The good, the bad and the UGLY… My tools… Not all one pagers are pretty and well put together. These two are particularly rough. One just didn’t I once asked one of my first bosses what his secret to success was. He said to have work. The other was a function work horse that got me out of trouble on more than one occasion… a sexy pen and a run-of-the-mill notebook to capture all your thoughts and ideas. An expensive pen because you know it’s an event every time you get it out. And a standard notebook just to keep things real. Because you can’t write on Smythson paper all the time. Sage advice that’s served me well… This is an UGLY one pager. Tempting as it may be, not everything One pagers don’t need to be pretty. I’m not proud of sharing this needs to be turned into a Branded Process™ or signature framework. chaotic mess of scribbles but this one did its job and served me well. This one pager was the final result of many evenings trying to come This 2-part one pager was a workhorse that I used when I needed to upwithaone-size-fits-all graphic that combined the art and science of deliver two keynotes at Google in front of a very influential audience. I commercial storytelling. It needed to do a lot. Combining Aristotle's never referred to these notes during my talk but having the structure Poetics with 'The Hero's Journey', it needed to speak to the locked down in my head made me sure that the two very different psychology of the presenter, as well as helping to trigger certain keynotes would land in the right way. hormones in the audience. It needed to provide a simple structure without over-simplifying the complexity needed to tell an engaging OnewasafastandfunkeynoteaboutDJ’sandcreativity. The other was story of transformation. But despite my good intentions to create a very thoughtful keynote about the climate crisis and what tech leaders something useful, it didn't work. What I ended up with was what you'd can do about it. You can just about make out the timeline, the amount of expect from a really bad consultant. It's wordy. It's messy. It's over- slides in each deck and where the video or dramatic quotes are. The red, complicated. And even if I turned it into a killer animated diagram, you green and blue coloured bars correspond to the emotions that I want still wouldn't know what to aim at. Stories are as much about art and the audience to feel, so I know to adjust my style and tone accordingly. I beauty as they are about structure and simplicity. scribbled these notes in about an hour but used them many many times. Having them in this format was especially useful if I was pulled into an Myconclusion? Just because you can do something doesn't mean that event at the last minute to give a keynote. Everybody loves the person you should. I knew this particular one pager was destined for failure who can come to the rescue at the last minute (and deliver a great when I started to scribble in a marketer pen. Creatively, my brain had session) when somebody has dropped out. Having a couple of strong checked out. It was a great exercise in thinking through an idea with keynotes up your sleeve will always serve you well – and having them my pen, because it helped me to let go of this idea. It just wasn’t roughly mapped out in a way that helps you to instantly remember also meanttobe.Somepeoplethinkthenwrite.Iwriteto think. means that you don’t need much prep time to re-acquaint yourself with the content, especially if you’ve not presented it for a while. Some advice for writers from writers… "I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in." Robert Louis Stevenson “Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.” Ben Franklin “When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations.” J.F.K. “No subject is terrible if the story is true, if the prose is clean and honest, and if it affirms courage and grace under pressure.” Ernest Hemingway “Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.” Mark Twain "When you make music or write or create, it's really your job to have mind-blowing, irresponsible, condomless sex with whatever idea it is you're writing about at the time.” Lady Gaga