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Chapter 1
THE BIRTH OF AN IDEA
In the mid-1980s, when I was a thirty-seven-year-old businessman, Adnan Khashoggi, one of the richest men in the world, invited me to Monte Carlo to join him aboard his yacht. We were to discuss a business proposition my company had presented to him a few months earlier. I had met Khashoggi some time before at the Mount Kenya Safari Club, where we were introduced by a mutual friend. Khashoggi is a uniquely personable and gracious man. I enjoyed his company immensely and admired his obvious success in international business. I was looking forward to doing business with him. But here in Monaco two years later, getting around to business took a while. I was his guest at the Hotel de Paris in Monaco for nearly a week as I awaited my turn in his schedule. Khashoggi was a great host to me and his numerous guests, ranging from the King of Jordan to the actress Brooke Shields. He sent me to spend my days at Cap dâAntibes, swimming and boating along the French Riviera. This was the kind of waiting I could get used to.
Finally it was time for our business meeting ⌠at one oâclock in the morning. We met aboard his yacht in the Monte Carlo harbor. I was prepared for an in-depth discussion of the elaborate business plan my brother and I had sent to him a few months earlier concerning our companyâs activities in the Horn of Africa. I was prepared for detailed questions about the intricacies of our proposal, which concerned an equipment dealership I wanted to develop as a joint venture. Khashoggi had other ideas. âI asked for this meeting,â he said, âbecause I wanted to teach you something very important to me, that could be very important to youâhow to write a one-page business proposal.â
Those few words put me on alert: obviously I had made some kind of mistake with my business plan. At first I was shocked. Like most businessmen, I was trained to be thorough, meticulous, and detailed in my presentations. I hadnât expected that my fifty-page proposal could possibly have been considered too lengthy, but obviously it was. I wondered, was this my cue to thank him for his time and leave?
Apparently not. Not only was Khashoggi not pushing me out the door, he couldnât have been more friendly, and it was apparent that he was in earnest: he really wanted me to understand what he was trying to say. I listened intently as Khashoggi continued. âThe one-page proposal has been one of the keys to my business success, and it can be invaluable to you, too. Few decision-makers can ever afford to read more than one page when deciding if they are interested in a deal or not. This is even more true for people of a different culture or language.â
The message was gracefully delivered and clear: the proposal I had prepared was not suited for a man like Khashoggiânot because it lacked thoroughness but because it lacked brevity! Following common practice, our original proposal was divided into sectionsâCompany, Business, Risk Factors, Markets, Capitalization, Financial, Management, Recent Events, Legal, and Referencesâand included dozens of diagrams, charts, and maps. But in preparing it, I quickly realized, we had failed to recognize an important fact about our target audienceâKhashoggi simply couldnât take the time to digest our exhaustive proposal and make a decision. His days were measured in minutes, not hours. Even fifty pagesâshort by conventional business-plan standardsâwould take too long to read for a man who bought and sold businesses and moved capital all around the world before breakfast.
Khashoggi explained that he was motivated to help us for several reasons: he already had business dealings in the region, he liked us and our general idea, and, of course, he had the money. (According to his biographer, at that time Khashoggi had direct investments in fifteen hundred enterprises and was earning two hundred thousand dollars a day in interest from his uninvested capital.) He had been enthusiastic and ready to move forwardâuntil our elaborate, overwrought proposal gave him second thoughts and frustrated his ability to make a decision. By the time I met with him, he had gotten the proposal off his desk, passing it along to lower-level advisers for evaluation.
The more subtle implication of Khashoggiâs advice was that in the international arena, key decision-makers may evaluate proposals differently from their American counterparts. A complete business plan might frustrate them because their language skills are not fluent or because American-style charts, graphs, and technical detail are simply not an everyday part of their business culture. Logically such a person would refer more demanding proposals to subordinates, as Khashoggi had doneâtaking the proposal off the front burner, perhaps for good.
Adnan Khashoggi, having grown tired of passing on potentially good ideas, took the time to advise me on how to improve my chances. And so that night, aboard the most beautiful yacht in the world, one of the worlds wealthiest men carefully laid out for me the essence of writing a business proposal that a businessperson like him could read, digest, and act on immediately. For him the answer was a one-page proposal that described simply and clearly the structure of the deal and what he as a venture capitalist was being asked to do. Khashoggi knew what he was talking about, for he himself had successfully made similar proposals to kings, presidents, and the CEOs of the largest multinational corporations on earth. In two hours he became a teacher and a friend. I left his company at about 3 a.m. and returned home to San Francisco with a newfound prescription for success.
The secret I learned from Khashoggi has since brought me revenues of over ten million dollars. I have used the principle he suggested to advance my business interests at home and overseas, to develop business ventures in the United States and Japan, and even to advance the private interests of my family.
Though I feel evangelical about my methods, I have kept the one-page proposal concept a secret for years, despite using it as a key element of my business style. I even improved on it after carefully studying famous one-page proposals in historyâfrom the Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence to the Arecibo interstellar message sent into deep space.
Then, recently, something happened that made me decide to share the secret and write this book. On behalf of one of my clients, Fuji Photo Film of Tokyo, I had a meeting with the president of one of Silicon Valleys great technology companies. I arrived and was seated in his office while he finished up a call. Glancing around his office, I noticed on his credenza a stack of more than forty proposalsâsolicitations from other companies, entrepreneurs, and even some from within his own company. They were slick proposals, no doubt filled with wonderful ideas, with charts and graphs illustrating all manner of brilliant points. All at once I realized what all these proposals had in commonâthey were unread!
Thinking back to that night in Monaco, I realized that the one-page proposal was a tool that could expedite ventures not only with the wealthiest people in the world but with businesspeople in all walks of life. I wondered how those proposal writers would feel if they knew their carefully constructed presentations were buried, unread, and likely to remain so. So many good ideas that would never take root; so much time lost; so much energy wasted; so much venture capital that would never find its way to worthy hands. I thought of my friendsâbusinessmen, investment bankers, Hollywood producers, writers, young people with ideas for their companiesâwhose lengthy proposals were languishing in the backwaters of executive suites because the people for whom they were intended were too task-saturated to read them. And it was then that I knew the secret Khashoggi had shared with me should be shared with entrepreneurs everywhere, to help them convey their important propositions quickly, powerfully, and persuasively to the busy men and women who could make them happen.
The world today is experiencing an information avalanche, and itâs burying any number of worthy ideas and innovators whose talents and business minds may outstrip their communication skills. Effective two-way communication can seem nearly impossible when indiscriminate mass e-mails, automated telephone solicitations, junk mail, and relentless advertising messages eclipse the possible benefits of new channels of communication. At the same time, competition for capital and other project sponsorship has increased substantially in almost every field of endeavor. Any new strategy designed to help people cut through the cacophony of data and bring some fresh air to the proposal process can only improve the flow of business everywhere.
So I wrote this book.
As you will discover, the one-page proposal has historical antecedents. Its basic formula has been used by Caesar, Napoleon, Thomas Jefferson, and Lincoln in the past and by NASA to communicate with otherworldly beings in the future. As I write these words, President Bush, through the Defense Department, has issued a request, as reported by Reuters, asking for antiterror proposalsâin the very same format I recommend.
His demands make intuitive sense. Heâs in hurry-up mode, so he wants everyoneâs best thinking, and heâs not in the mood to waste time with superfluous details.
While we canât compare the tragedy of September 11 to normal business transactions, we canât escape the conclusion that in the modern business world, direct paths to action are at a similar premium. There is a need for speed out there that sometimes makes every decision seem like an emergency. Itâs unrealistic to think that key decision-makers will alter their normal decision-making speed when considering new ideas that cross their desks.
The one-page proposal is a time-sensitive document. Not only is it a quick read, it contains all the crucial data needed to make a decision. I didnât say that todayâs movers and shakers were only fast; theyâre also smart, and they absorb new material quickly so they can apply it to their battlefield view of the world.
In the pages ahead you will learn how to write a one-page proposal yourself. I think you will find it a perfect communication tool for most proposal situations in your business and private life and, apart from the outcomes of your financial ventures, that it can have fascinating, unexpected benefits for you as a person.
Like all processes, itâs a journey, so letâs get started.
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Chapter 2
THE ONE-PAGE PROPOSAL
What Is It?
Here is my definition. The One-Page Proposal is a document that:
Succinctly expresses all the facts, reasoning, and conditions surrounding an undertaking or project
Uses persuasive language to build a case for approval
Proposes a specific course of action
Fulfills all these qualifications within a single printed page
The objective of the proposal is to convince a specific person to undertake a specific course of action. Its format is designed to encourage the reader, whose time is precious, to see the project through the eyes of the writer who originated the idea. Its parts are codified, and its language is precise in the service of brevity but not to the exclusion of understanding. Each paragraph of the One-Page Proposal serves to support and promote the desired action.
The One-Page Proposal is a template, a step-by-step procedure to accomplish your aim. It contains a distillation of ideas, plans, analysis, and action steps that, if explored completely in written form, might extend to hundreds of pages.
The One-Page Proposal is also a process. The process involves not only a comprehensive understanding of the subject at hand but also workable verbal skills, intuition, discipline, and a faith in the clarity that comes from keeping things simple. The preparation of a successful One-Page Proposal is an exercise in expressing complex thought in very few words.
Why One Page?
Like many successful businessmen, Adnan Khashoggi relies on his instincts, knowledge, and extensive experience to guide him. For him and others of his wealth and alacrity, a two-hundred-page business plan is almost an insult; it implies that he needs overwhelming data before feeling comfortable risking investment in a business venture. Even before it is read, a printed proposal that is deliberately short says a lot to a man of Khashoggiâs stature. It conveys that the preparer has respect for his time. It demonstrates that the preparer recognizes the extent of his knowledge and experience. It gives him credit for being able to absorb information and act quickly and decisively.
The law of âeasiest decisionâ says that when confronted with a long list of decisions to be made, people tend to make the easiest decisions first. Anything that requires further study or meetings or more data gets pushed back. Too much information can delay a decision, not accelerate it.
Worldwide competition for capital or other sponsorship of major projects in engineering and construction, philanthropy, the arts, science and technology, and medicine, to name a few, has mushroomed in the last twenty years. The likelihood that support for your idea will come from your own hometown is small, and if you have a career as an entrepreneur, at some point along the way you will be obliged to seek financial, political, and/or diplomatic support from elsewhere in the world. Therefore you must take into account the language and cultural difficulties that a complex business plan might create. The One-Page Proposal has already proved to be a wonderful solution to this business problem. People and companies with superior tools of communication like the One-Page Proposal are cutting through the glut and getting their propositions funded.
Why One and a Half Wonât Do
Your goal is to present a task that seems as easy as possible. Therefore the final result must be exactly one page and no more. Why not one and a half, some might ask? Why not two? Sorry, itâs one or nothing. Once the proposal extends past the first page, the battle is lost. Chances are, if itâs more than one page, even the first page will not be read. All the elegance that comes from condensing the salient points of a proposal onto one page is lost when the format is violated. Why disqualify yourself before youâve even had a chance?
The work involved in compressing your pitch into one page can be an important step in developing your own understanding of your project, perfecting a concise oral presentation when needed, and honing your style as a communicator. Writing a One-Page Proposal can help you identify a clear objective, focus on it, ferret out pitfalls, sharpen your thinking, and pitch an idea perfectly. Every aspect of your business life can benefit from this process.
Think of the One-Page Proposal as a photographâone complete image composed deliberately for one frame. Given the option, would you take a picture of your family that cut out your two youngest children because they were standing outside the frame? Of course not. Likewise, to relegate the last few elements of your pitch to a second page looks like bad planning. It devalues and fragments the composition to the point where the whole idea is lost.
One page of about four hundred words in length will take an average reader three or four minutes to review. Itâs those few minutes of mind-share that youâre after. Your reward is the accomplishment of...
