It’s only March and I’ve already read another guaranteed Top-10 book for 2021. When it arrived, I read the intro—and then I just couldn’t put it down. (The sizeable stack of other “to-read” books just glared at me!)
Suneel Gupta, the author of “Backable,” was invited to speak at FailCon—aka the Failure Conference! His track record of big busts was so legendary, he writes, that the “New York Times” wrote “a full-length story on failure, with my face at the top.”
He adds, “I had spent an entire career trying to craft an image of success. Now I was the poster child for defeat. My inbox was jammed with consolation messages. My parents offered to help pay that month’s rent.”
But there was an upside. “I decided to give this new identity a try. I began emailing highly successful people using the ‘Times’ article to break the ice. I’d write things like, ‘As you can see from the article below, I don’t know what I’m doing. Would you be willing to grab coffee and give me some advice?’”
What he learned: “People who change the world around them aren’t just brilliant … they’re backable. They have a seemingly mysterious superpower that lies at the intersection of ‘creativity’ and ‘persuasion.’”
This book is a must-read! “Backable: The Surprising Truth Behind What Makes People Take a Chance on You” features seven steps and 26 practical pointers for becoming backable. Gupta wrote it for “…hospitals, companies, charities, and studios. I joined the faculty at Harvard University to teach students how to launch backable careers.” As the co-founder of RISE, it took some convincing that his experience (and a book) could be helpful to others. It is. (A colleague emailed me today that he too couldn’t put the book down!)
Check out these seven steps. I’ve included 15 of the 26 practical pointers and you now have the ingredients for staff presentations at your next seven weekly staff meetings—or up to 26!
STEP 1: CONVINCE YOURSELF FIRST
Peter Chernin, the Oscar-nominated producer (“The Greatest Showman” and “Ford v Ferrari”), told the author that “when he’s undecided on whether to back an idea, he’ll sometimes look at the filmmaker or entrepreneur and say, ‘That’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard.’ Then he’ll wait to see if they back down or show conviction.”
Gupta: “What moves people isn’t charisma, but conviction.” The number one TED Talk of all time? “You might be surprised to see Sir Ken Robinson stand with a slight slouch and a hand in his pocket while he explores whether schools kill creativity.” But study his conviction about creativity.
SCHEDULE INCUBATION TIME. “I don’t jump to conclusions, I jump to experimentation,” said a marketing exec at LEGO. Gupta explains how a top restaurant in Spain rebuilt its menu after a fire sidelined their restaurant for four months—and why a year later, they voluntarily closed again—for more incubation time. Bill Gates takes “think weeks.” Most new ideas, says the author, “aren’t killed inside conference rooms. They’re killed inside hallways and breakrooms.” Most great ideas need incubation time—before they’re shared with others. (Attn: Colleagues, clients, and friends with “Ideation” as your top strength. Read this book!)
STEER INTO OBJECTIONS. “You have the most attention from investors in the first few minutes,” notes Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn. So you must steer directly into the likely objections—from the get-go. You’ll do deeper thinking by dropping the PowerPoint (the what) and creating a narrative (the why) like Jeff Bezos requires at Amazon. (Read: “The Amazon Management System” and “15 Minutes Including Q&A.”)
STEP 2: CAST A CENTRAL CHARACTER
Here are just two of the three big ideas in Step 2:
CHOOSE ONE PERSON. “Great storytellers don’t just focus on a central character, but also a central reader.” The author of “The 4-Hour Workweek” collected 26 rejection letters from publishers—because his manuscript cast too wide a net. Then he narrowed the book to the interests of just two friends (an entrepreneur and a banker). Wham! “New York Times” bestseller! When a customer tells you, “Wow! It’s like you created this product, program, or service just for me,” you’ll know you’ve nailed it. (Interestingly, Max De Pree wrote his classic 92-page book for board members, “Called to Serve,” to just one person: Verley Sangster, the new president of a theological school in Philadelphia.)
CREATE A STORYBOARD. This is a really big and brilliant idea—in just six pages. Don’t bore your investors or donors—instead, walk them through a “storyboard” of your actual customer. (Peter Drucker would use the term, your “primary customer.”) Gupta visited Airbnb’s first office and “saw illustrations on the wall that storyboarded every major detail for an Airbnb host.” See also the detailed narrative for a Dollar Shave Club customer that convinced a female investor (“with zero interest”) to back this innovative business in just 10 minutes. The storyboard created an “empathy bridge” between the backer and the shaver! Drucker would be proud!
STEP 3: FIND AN EARNED SECRET
The author began using the term, “earned secret,” after hearing a venture capitalist explain the concept—“learning something that not a lot of other people know.” Gupta once interviewed at a fast-growing tech startup. One problem: everything he had researched before the interview; the CEO already knew. So he went to UserTesting.com and within hours he had videos of three users trying to navigate the tech company’s website (total cost: $50). Halfway through the interview he showed the videos to the surprised CEO who said, “I’ve interviewed hundreds of people—and no one’s ever prepared something like this.”
GO BEYOND GOOGLE. This is must-read section—and also not a bad poster for your wall!
INTOXICATE THEM WITH EFFORT. When you demonstrate your conviction with personal legwork and effort—you’ll elevate your chances of getting to YES. Gupta writes about an auto exec who was pitching an idea to senior management. On his own time, he collected data on the assembly line (early morning, after work) and over several months knew every line worker by name. One supervisor even invited him to a family birthday party! Gupta coached him to flip his pitch: numbers later, his all-in legwork first. Answer: YES!
STEP 4: MAKE IT FEEL INEVITABLE
Note: See Appendix 1 for handy cheat sheet chapter summaries for your weekly staff meeting presentations.
BE AN ARMCHAIR ANTHROPOLOGIST. Tina Sharkey asks, “What is the shift in the world that is making your idea matter?” Investors and senior leaders may not understand your idea unless you wear your “cultural anthropologist hat.” Airbnb had to document that “sharing your home with a stranger” was no longer creepy. Reminder: “Record labels had perilously ignored the iPod, and we didn’t want to make the same mistake with the iPhone.” (For more, read “Non Obvious Megatrends.”)
WITH OR WITHOUT US. For some backers, you can leverage FOMO, the fear of missing out. Gupta reminds us about the Blockbuster exec who “passed on buying Netflix for $50 million.” (By the way, Netflix’s valuation on Feb. 26, 2021, was $238 billion.)
STEP 5: FLIP OUTSIDERS TO INSIDERS
Gupta notes research, dubbed “the IKEA effect,” from Harvard Business School that we place “nearly five times more value in a product we helped build than on a product we simply buy. ‘Time spent touching objects’ leads to ‘feelings of ownership and value.’” Research in the 1940s revealed that consumers felt guilty that “instant cake mixes” were too easy to bake—thus dismal sales. (Read the simple solution in Chapter 5.)
THE STORY OF US. To flip outsiders to insiders, you need to follow the pattern of great political speeches, writes Gupta: “the story of me,” “the story of you,” and most important, “the story of us”—what happens “when we join forces and work together.” He notes, “I’ve discovered that founders often tell the ‘story of me,’ occasionally tell the ‘story of you,’ and almost never tell the ‘story of us.’”
MAKE THEM THE HERO. Brilliant! Read these four pages on why you should always go back to people who say no—noting how you’ve addressed or incorporated the feedback you received.
STEP 6: PLAY EXHIBITION MATCHES
Guarantee! Read the intro to Step 6—and you’ll be hooked on this book and this insight. When Oren Jacob was an intern at Pixar, the company changed direction and “laid off more than half the employees.” Jacob’s dad (three cheers for dads) asked his son, “What would happen if you just went back on Monday as if nothing has changed?” LOL! He showed up, got a few raised eyebrows, and found something to do. It was the beginning of a 20-year stint where he went from “intern to technical director of ‘A Bug’s Life’ to supervising technical director of ‘Finding Nemo’ and finally chief technology officer for all of Pixar.”
This is convicting. Oren Jacob asked Suneel Gupta about all the practice exams Gupta took in law school. “So, for a law school exam you would spend hours practicing, but for a meeting that could have changed your career, you didn’t practice at all?”
That “punch to the gut” enabled Gupta to understand Step 6: Play Exhibition Matches. “…backable people tend to practice their pitch extensively before walking into the room.”
This is a powerful chapter—whether you’re seeking an investment, fundraising for a nonprofit, or pitching a new idea to your boss. Don’t skip these sections:
NO VENUE IS TOO SMALL. Practice anywhere and on anyone! Gupta’s eight-year-old daughter has heard “plenty” of his exhibition matches!
BE WILLING TO BE EMBARRASSED. Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, realized he needed to become a “student of communication.” (Note: Dick Daniels, author of “Leadership Core,” believes that “Communication is the primary competence of a leader.”)
DON’T ASK, “WHAT DO YOU THINK?” A medical professional “…began to see questions as medical instruments—the wrong instrument led to useless answers.”
BUILD YOUR BACKABLE CIRCLE. Gupta looks for the Four Cs in his “backable circle,” including a collaborator, a coach, a cheerleader (like your mom!), and a cheddar (someone “who will deliberately poke holes in your ideas”).
THE RULE OF 21. Your practice, practice, practice will prepare you to “welcome curveball moments” in your pitches or presentations. We can learn from jazz singers and musicians. One keynote speaker (also a jazz musician) does 21 practice rounds. Why? He knows he will mess up, “but because I’ve practiced so much, I have confidence I can recover. Knowing that makes me feel bulletproof onstage.”
For example, Ella Fitzgerald sang “Mack the Knife” to a West Berlin audience in 1960—but she forgot the lyrics! She kept singing confidently “inventing new lyrics as she went.” The crowd loved it and so did her peers. The recording earned her Best Female Vocal Performance at the Grammys in 1961.
STEP 7: LET GO OF YOUR EGO
Finally, Gupta introduces us to Dr. George Schaller, who studied mountain gorillas in Central Africa in 1959. He was asked, “How did you get such detailed information?” Schaller responded, “It’s simple. I didn’t carry a gun.” He discerned “you could hide a gun, but you could never hide your attitude when you carried a gun. No smile or gentleness could fully cover your unease, and the gorillas could always pick up on that.”
Suneel Gupta confesses, “After many years of struggling to become backable, I came to realize that the gun inside my backpack was my ego. That my extreme desire to impress people in the room had created distance, not connection. No matter how professional or friendly I acted, people could always tell when I wasn’t at ease.” (Another must-read chapter!)
You may not be seeking investors for a startup, but don’t skip the conclusion (page 130). Gupta challenges CEOs: “…companies spend billions of dollars hiring outside consultants and high-price think tanks to come up with ideas that already exist in the minds of their employees. Their genius remains hidden in plain sight.”
And by the way, seven cheers for Gupta who delivered the meat and potatoes of this book in just 133 pages—then included value-added optional reading in Appendix 1 with helpful chapter summaries. Appendix 2 includes short highlights from interviews with nine experts on how to be backable.
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Backable is a book for everyone (yes, this means you :-)
Reviewed in the United States on March 20, 2021
I ordered a copy of Backable because (i) I went to law school with the author; and (ii) after launching several failed startups I was hoping to find a few pearls of wisdom about where I went wrong. But the reason that I’m wholeheartedly and enthusiastically recommending it in this review is because I truly believe that Backable is a book that everyone will benefit from reading. Why? Because as Gupta puts it nicely in the Introduction, “in order to succeed, you need to get out and inspire people to see in you what you see in yourself” — and Backable helps you make adjustments in your style and approach to accomplish this goal.There are several elements to highlight that I think work particularly well in this book. The first is that Backable doesn’t have hundreds of extra pages of fluff (as noted by Gupta in Appendix 2, this is actually by design “to give you a book that you could absorb quickly and put into practice immediately”) which I really appreciate — I absolutely can’t stand it when a book essentially repeats the same concept over and over in slightly different ways when it could have been said more concisely! Each section (referred to as “Steps”) in Backable has clearly articulated concepts that you can actually incorporate in your life to become more backable. Appendix 1 nicely summarizes all of these concepts for ease of future reference, while Appendix 2 includes a very enlightening “highlights from select interviews with backable people.”The second important element to highlight is that I truly believe the lessons from business leaders contained in this book (which includes an impressive mix from entertainment moguls, and founders in addition to venture capitalists) be can used to help achieve whatever goals you aspire to achieve. In other words, the things that make people Backable seem to be fairly consistent regardless of industry, occupation or inspiration.In sum, Suneel Gupta has impressively been able to translate some personal setbacks in business and politics into a winning book that is deeply authentic and extraordinarily candid. This personal approach feels like it was written for me, but applicable to all. If you’ve made it this far I wouldn’t hesitate to click Buy Now :-)
Reviewed in the United States on March 20, 2021
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Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 2, 2021
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 9, 2022
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 21, 2022
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 20, 2021
There are several elements to highlight that I think work particularly well in this book. The first is that Backable doesn’t have hundreds of extra pages of fluff (as noted by Gupta in Appendix 2, this is actually by design “to give you a book that you could absorb quickly and put into practice immediately”) which I really appreciate — I absolutely can’t stand it when a book essentially repeats the same concept over and over in slightly different ways when it could have been said more concisely! Each section (referred to as “Steps”) in Backable has clearly articulated concepts that you can actually incorporate in your life to become more backable. Appendix 1 nicely summarizes all of these concepts for ease of future reference, while Appendix 2 includes a very enlightening “highlights from select interviews with backable people.”
The second important element to highlight is that I truly believe the lessons from business leaders contained in this book (which includes an impressive mix from entertainment moguls, and founders in addition to venture capitalists) be can used to help achieve whatever goals you aspire to achieve. In other words, the things that make people Backable seem to be fairly consistent regardless of industry, occupation or inspiration.
In sum, Suneel Gupta has impressively been able to translate some personal setbacks in business and politics into a winning book that is deeply authentic and extraordinarily candid. This personal approach feels like it was written for me, but applicable to all. If you’ve made it this far I wouldn’t hesitate to click Buy Now :-)
Backable is a book for everyone (yes, this means you :-)
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 20, 2021
I ordered a copy of Backable because (i) I went to law school with the author; and (ii) after launching several failed startups I was hoping to find a few pearls of wisdom about where I went wrong. But the reason that I’m wholeheartedly and enthusiastically recommending it in this review is because I truly believe that Backable is a book that everyone will benefit from reading. Why? Because as Gupta puts it nicely in the Introduction, “in order to succeed, you need to get out and inspire people to see in you what you see in yourself” — and Backable helps you make adjustments in your style and approach to accomplish this goal.Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 20, 2021
There are several elements to highlight that I think work particularly well in this book. The first is that Backable doesn’t have hundreds of extra pages of fluff (as noted by Gupta in Appendix 2, this is actually by design “to give you a book that you could absorb quickly and put into practice immediately”) which I really appreciate — I absolutely can’t stand it when a book essentially repeats the same concept over and over in slightly different ways when it could have been said more concisely! Each section (referred to as “Steps”) in Backable has clearly articulated concepts that you can actually incorporate in your life to become more backable. Appendix 1 nicely summarizes all of these concepts for ease of future reference, while Appendix 2 includes a very enlightening “highlights from select interviews with backable people.”
The second important element to highlight is that I truly believe the lessons from business leaders contained in this book (which includes an impressive mix from entertainment moguls, and founders in addition to venture capitalists) be can used to help achieve whatever goals you aspire to achieve. In other words, the things that make people Backable seem to be fairly consistent regardless of industry, occupation or inspiration.
In sum, Suneel Gupta has impressively been able to translate some personal setbacks in business and politics into a winning book that is deeply authentic and extraordinarily candid. This personal approach feels like it was written for me, but applicable to all. If you’ve made it this far I wouldn’t hesitate to click Buy Now :-)
Images in this review
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 3, 2022
Top reviews from other countries
eyupsharpy
Only half the book is the actual book.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 7, 2021
eyupsharpy
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 7, 2021
The overall content is helpful in parts but did feel a little top line. I feel it needs explaining in the marketing copy how much of the book is the core content. I did think I’d bought something that was less than promised.
The author clearly has great experience, and means well, with ideas that are supported by lots of titbits he has picked up by speaking to lots of people.
I found it a bit disjointed, very short for £14:99, but I will keep the summary pages as a reference.
The photo shows the book folded at the point it finishes.
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Upbeatz
Suneel Gupta's "Backable" is a game changer if you are are raising capital for the first time!
Reviewed in India 🇮🇳 on March 3, 2022Andrew Ahachinsky
Why did I wait this long to read Backable?!
Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on April 7, 2021
