Dan Roam
Creative Director, Visual Storyteller, Bestselling Author President/Owner @Digital Roam | www.danroam.com

We’re all better storytellers and marketers than we think. All we need to do is talk a bit less, and draw a bit more.

Q: Visual storytelling is a very unique and powerful concept… How did you get into it to start with, and how did you establish yourself as a leader in this field?

I’m the author of 6 books, each of which has become an international bestsellers. I wrote my first book – The Back of the Napkin – 12 years ago, and luckily it was successful enough that it allowed me to quick my job as a management consultant and follow my passion full-time.

I believe that all of us are better storytellers and better marketers than we think we are. And all we need to do to find out how good we really are at telling our story is learn how to talk a little bit less and draw a little bit. So my whole focus has been on the incredible power of visual storytelling and it has changed my business and changed my life.

Q: What are some key takeaways from your books on the power of visual storytelling?

Let’s talk about Back of the Napkin, Draw to Win, and Pop-up Pitch in increasing order of applicability.

Back of the Napkin is what we’ve been talking about: the idea that the business world Is really complicated and people get overwhelmed. So Back of the Napkin shows how to use your visual mind to unpack a complex problem into a set of simple visuals that make it clear.

The reason I came up with this book title is that the real meeting often doesn’t happen in the meeting room, it happens at the bar, where all you have available is a cocktail napkin. So it’s about: how can you easily explain your idea or draw out a strategy with super simple visuals you can fit on a cocktail napkin?

Funny story: this is how Southwest Airlines was started. This is how Cisco was started. This is how Google was started. Just a couple of people sitting there. Not throwing PowerPoints at each other, but actually having a conversation that was enhanced by the low pressure, low key non worrisome idea of just drawing on a piece of paper.

Next, Draw to Win shows the power of bringing these simple drawings back into the meeting room to really stand out. No one else believes they can or knows how to draw and get their point across. So if you’re the only one using the whiteboard, you’ll get the most attention by definition. You’ll connect at a more emotional level. And win!

Finally, Pop-up Pitch is how to use the drawing approach in order to create the best presentation in just 2 hours. If you’re an entrepreneur or a marketer and want to communicate a new idea, test it with a quick pitch you can put together in 2 hours instead of prepping and refine the idea for months. Forget about the polish. Your idea is too new. So you want to test it with a small audience, get feedback, iterate and learn from the test, and then refine.

The analogy being with a pop-up restaurant or a pop-up clothing store. If you’re a food entrepreneur, you have 2 options: you can raise or invest hundreds of millions of dollars and months of your life to build a restaurant, OR you can first try out the pop-up version, a minimum viable product as a test.

In this analogy, building the full restaurant is similar to spending weeks on creating a super-slick PowerPoint deck. Your department hires copywriters and designers, and then you have 15 minutes to unveil it to your audience. And they go “Nope, not what we wanted.”

Q: After 6 international bestsellers on the topic and over 12 years of teaching visual storytelling, what’s a contrarian view that you’ve developed?

I truly believe that we are all a lot smarter than we often think. Our visual mind – and what I mean by that is literally the neuro-biological and physiological part of our eyes: our visual, new cortex, our mind’s eye, all of those things – is so powerful.

We have such an incredible superpower of navigating our way through the world every day based just on what we see. We’re actually really genius at being able to take complicated ideas and understand them through our sense of vision.

So my contrarian point of view is this: if we can understand that power of our visual mind and harness it and learn how it works, then we can be extraordinary storytellers and incredibly powerful in being clear in our own mind and then conveying that clarity to someone else.

And here’s the best part of the whole thing. As we convey our story to someone else using our simple visuals or sketches, that person (our audience) will love our story much more than they would if we were just regaling them with some kind of PowerPoint or reading them a whole bunch of bullets.

If you actually really, really want to engage an audience, tell them a story in a powerful way. Tell them a little bit less, and show them a lot more with visuals and sketches. And it really works!

Q: Why do you think we’ve plateaued in the business world at the idea of bunch of bullet points, Powerpoints and email to communicate and sell?

That’s a GREAT question and I’d love to unpack it. Why have we plateaued? #1 is because that’s what we’ve been taught to do, and if everyone is doing it it must be right. And related to that, #2 is that we have a fear of trying something new in business for exactly that reason.

Even though we all say that we want to stand out, I’ve found that there’s big pushback and people actually DON’T want to stand out and challenge the status quo. No matter how convinced we are that the status quo is broken.

Everyone complains about communications and engagement, but they’re not changing fundamentally HOW they communicate and WHAT they say.

But if we’re all about growth marketing, why would we ever want to be constrained by the status quo? Why would we ever want to tell a story the same way everyone else tells a story? Why wouldn’t we want to use the simplest tools – drawing simple sketches that clarify and enhance what we say – to stand out?

I have found that – especially in this hybrid work environment that we live in – nothing is more evocative of emotion than just drawing something as we go.

Q: This dovetails into the real issue… I’m sure you’ve heard countless times: “I’m not an artist. I don’t know how to draw.” How does someone get started and on board with your ideas?

You’re right, I always get this reaction whenever I make a corporate training or workshop.

It’s actually a lot simpler than anyone thinks. The main idea is that in order to tell better stories and communicate more effectively, it helps tremendously if you use supporting visuals to clarify your story. And by “visuals” I’m really talking about sketches.

The key misconception is that: to draw sketches I have to be an artist. NO!

The sketches I’m talking about, anyone can draw. It’s not about being artistic. Nobody cares about how beautiful your sketches look. It’s about being clear. Your simple sketches should help your audience understand and follow along what you’re telling them. They should bring your story to life. So that you can make your point more tangible. The power of sketching is that you can take something very complicated and reduce it into a simple sketch so your audience jumps up and says “now I get it!”

Q: I still don’t get it exactly though… how can you show me what this simple sketching actually looks like and what it’s all about?

Absolutely! If you can draw a circle, a box, and an arrow that connects them, that’s all you need to communicate the idea that we’re going from a starting point to an end point. And in between you can write the numbers 1, 2, 3 to denote the different steps. And if you can draw a simple stick figure you can help your audience start visualizing your plan even more.

It’s difficult for someone to follow your ideas and logic. By showing them simple drawings, you help them follow along, make most of your ideas tangible so they don’t have to rely on their imagination. Sketches create a common language and a common ground to make sure you’re on the same page. Otherwise, you don’t know if your audience is following you, and it’s very easy for someone to get lost.

That’s all you need to do: simple shapes and stick figures. Start with that, and the more comfortable you get, the more you’ll want to embellish and add more shapes to your repertoire. For example, if you’re explaining a new idea for a cancer diagnostic and you’re always talking about how dogs are sniffing cancer, you may start with simple shapes to tell your story but after a while you may want to look on Google images different sketches of dogs so you can learn how to draw a simple dog. And you keep evolving your sketches and your story.

Q: I get it, but you’re talking about distilling your ideas and stories into simple sketches. And we talked about how it’s easy to deal with the sketches. What if you’re stuck on the distilling part?

Perfect transition – so whenever you start a presentation or a talk, draw a circle. No matter what you’re talking about, draw a circle. And name it or label it whatever your big idea is, or what you’re going to talk about. And then draw another circle about another idea, and maybe an arrow that connects them, and then the number of steps it takes to get there.

As long as you overcome the fear of drawing, then you want to take away the thinking of it as much as possible. Start drawing circles (your thoughts) and connecting them with arrows (because your thoughts are connected to each other since you’re making an argument). Eventually, you’ll end up with a whole map of all the pieces in your brain and how they connect to each other.

Then, as you get more comfortable, maybe you’ll draw something more than just a circle for one of your ideas. You’ll add that drawing to your repertoire. And you’ll keep growing your repertoire with more drawings that become second nature to you.

Q: And then perhaps the final issue I can see: how does the average person find the courage to stand up, pick up a marker, and tell a visual story? I imagine that will make them feel pretty vulnerable in pretty much any setting…

If you are the average person, the likelihood of you persuading anybody to do anything is pretty thin. If you perceive yourself as “I’m just the average person.” Well, good luck selling me on anything.

Nobody is just “average.” We’re all exceptional. You just have to shift your mindset and starting thinking about: what is my superpower? What is it that I bring to the table that’s unique?

You need to reflect, you need to do the work to figure out: in this role, in this company, maybe I’m just an average employee and I’m working at an average company… From my perspective, that’s not a place where you’re gonna break out and accomplish a whole lot.

Instead, you need to think: I work for a very, very special company and here’s what makes it special. And I am an exceptional person in this company and here’s what makes me exceptional. That’s the story you have to tell yourself and everyone else. And this type of story will fuel your courage to stand up and tell yours and other great stories that will resonate with co-workers, bosses, and clients.

We’re all better storytellers and marketers than we think. All we need to do is talk a bit less, and draw a bit more.

We have an incredible visual superpower that enables us to communicate and explain super effectively.

Anyone can start sketching to clarify ideas and connect with their audience: it’s all about simple shapes and NOT about how artistic you are.

Our vision is a magically powerful way that helps us understand our world, and we can use that power to understand business problems.

Nobody is just “average.” We’re all exceptional. You just have to shift your mindset and starting thinking about: what is my superpower? What is it that I bring to the table that’s unique?