Note: The Unreasonable Blog is lucky enough to host Shannon Suetos, an expert writer based in San Diego, California.  She writes extensively for an online resource that provides expert advice on purchasing and outsourcing decisions for small business owners and entrepreneurs such as phone systems & VoIP service at Resource Nation. Having written before for publications like Entrepreneur Magazine and American Express Forum, Shannon will write a series of 5-posts on vital entrepreneurial skills. This week: revenue-generation when you’re running a bootstrapped startup.

In the U.S. the SBA reports that around 600,000 businesses are started each year. Another report goes on to say that worldwide, “there are about 300 million persons trying to start about 150 million businesses.” With those kinds of numbers it makes you realize how competitive it is to attain capital and survive.

Bootstrapping is a move for someone who wants to start their business right away, and think they can thrive in a make it or break it kind of way. Many times the business owner (or owners) are working with no profit to them until their company breaks even and can make profits. Some companies that have thrived from bootstrapping are Microsoft, Dell, CISCO, Oracle, and eBay.

Making every dollar count is imperative to any small business owner, but for those that try bootstrapping, it is even more so. Many times bootstrapping means that you aren’t getting a pay check until your business starts making a profit—which can be hard on the bank account.

Pitch Like a Pro. You more than likely aren’t a PR pro, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t act like one. Pitching to new clients is the only way you will start getting your income to roll in. Knowing what reporters and bloggers want from you is imperative to get that exposure you need.

Think of it this way, a PR pro started out green, just as you are. They had to learn fast and read and research on how to make that perfect pitch. Get online and start reading—you will be amazed how many articles there are on how to pitch an organization or blogger. The more exposure you can bring to your company, the more likely you will generate revenue.

A social media campaign may not be the best idea for your company, but it doesn’t mean you can’t use Twitter and LinkedIn to network. Many reporters and PR pros are on Twitter and LinkedIn because they find valuable information. This is a great way to get your name out to the right people, and hopefully generate some buzz.

Barter. Inc. has made a list of 14 Bootstrapping Tips, and bartering seemed to get the best response. They reported that, “John Sarantakis, owner of People’s Choice Family Fun Center, an arcade in Waukegan, Illinois, says his company acquires used DVDs for $1 apiece and is able to refurbish them and resell them for $10. Sarantakis sells items on IMS, an online barter and trade exchange site, and estimates the items cost him about 50 cents per dollar of list price. Therefore, he figures that items he buys with barter dollars come with an automatic 50 percent discount.”

Check out sites like BarterQuest and SwapRight to get started.

Co-Working. Co-working can save you money on your office space, and depending on your partner, could be someone you can help grow your business. Think about when you were in college, or just graduated, chances are you had a roommate. Sharing a living space is much cheaper than living on your own, and you also get to share and grow with someone. The same goes for co-working you can get a nicer space for a lesser cost.

There are many office spaces popping up around the country that are set up just for this type of concept. In Berkley, a building called the Sandbox Suites, “operates much like a gym or other club. Memberships can be bought by the day ($35 for an all day drop-in desk), or by the month ($495 for the “Second Home” package which includes full-time use of a private desk and six hours of meeting room time).” Membership also includes free Wi-Fi, free coffee and there are printers, copiers and conference-call facilities on site.

It’s All About the Numbers. Bootstrapping puts you in an environment where you need to make money out of necessity. This is where creativity can thrive, because you are forced to think outside of the box to generate revenue. The most important question to ask yourself is, “how will this make us money?” Every dime you spend should be bringing in a profit—even if it is a small one. Bartering and other techniques can help you get the equipment you need, but may not have been able to afford.

Marketing is another important piece to the puzzle. Learning how to pitch correctly should get you the exposure you need. There are a myriad of online marketing tactics that are little or no cost to implement.

Just remember everyone has to start out somewhere. Bootstrapping is a viable option if you have the money to do so. Bootstrapping takes the pressure off of pleasing your investors, but does bring the added stress. If you fight through and think smart, you should be able to succeed and create a great business.

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” -Aristotle

Wisdom from my Father. I called up my dad the other day just to say hi. He regaled me with a few exciting stories from the hospital, where he works as a neurologist. I asked him something I had never asked before: “What makes an excellent doctor in your opinion?” My dad said being an excellent doctor boiled down to three things: 1) availability, 2) affability, and 3) ability (in that order). It’s likely these 3 pillars aren’t only the makings of an excellent doctor, but an excellent entrepreneur and an excellent human being.

Being Available. With startup founders constantly clamoring for his investment dollars and entrepreneurial wisdom, Boulder-based venture capitalist Brad Feld is probably one of the busiest people around. Considering this, you’d think he’d be highly selective about who he speaks with, but he’ll actually talk to anyone for 15 minutes. Like a college professor, he holds regular office hours. Anyone can show up to pitch him on an idea, ask for his advice, or just chat. Of course, after the 15-minute conversation, he’ll be honest about whether he’s interested in having future conversations or not. Even still, because Brad is one of the most approachable VCs in Boulder, he’s also one the most reputable and best respected.

If he weren’t so approachable, he might not have such a remarkable reputation. As an illustration, a respected mentor introduced me to a certain impact investment fund (which will remain nameless). I sent them 4 heart-wrenching emails and they never responded. They’re undoubtedly busy, but even still, I felt ignored. I felt like this organization didn’t even have the courtesy to tell me whether it felt our collaboration would not be ” a good fit.” I’m left with pretty negative feelings about this group and won’t be contacting them again.

That feeling is exactly why the sort of openness to conversation is so important. It’s best captured by something Maya Angelou once said: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” I definitely don’t remember everything my dad said or did while I was growing up, but I definitely remember that he was at almost every one of my tennis matches, that he was never too busy to help me with my homework, and that he always supported me no matter what I wanted to do with my life. His ability to make people feel like he always has time for them is probably why patients keep coming back to him. And as an entrepreneur or VC, it’s probably why people will keep coming back to you.

Being Affable. Keen on learning a little bit more about how my dad does his job, I asked him if he gets tired of treating the same illnesses day after day. He said, “I do get a lot of the same cases, but I don’t get bored. That’s because I don’t treat an illness, I treat a person.” Because he treats his patients as people, my dad has been late to see most of his patients. But in over 20 years of practicing medicine, only 2 patients have complained about his tardiness, according to his receptionist. Why? Because my dad doesn’t see the 15-minute appointments his patients make with him as enough time to treat them like people. He might spend 45 minutes with one and show up late to his next appointment. But his next patient knows that she will get the same intensity of attention.

Hearing my dad say this reminded me of what my teammate Daniel Epstein always says: “business isn’t business, business is people.” Those who are truly successful in business are those who connect with others on a deep human level (see Daniel’s blog post on how to build genuine relationships).

In addition to being caring, one thing Daniel always reminds me of is that one of the best ways to connect with other human beings is to show that you too are a human being. That means being your quirky and unique self. I am always amused by Google’s annual April Fools’ Day antics. I love flying Southwest Airlines because the flight attendants sing songs instead of giving you the standard “this is how you fasten your seat belt” spiel. And as I explained in our last blog post, I will return to Northwestern University’s Global Engagement Summit as much as I can because it is comprised of a group of people who love having fun. That too keeps people coming back to you.

Being Able. In the end though, you’re unlikely to be available or affable if you aren’t good at what you do. Being competent gives you the confidence to be available and to be your quirky self. Brad Feld, Google, Southwest Airlines, and the Global Engagement Summit are not only approachable and likable, they show up and deliver. They find good people, they provide invaluable services, and they do both damn well, again and again and again.

If that’s not excellence, I don’t know what is.

Photo Credit: Temple Zenith

A very exciting announcement from our partners at the Hub Bay Area!

About Hub SoMa Launch

On May 3rd, Hub Bay Area is opening an 8600 sq/ft work and event space for members at the SF Chronicle Building – one block from the Powell St BART station. The space features an art gallery curated by Intersection for the Arts along with several meeting rooms, large event spaces, a full kitchen/café, and more than 70 work stations. The space also holds 7 private offices held by social enterprises – SOCAP, Rubicon National, Exponent Partners, Investors Circle, Mercy Corps, Adaptive Edge, and Hull Family Enterprises.

Locally, Hub Bay Area consists of more than 320 social enterprises building and scaling solutions for change. Our first location is in Berkeley at The David Brower Center. As a member of Hub Bay Area, you will have access to Hub Berkeley, Hub SoMa, and more than 20 Hubs across five continents.

For info about Hub Bay Area and membership, please call us at (415) 624-5881 or email us at sanfrancisco.hosts@the-hub.net.

About 5&M Launch

Hub Bay Area and Intersection for the Arts are proud to announce our May 3rd launch of Hub SoMa and The 5M Gallery – located at The SF Chronicle Building at 5th and Mission St. TechShop will follow soon after with the opening of their SoMa location next door. Together, we are combining a workplace and toolset for changemakers, an integrated arts incubator, and a fully equipped community workshop.

Together, we are assembling diverse talent into a common space to generate new ideas and catalyze new models for change. The link between us is a shared vision to blend economic viability with social and environmental impact. The goal - help individuals and enterprises reach their goals faster, surrounded by a community that makes everyone smarter and more effective. Join us May 27 for our Hub SoMa Launch Celebration showcasing our collaborative local and global vision.

Dasra Social-Impact is pleased to be on the lookout again for India’s next top social entrepreneurs. Whether you are a for-profit, non-profit or a hybrid, Dasra is looking for social entrepreneurs who want to make a step-change in their growth. Now in its 5th year, the program gives participants the opportunity to work closely with a diverse range of partners, who include Social-Impact International, Acumen Fund, HSBC Private Equity, Aavishkaar and McKinsey. CEOs and senior decision-makers work together over 9 months in an intensive professional development program that combines 3 week long intensive residential workshops, peer mentoring and access to capital through Village Capital, and real pitching opportunities and mentoring for some of the most exciting organizations in India and elsewhere. Deadline for applications is June 30, so start applying early! For more details see www.dasra.org/dasra-social-impact.htm.

This may have been my favorite interview yet.

Last July, I had the pleasure of traveling to Columbus, Ohio to attend the For Impact Funding Bootcamp, a rigorous 2-day training program on how to raise the funds you need to make your vision a reality. My teammate Nikhil and I left utterly and completely inspired. That’s what Tom Suddes, the Co-Founder and Chief Evangelist of For Impact, and his team do best: inspire. If you combine that with the fact that Tom has made 6,000 asks in the past 35 years and started 19 companies of his own, you might be able to see why For Impact has helped organizations they work with raise over $2 billion in funds.

Now you know why we invited Tom and the For Impact team to be mentors at The Unreasonable Institute.

I hopped on Skype with Tom to drill him about how on earth you raise $2 billion and start 19 companies. Here’s what he had to say!

Video Interview Table of  Contents:

1. What’s your background and what is For Impact? (0:01-0:39)
2. You’ve raised $2 billion in funds. How did you do that? (0:40-1:57)
3. How many asks have you made? What have you learned from those asks? (1:58-3:52)
4. What are 3 big reasons people don’t ask? (3:53-5:55)
5. So then, what are the 3 keys to making an ask? (5:56-8:39)
6. What advice do you have for aspiring social entrepreneurs? (8:40-10:51)

Thanks so much Tom! Learn more about For Impact at www.forimpact.org.

With 17 fully supported Unreasonable Fellows and just a week left to support 8 more Unreasonable entrepreneurs I thought I would share a personal story. A good friend of mine did a remarkable thing, but she didn’t think much of it. If fact, she almost seemed embarrassed. At what was basically a whisper, she told me that she had supported two Unreasonable Finalists at the Finalists Marketplace. I basically shot out of my chair with excitement!

To her, giving the small amount that she did (be it $5 or $10 or even $50 – I am not sure) was not significant based on what the entrepreneurs at the Finalist Marketplace were trying to do to improve the world. I asked her if I could kindly shift her thinking. “Let’s say you sponsored just 1% of the cost for an Unreasonable Finalist to attend the Unreasonable Institute,” I told her. “Let me calculate what that translates into.”

“The goal at the Unreasonable Institute is for each entrepreneur to go on to improve the lives of at least 1,000,000 people. Pretend the entrepreneur fails at 90% of this goal. They will still have improved the lives of 100,000 people. If you can say you were just 1% of the reason that he or she came to the Unreasonable Institute and helped those 100,000 people, that’s 1,000 people that you have helped that entrepreneur reach. ”I would say helping 1,000 people IS significant and something you should be VERY proud of.”

She agreed.

Remember, enough 1%’s will add up to 100% and will send a brilliant, driven entrepreneur to the Unreasonable Institute where they will train to improve the lives of millions. In this last week we hope you visit http://UnreasonableFinalists.org and support an Unreasonable Finalist that you believe in.

With Unreasonable excitement,

Tyler Hartung and the Unreasonable Institute Team

It’s Jehan and Simon here from Who Gives A Crap^TM: non-profit toilet paper supporting water sanitation in the developing world. A few weeks ago we reached the $6500 target to become the world’s first Unreasonable Fellows. As a result, the Unreasonable team invited us to guest blog on the topic “How to Get the World to Give a Crap in Two Weeks.” Looking back we realized our winning formula was Message + Plan + Luck – Sleep = $6500.

Message

Short and sweet. To keep our messaging clear, we created our own website – www.whogivesacrap.org – to act as the central ‘hub’ of our marketing campaign. This gave more of a target introduction to Who Gives A Crap^TM (and an easier to remember URL) than our detailed profile on the marketplace. Our key messaging was: (1) Pledge now! (2) Help spread the word. (3) This is our concept, we need your help…in two sentences. (4) Go to our marketplace profile for more detail.

Give Something Back. Everything Who Gives A Crap^TM will ever do is based on the fact that we don’t really appreciate a lot of the ‘traditional’ development aid fundraising tactics – images of sick children and people asking us for spare change really turn us off! We thought about what potential pledgers would appreciate and decided that we needed to give something back. Without a tangible product the best we could was a good dose of every bad pun in the book (it’s a crappy idea, this will never work in France but who gives a bidet, a quick re-crap, now for some toilet humor, …). We created funny videos, dreamt up humorous media stunts, created a toilet paper tagging Facebook campaign and dug up all sorts of strange and amazing toilet facts and photos from around the universe (mostly Asia!). Did you know the world’s largest toilet can be seen on Google maps satellite view?!

+ Plan

Launch Stage 1: Far, Wide and Impersonal. Due to the ever increasing weekly pledge limits, our launch plan was to create buzz using Twitter and the mainstream media in week 1 and then to engage with our (potentially more generous) personal networks in week 2. After having a HUGE prime time live TV stunt canceled just hours before going to air, the best we ended up with was this photo of Jehan (Simon in the background) in a big Melbourne newspaper:

Launch Stage 2: The Close To Home Push (Pun Intended). Despite our optimism, we didn’t end up raising much in Stage 1. But the hype amongst our family and friends made it much easier to approach them using Facebook and YouTube, and to create email content that would be more likely to go viral. We wrote a list of individuals to approach personally and emailed / Facebooked everyone else that we knew: email first, Facebook as a follow up. The individuals we approached personally were asked to become ‘pledge champions’ with the objective of finding 5-10 additional pledgers – this was responsible for raising thousands of dollars of pledges. Needless to say, we owe these guys BIG!

+ Luck

In hindsight we had a pretty good plan, but we were also very lucky for a few reasons: (1) We have strong personal networks with relatively high disposable income and near constant internet access. This really hit home when a friend in Malawi couldn’t pledge for 4 days (and eventually gave up) because her internet wasn’t fast enough. (2) We have contacts in lots of different areas of mainstream and sub-cultural media. (3) The economy was on our side – the Australian dollar is kicking some serious arse making pledges almost 1:1. (4) Our email campaign went relatively viral. Yes, this is mostly luck. We are still meeting strangers who received our mail out. (5) Finally, Melbourne’s Sri Lankan girls went unexpectedly crazy over the sight of Jehan’s bare legs.

- Sleep

What did we learn? (1) Don’t expect to get much sleep, or to ever complete that to do list. (2) Back lots of horses, some will fail and others will do better than expected. (3) Start earlier than you could ever think is necessary. Some of our ‘failures’ have turned into media ops that we’re now dealing with 6 weeks later. (4) Last but not least, prepare to be amazed by the generosity of both friends and strangers. All of it culminated in what was truly an amazing experience. The adrenaline (and coffee) made up for the over tiredness.

And that’s how you get the world to give a crap in 2 weeks!

Startup enterprises face a great deal of difficulty not only obtaining the resources they need, but navigating their options to find the ideal investors, legal structures, and other resources. At the same time, investors and capital providers often struggle to find the entrepreneurs that fit their criteria and spend way too much time conducting due diligence. Fortunately, now there’s W1SD0M, an online matchmaking service for entrepreneurs and investors to connect with the people, capital, knowledge, and tools that best serve their needs. I chatted with Founder Greg Berry , one of our mentors and friends here in Boulder, Colorado, who shares a bit of his W1SD0M in this video.

Video Interview Table of Contents:

1. What is W1SD0M? (0:01-0:42)
2. What is an entrepreneur’s experience on W1SD0M? (0:43-2:52)
3. How can W1SD0M serve investors? (2:53-3:37)
4. What will W1SD0M’s user interface be like? (3:38-7:39)
5. What advice do you have for aspiring social entrepreneurs? (7:40-8:24)

We raise our glasses to Greg Berry and the W1SD0M team for speaking with us about the innovative work they’re undertaking! Learn more at www.w1sd0m.net.

“To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.” – Elbert Hubbard

Here at the Unreasonable Institute, we are pretty happy to have the sort of open communication where we can handle and where we welcome critical feedback. You’ll routinely hear Unreasonable Institute President Daniel Epstein say “Here’s my idea. Now destroy it.” Still, as open as we want to be to criticism, one thing all of us have to consciously overcome is doubt. Wow, we hate doubt.

As startup founders, you’re bound to face crippling doubt from both people who have no idea what they’re talking about and people who are experts. You’re putting yourself out there with an incredible idea, and no one is funding you. Possibly no one is even listening to you. It’s incredibly frustrating and it’s pretty difficult to “adapt the world to yourself” when you feel like you can’t bend the world to your will. So if you’re facing scathing skepticism, just keep these 3 stories in mind:

1) A German Greek Grammar teacher named Joseph Degenhart told the father of one his 7th grade students “It doesn’t matter what he does, he will never amount to anything.” That student was Albert Einstein.

2) A Management Professor at Yale told Fred Smith, a business student who wrote a paper proposing an overnight delivery service, “The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a ‘C,’ the idea must be feasible.” Smith went on to start Fedex.

3) In 1962, The Decca Recording Company turned away a band looking to put together an album, saying “We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.” That band was The Beatles.

If someone tells you what you’re doing will never work…well, it just might be one of the most incorrect statements in history.