Can I tell you my story in 2 minutes?
You've got a vision that you want people to buy into. It's grandiose, complex and extremely long-term, and you've put your passion and thought into sharpening it and guiding it to feasibility. But what keeps you up at night isn't the fear that it won't work, but that people won't buy it and it'll die before even making it out of the gates. An adult human's full attention span is less than 20 minutes. But your idea takes at least 10 more than that and you need people to be there 110% from the start to the finish.
What should you do? Shrink the vision? Give it up and aim lower? Hope people will just "get it"? The answer, according to a HarvBiz article, is: Forget the goddamn vision for a second. Forget talking up the "big picture", the things that need to be done by yesterday and the ROI of this or that. Instead, tell the story of You. Take two minutes to talk and let your story speak for itself. Like I kept hearing this summer from all the VCs here in Silicon Valley: At the end of the day, you invest in the person, not the idea.
Here's some of the draft I wrote today. It's much longer than 2 min, but I'm working on it:
In 5th grade, I got elected Student Council VP. Quite the upset by a shy Asian boy (thick round glasses and all) in a popularity contest for who could be the prettiest, blondest or jockiest. All it took was a humorous speech in a suit vest (what was I thinking?!) and I was handed the conch (can't resist sticking in a LotFlies reference).
Wow, did I suck as a VP. Thinking I'd never win, I had no plan, no mission, no idea what the hell I wanted. In council meetings, I was the wallflower. I finished the year unremarkably and the cafeteria food continued to blow. The next year, friends pushed me to run for President and I did, because hey, it's warmer under the spotlight so why not?
I didn't even made it past the classroom primary. The candidate who'd lost to me the year before, a sweet girl with blonde hair and blue eyes, was elected and did a hell of a better job than I ever could have. I learned three things: 1) charisma = power; 2) never use underdog status as your excuse for lowering standards -- it's a very poor one; and 3) a person with power but no goals is nobody, no matter how well he can talk the talk. The humiliation of loss and the bittersweet fall from something to nothing was the best lesson I could've ever learned at age 11.
In 8th grade, I led a Boy Scout patrol of four or five kids, including one troubled 9-yr old with extremely violent tendencies -- I exaggerate not. Imagine a fourth-grader who spends a weekend camping trip sharpening a wooden pencil with his pocketknife and slashing another boy's leg open with it, whose first instinct when handling live furry animals was: start squeezing and don't stop. I ran a tight ship with my patrol though, and thought I was a real superstar patrol leader, so I could manage this punk... I ordered, he talked back, I yelled, he pushed, I pushed back, and so on. It went nowhere, so finally I gave up and ignored him.
To my relief, he'd disappear for weeks at a time but then, to my dismay, would show up right before camping trips. On one trip, I left my tent to take a piss in the middle of the night and found him alone by the campfire. We threw a few branches on to keep the flame going and sat there. At one point, I said "Luke. Why can't you just be a good kid?" He shrugged. Later, he said, "I think my dad would like you," and I shrugged back. The trip ended and several months went by. Sometimes he showed, sometimes he didn't. When he stopped coming altogether, I couldn't have cared less. Years later, I was old enough to understand that his father was a horribly abusive drunk.
In hindsight, what did I learn? Again, three things: 1) Luke was a tough kid with a too-tough situation who could, in a different life, have loved camping; 2) I thought I was leading when I was failing - I tried emulating what I thought was strong leadership, but ended up emulating his dad... looking back, no amount of good intention excuses that; and 3) when a leader fails, he doesn't fail "the mission" -- he fails a person. It doesn't matter if you're a corporate CEO or a glorified babysitter... other people suffer the consequences of failed leadership. Bonus lesson: Second chances unfortunately don't come like they do in the movies. Atonement is no word to be trifled with, but I think it's appropriate here.
That's about half of my story, which gives me a full minute. If I talk as fast as this guy SNAPS, I might be able to do it...
