Creating a powerful headline
for slide decks and your life
Recently I had the privilege of coaching a trio of founders on their pitch for angel investments. This is the part of my work I enjoy the most—helping passionate aspirational entrepreneurs clarify their message and hone their ask for further support. Since they are in stealth mode, I will refrain from sharing anything about the content of their pitch but will offer some insights from which we all can learn regarding the language on their slides.
Repeatedly the team had used “topics” not “headlines” for their slides: finances, market, and competition. While that alerts an investor to the content below, it lacks the power of a clear and compelling narrative. Fortunately, the fix for this issue is quite simple: add a verb. This one action brings life, energy, and power to the headline. It’s no longer just a topic but has transformed into a story.
Now don’t use just any old verb but deploy a power verb. Avoid weak verbs (is, are, was, were, have, had, and has) and embrace power verbs. I’ve compiled a list of more than 150 power verbs you can access here for free. They’re great not just for slides but resumes, LinkedIn descriptions, and more.
What if you gave yourself a headline for your career?
However, it’s not just writing that deserves powerful headlines. We can use them for our lives, too. I’d love to say Scott Galloway is a friend (we taught at NYU Stern together in the early 2000s), but I’m not sure he’d remember me as vividly as I recall him. In his podcast, Pivot, with Kara Swisher, Scott shared a compelling idea: what if you had only one headline for the last century, or the last 50 years, not one headline every ten minutes in our 24/7 news cycle? Give this excerpt a listen (fair warning he uses a little salty language) to get the full impact of Scott’s question.
Scott got me thinking: what a powerful exercise for leaders, particularly those in transition right now due to massive tech layoffs. What if you gave yourself a headline for your entire career? Or the past decade? Or the time since finishing graduate school? While many of our businesses look at numbers on a quarterly, weekly, or daily basis, we don’t have to be that limited in our focus. We can define the units of success for our careers, and if we choose wider measurements that provide a clear narrative arc, we own the story of our trajectory more.
Case in point: I spent 13 years at Stanford. If my headline captures only the final year or final three years, it’s an incomplete story. I need to own and choose a headline that best captures the entire contribution I made while there.
So, what’s your career headline? Use power verbs to turn a topic into a story.
JD’s Recommendations: what I’m reading, hearing, and seeing:
Reading: Talking Health: a new way to communicate about public health contains remarkable chapters including Winning Words and Strategic Stories by Doug Hattaway & Eric Zimmerman.
Hearing: Pivot hosted by Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway—the excerpt above was from their February 3, 2023, episode, but they are all great in my humble opinion.
Seeing: A Tale of Two Leaders—seeing my former student Dave Prakash featured in the opening coin toss of Super Bowl LVII prompted me to revisit his LOWKeynote talk from 2018.
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As always, jds
PS: Are you a coach in the Bay Area (communication, life, exec, or leadership)? If so, join me and my dear friend and colleague Bronwyn Saglimbeni THIS THURSDAY, February 16, for a day of renewal and re-engagement. Make an investment in yourself that will pay dividends throughout the year for you and your clients.