Life Advice for Ambitious People: Create a Surprise Deck

Hi BoTs,

In 2024, basically for fun (lol) I wrote a book proposal for a possible new book I wanted to write: Surprise Deck: The Power of Unexpected Presentations to Get What You Want at Work. It never went anywhere, but as part of a book proposal, you include a writing sample. I still love the concept, hope eventually it will find a home, and wanted to share an excerpt from my writing sample that I wrote below!

—

Let’s say there is an open position to chair your town’s gardening committee. You love to garden. You know every local flower species, plus tons of herbs and weeds. You care deeply about the town itself. You want the chance to volunteer and serve your community and help every window box and front yard absolutely shine.

But there are two names up for consideration to chair the committee: yours and a former sitting U.S. president. The former president doesn’t know much about flowers, but everyone knows their job history. And if they can run the country, surely they can promote a few floral boxes, right?

WRONG. The person who is best known may NOT be the right person for the job. The way to slip in the back door is to show that you are the one who wants it the most. The former president has a million other things to do. They are rarely in your town. They just thought the banking committee sounded too boring. They don’t have half the knowledge or passion that you do.

So what’s your plan? Roll over like a weed under a mower? Or show that YOU are the one with the best ideas, the most talent, and a burning desire to make your entire town proud?

You go to the selection meeting. Each candidate is allowed to make their case for two minutes. The former president says, “For those of you who do not know me….” and gets a laugh. Then they ramble on for the rest of their time, never saying a single word about flowers.

You are up next. You smile and say, “Hi! If it is OK, I’d love to connect my laptop to the projector and walk you through some of my ideas.” The board seems surprised but gives you the go-ahead.

For the next 120 seconds, you run them through three slides: the first is your name and the approximate number of plants you’ve nurtured in your life. (It’s in the hundreds of thousands.) This takes ten seconds. The second slide is just four pictures you snapped yesterday while walking around town; weeds, wilted plants, paint peeling on pots.

“I took these pictures yesterday while out for a walk. All of these issues would take less than a day to fix, and….”

You move on to your third slide. Board members are leaning forward.

“And I am the one to do it. Up on the screen is my ninety-day plan as Garden Chair. It’s divided into three sections, with the main priorities highlighted for each one.” You walk through each priority. At the end, with ten seconds left, you say “I might not be the most well-known person running, but I care deeply about this town and I know my flowers.”

Your deck was simple: just black text on a white background. You made it in any slide software: Canva, Google Slides, Beautiful.ai, Pitch.com, or the classic PowerPoint.

Why did it work?

Because in life, it’s usually better to show than tell. And when you show up with a deck meant just for that specific occasion, you are showing the other person you know what you’re doing and that you deeply value the chance you’ve been given to meet with them: they and they alone are important enough that you put your time into a personalized presentation only they will see. That’s the ultimate power of the Surprise Deck.

EXPLAINER: How Is a Surprise Deck Different From a Professional Portfolio?

A professional portfolio is often used by folks working in creative fields like graphic design and copywriting. These portfolios are documents that showcase the best examples of people’s work, and are often used in the interview process. When interviewing or as part of a job application, an applicant might submit a professional portfolio to prove they’ve got the talent and experience for the job. The main difference is that a professional portfolio is expected, often required, as part of the interview process. A Surprise Deck is unexpected. They both can be important tools for wowing and landing a new client or new position, but a professional portfolio is more like a resume; for many creative jobs, it’s expected you will show up with one.

A Practical Way to Figure Out What You Care About: What do you prep for?

Everyone who has ever opened a fortune cookie has heard the phrase, “Luck is where preparation meets opportunity.” And just by creating a Surprise Deck, whether for a job interview, a networking meeting, or another type of project, you are preparing the way for new opportunities….even if they don’t show up when or how you’d like.

Surprise Decks have helped me land some of the most important deals of my life (my Venmo job, my Forbes job) and helped cement some of my most important relationships (two friendships came to pass because I showed up for networking meetings with a Surprise Deck). I know for a fact that they can work! But that doesn’t mean they will always work. Sometimes you’ll prepare a great deck with a phenomenal argument to back it up … swing and miss.

That doesn’t mean you’ve wasted your time and energy. Any prep work you put into thinking through and assembling your Surprise Deck is still incredibly valuable.

Even without landing the opportunity, you have succinctly articulated what you truly want. You’ve envisioned a path for yourself and described the steps you can take to set off down that path. You may have asked for guidance and input from trusted advisors, created an excuse to reconnect, and tended to those important relationships. With your Surprise Deck created, you now know a lot more about the subject than before, and can talk about it confidently in a variety of settings. You have new and valuable clarity.

And you have a killer deck ready to go when the opportunity arises again.

Just because the deck is a surprise for your audience doesn’t mean it is a surprise for you. I have a few Surprise Decks I am working on as I write this book: One is a pitch for a TED talk. Another is a commencement speaker pitch. A third is to sell my business. No one has asked for those decks. But someday, a person who runs a TedX conference will ask me for a meeting and I'll surprise them with my deck. Or someone from my college will call me up and I can make my case as a graduation speaker, or the exact right buyer for my business will wander into my life. And I’ll be ready.

Last summer, I heard that a large public company in my space was looking for a new leader. It was a big company and taking on the leadership role would be a huge step up for me. So I did two things at once: I connected with their recruiter and I wrote my deck outline. Even before I knew for sure I’d be presenting to their team, I worked on the Surprise Deck to present to the board ahead of time.

And when the recruiter called me out of the blue to discuss the role, I was prepared. It was not a video call and they weren’t the exact target audience of the Surprise Deck, but I was able to open up my Surprise Deck draft on my computer and walked them through the ideas verbally. Just by thinking through, researching, and assembling my Surprise Deck, I’d prepared myself for this moment.

I made it to the next round of interviews and then the opportunity died.

Or did it? The entire process of creating my deck had been quite clarifying. I’d reached out to mentors to help me put it together, and that process was a great touch point for many of them. I’d clarified in my own head what I would need to get a role like that someday. And I had fun doing it!

Sometimes the benefits of a Surprise Deck aren’t limited to landing the opportunity you want. Building the deck allows you to reach out to people, collaborate, and network. And it’s a fantastic way to dive deep into your ideas, ambitions, and desires around a role or topic.

No Surprise Deck is ever a waste of time; sometimes you just can’t see what the prep work will take you to…yet.

CLOSING EXAMPLE from CNN's former senior tech correspondent Laurie Segall

From Special Characters by Laurie Segall: “...I opened the laptop, praying to the tech gods for good karma. If the computer froze, all bets were off. Jeff [Zucker, president of CNN Worldwide] raised an eyebrow. Most reporters didn’t pitch the president of the network on a PowerPoint. They might set up a meeting with Jeff and talk through an idea, or have their agent meet with executives and “put in a good word,” so creating a PowerPoint to pitch my own show seemed like an offbeat move in the game of corporate chess at CNN. But I didn’t care. I was not most reporters.” (She got the show!)

Happy Surprise Decking,

-Molly Beck