We've identified the main point of our memo, which is to propose a specialization to Coursera. It turns out it was a little bit harder to get started maybe than we thought. Because, like so many writers, I fell into the introduction trap. But we took care of that, because we're willing to cut things that don't fit our purpose. Now, we need to get started really outlining our argument. We need to know where we're going and we have to carefully order the points that we want to make. We're in the say it phase of our scaffold memo. In our brainstorming session, William, Dave and I came up with a lot of potential benefits that support our purpose here. Each one of these can be a separate point in the pitch memo. They include, employers want their employees to know how to write, design and present. Students will learn these skills, they'll have confidence in their abilities, Coursera MOOCs are more popular than ever. Our students will be able to present their best professional selves to their audience. There are concrete learning benefits to taking this course. Finally, we believe that there's a market for the course. I'm listing all of these in my outline in no particular order. I can move things around in just a minute. I'm already thinking that these points are the beginnings of my topic sentences for my paragraphs that are going to follow. So my outline looks something like this. At this point, I take a step back to assess the structure of the document that's emerging on my screen, and you should too. I notice three things immediately, I have too many main points, I have something that doesn't match my purpose, and I have similar ideas in more than one place. This won't do, where are my problems? Take a minute to look and see if you can find them and then I'll let you know what I'm thinking. First, what I did doesn't fit this memo. There are no wrong or right answers. Second, where do I repeat ideas? Okay, let's see if we agree. You might have different ideas than I do, and that's fine. The point isn't to be right or wrong, the point is to get to really tight structure in our final document. There's more than one way to get there. Okay, remember our rule of always write to your purpose? Well, that's how I know I've done something wrong. I need to make sure that every topic on my outline supports my purpose. Do you see one point here that doesn't? Here it is, the statement that Coursera MOOCs are more popular than ever actually doesn't support my purpose at all. It has nothing to do with the specialization. So I need to cut it. I've checked to make sure that every point I have on the page works towards my purpose. So now my second step is, I need to make sure that I don't repeat any ideas in more than one place. I see several opportunities to consolidate my points in short my memo. And remember, short is better. The first repetition I see is that the point about learning benefits and the point about students want to learn these skills are actually talking about the exact same thing. So I'm going to put them in the same place in my memo. I'm also going to shorten this bit to learning benefits, just to keep it simple for now. I also noticed that having confidence in their abilities, and students will be able to present their best professional selves are really part of the same argument. So I'm going to put them together too. And I'm going to shorten this to best professional selves. Same thing with employers want their employees to have these skills and there's a market for the course. I'm going to shorten this to market need. By grouping similar ideas in the same paragraphs, I've narrowed down my supporting paragraphs and my argument's main points to three key pieces. Could I have organized this differently and fit things together differently? Sure, I could have. There's not one right answer to how to do this. The key is that I did organize it. And the way I put the points together builds a coherent argument. The process is really key here. Now I ask myself, have I started with my most important point first? This is a judgement call on the writer's part, so you need to decide what point is most important to you. And then you need to stick with it. As I look at my three possibilities, I think they're all important. If they weren't important, I wouldn't have them on the page at all. I want to be sure that my audience understands what I see as the overarching benefit of this course, which is more than just writing, designing and presenting well. It's about presenting our best professional selves to the world around us. And it's about personal branding, isn't it? That's the point I really want to get across, so I'm going to make it my first body paragraph. I think my next two points are pretty even in priority, but since this is a business proposal my instinct tells me I should hit on the market need. So I'm going to make that second. Then, my third point will hit on the learning benefits. Another reason I'm making this point last is that I think it's already embedded in the title of the specialization, it's pretty obvious. I don't want to trust the reader to understand it without my stating it, but I also feel like the other two points need more work to get across. So they should go first. Now that I've sketched out my paragraph topics, I'm ready to go back and fill in my introductory paragraph. Argument 1 is best professional selves. Argument 2 is market need. And Argument 3 is students want to learn these skills, which I've changed to learning benefits. You can see, the introduction mirrors my body paragraphs exactly, because it provides a preview of what's to come. While this memo deals with pitching a specialization to Coursera, this process of defining and organizing our main points will apply to any document that you write. In the next video, I'll show you a process for outlining our individual paragraphs.