremental success Phrases: The momentum we build by starting soon … Just by getting started we already gain… One benefit we see right away from taking action now is… Visual decoder- Chart

Long Win – unexpected giant win of long win once the change becomes the new normal. By the way, can you imagine what else we might accomplish by getting this right? Be Bold. What comes next is better in ways we can’t seen yet. Life is amazing and different when we reach this goal. The most amazing result will be the parts we can’t even imagine yet, new things we find along the way. When we get this right, we won’t just solve the problem that got us started, we will reveal capabilities we never knew we had. Lessons learned are worth the journey. Asperational. Opportunities we can’t even imagine yet could be… Just think what it will mean when we can finally… Visual decoder- new map, lessons learned

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Books

Favorite Non-Fiction read in 2021

cup of hot beverage on books
Photo by Samson Katt on Pexels.com

Yesterday I posted my favorite fiction from 2021. The real world is also interesting and important. Here are my favorite non-fiction works I read, in no particular order.

Think Again by Adam Grant

My favorite insight from this book is that rethinking becomes more valuable as the world changes faster.

My least favorite wording of this book was calling people who can interrogate their beliefs critically, rationally, and continually “scientists.” I’ve been a scientist and I’ve worked with many scientists and people in that line of work are at least as susceptible to various biases as anyone else. Still, clearly not all politicians, prosecutors, or preachers act like the personas he invokes either. It’s a useful way to refer to a defines set of traits and behaviors.

If things like identity, polarization, consensus, disagreement, flexibility, and transformation are not on your mind these days, I suspect you are not paying attention. I like the framing – revisit your assumptions periodically, revise as needed – and the vision – it’s an increasingly important skill to be able to find out what you don’t know and be able to change your mind.

“people often become attached to best practices. The risk is that once we’ve declared a routine the best, it becomes frozen in time.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know

The Obesity Code by Jason Fung

This year I started experimenting with fasting, and this book was a piece of that journey. I still love food and don’t expect to get skinny, but I also would like to avoid metabolic disorders and more serious health problems as I get older. Living in Germany, most stores are closed on Sundays and Holidays. At first, as an American used to being able to get anything 24/7 , I found this weird and inconvenient. Over time though, I found that having some time off that you could not run errands allowed me to relax a little more deeply, make time for journeys out in nature, family and quiet.

“Hormones are central to understanding obesity. Everything about human metabolism, including the body set weight, is hormonally regulated. A critical physiological variable such as body fatness is not left up to the vagaries of daily caloric intake and exercise. Instead, hormones precisely and tightly regulate body fat. We don’t consciously control our body weight any more than we control our heart rates, our basal metabolic rates, our body temperatures or our breathing. These are all automatically regulated, and so is our weight. Hormones tell us when we are hungry (ghrelin). Hormones tell us we are full (peptide YY, cholecystokinin). Hormones increase energy expenditure (adrenalin). Hormones shut down energy expenditure (thyroid hormone). Obesity is a hormonal dysregulation of fat accumulation. Calories are nothing more than a proximate cause of obesity.”
― Jason Fung, The Obesity Code: Unlocking the Secrets of Weight Loss

Hold Me Tight by Sue Johnson

I have a love/ hate relationship with self help books. I was a psychology minor in college, so I like to read the latest theories. But main stream books are by definition pop psychology and anyone can publish their theories and some do not fit to my experience to the point of possibly crossing the border from bad advice to dangerous. Luckily, on the balance, this was not one of those books for me. I appreciated where insights were supported with data, which was frequent in this book.

This book is framed in terms of romantic relationships, but I thought that the insights were much more generally applicable to any intimate relationship in my life. We don’t grow out of the need to connect authentically with our loved ones. When we feel disconnected, it’s painful and we tend to resort to bickering. That happens with my kids when they don’t have enough attention too.

It was also useful to me to see examples of where our behavior is driven by our emotions even when we explain it in terms of our logical thinking. So teaching communications skills to better bicker about stuff that does not matter will never bring someone the love they want. We can only be vulnerable with someone when we are strong enough ourselves and we can trust them. That’s what intimacy is, and caricatures of it do not resemble the real thing for long.

“We have to dive below to discover the basic problem: these couples have disconnected emotionally; they don’t feel emotionally safe with each other. What couples and therapists too often do not see is that most fights are really protests over emotional disconnection. Underneath all the distress, partners are asking each other: Can I count on you, depend on you? Are you there for me? Will you respond to me when I need, when I call? Do I matter to you? Am I valued and accepted by you? Do you need me, rely on me? The anger, the criticism, the demands, are really cries to their lovers, calls to stir their hearts, to draw their mates back in emotionally and reestablish a sense of safe connection.”
― Sue Johnson, Hold Me Tight: Your Guide to the Most Successful Approach to Building Loving Relationships

Nano by Dr. Jess Wade

I follow Jess Wade on twitter and love her project to include more female professors on Wikipedia. In her experimenting with different science communication media, now she has a children’s book. My daughter and I watched a video of it being read to us. At 10, she was underwhelmed, as she may be too old for it. Or it might be that she already lives with a mom scientist who has been telling her about materials since she was small. Still, I appreciate that it is a thing that exists in the world. I think I would have liked it as a kid. As a mom, I can imagine playing a game pointing out things in the world made of different materials with curious littles. It gives me more hope for the future than any of the A.I. doomsday scenario tomes I read this year.

An acclaimed physicist and debut picture-book author introduces readers to the tiny building blocks that make up the world around us. Elegant, friendly text and stylish illustrations explain atoms, the elements, and other essential science concepts and reveal how very (very) small materials are manipulated to create self-washing windows; stronger, lighter airplanes; and other wonders of nanotechnology. – Goodreads blurb

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Books

Favorite Fiction read in 2021

A mix of science and science fiction reading teach me about the world and help me imagine what’s possible. While that doesn’t cover all the material I read this year, it certainly summarizes my favorites. Im breaking this up into fiction and non-fiction, listed in the order I read them. My family teased me about picking 4 books, but that means that it was a top 10% book, and I like that I had to restrict myself to the best of what I read.

Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley

This is the year that I fell in long-distance love with Kameron Hurley, a sci-fi writer about my age based out of Dayton, Ohio. To be fair, I also found Ohio to be a surreal place to live 😉 If you have not read her “We have always fought” essay, you should now. Point is, she is all about bad ass warriors that happen to be female, and that is a theme in the Light Brigade, although that might be a bit of a spoiler because the main character, Dietz, does not use pronouns until the end of the book. I have loved time-travel science fiction since I came unstuck in time with Kurt Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse-Five in high school. Hurley delivers a fresh and also timeless take on a timeline that skips around as a way of experiencing war.

“Imagine us all standing in a circle, trying to describe an object to one another, and as we agree on its characteristics, the thing at the center of our circle begins to take form. That’s how we create reality. We agree on its rules. Its shape.”
― Kameron Hurley, The Light Brigade

Kindred by Octavia Butler

Staying with the time-travel theme, I also read Kindred. It was my first Octavia Butler work, and I read it and the Parable series in one gulp. In 2021, I heard about a lot of white people reading as one way to try to understand race and diversity, and also heard some skepticism about this practice. In contrast to the modern tomes, this book is about as old as I am. I did not come to this book to add some diversity to my reading list, but it did open my mind to how much modern black women still might have to contend with the ghosts of generations past. I had the distinct impression that she was writing to understand who she was and how she got here for herself as much as for educating anyone else. As it should be.

“Sometimes I wrote things because I couldn’t say them, couldn’t sort out my feelings about them, couldn’t keep them bottled inside me.”

― Octavia E. Butler, Kindred

State of Terror by Hillary Rodham Clinton & Louise Penny

This book was a fun thriller read. While the plot and details were all clearly fiction, there were some nods to reality- serving a Secretary of State under a former political rival, the continuous onslaught of underestimation that middle age women face, entanglement between press and political players, and how down right creepy intimate gifts like *your* perfume or *your* favorite flowers can be when they come from a stalker/ rival. It demonstrates how Americans have a complex and evolving relationship with the rest of the world. Parts of it seem tongue in cheek in that it pokes fun at its role as propaganda. I grew up in the 80’s and 90’s and loved Top Gun, so maybe I’m a sucker for some types of propaganda entertainment.

“The propogandist is his own first customer.”
― Hillary Rodham Clinton, State of Terror

Origin by Dan Brown

Artificial intelligence was a reading theme for me this year, both in science and fiction. I read the Asimov classic I, Robot, which was fantastic, foundational and dripping with sexism. Lots of the non-fiction I read in this field was oddly dystopian considering my 10 year old tries to ask Alexa how she should do her hair. Origin struck the right balance for me between dystopian and something I want. Plus it is a fast paced romp through Spain, which I love. I hope the future is as fun as is it scary and weird. I love seeing what humans can create and how they live with the web of actions and consequences.

“We are now perched on a strange cusp of history, a time when the world feels like it’s been turned upside down, and nothing is quite as we imagined. But uncertainty is always a precursor to sweeping change; transformation is always preceded by upheaval and fear. I urge you to place your faith in the human capacity for creativity and love, because these two forces, when combined, possess the power to illuminate any darkness.”
― Dan Brown, Origin

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Books

READ

Books have been an important part of my life- a way of learning about myself, the human experience, and the world, a way to entertain myself, organize my thinking, and keep me company when I’m lonely.

Certainly, there have been periods of my life where I have gotten away from reading for pleasure. After completing my thesis, it was years before I picked up a book for fun. When my children were very little, I admit I did not read much. But when I look at the periods of the fastest personal growth in my life, they are typically proceeded by lots and lots of reading. And like many people last year, I have felt lost, stuck, and alone. So in 2021, I set a nebulous goal to read more.

I read about 35 books in 2021, despite not reading much while I was in the US for the summer. I got a Kindle for Christmas 2020, and it got quite a workout this year. My husband and I mostly replaced a nightly TV show from Netflix with reading before bed. We seem to both be enjoying the shift. The more I read, the more I found that I wanted to read. So many books, so little time!

As my reading list started growing faster than my ability to finish books, I gave myself permission to not finish books that did not turn out to be a good fit for whatever reason. A younger me would have stuck with whatever she started, unless it was an extreme outlier, but that girl had more time than I do. I’ve also started dropping books from my reading list if I lose my enthusiasm before I even start.

At some point during the year, I added audiobooks on my walks, bike rides, and while doing domestic chores around the house. Almost everyone likes being read to. With the caveat that some books work better as audiobooks than others.

So, like may others as we slide toward 2022, I’m reviewing how this year went and thinking about what I want for next year. My 2021 goal to read more surpassed expectations. So I’m keeping it. But I can’t clearly remember everything I read off the top of my head. So for 2022, I plan to use this blog as a public reading record.