“It’s not what you know, it’s who you know”
I’ve never liked this age-old adage because it polarizes a phenomenon too complex to be black and white.  Really, it’s about how you treat the people you know and don’t know.  It’s about being excited and confident about what you do know and honest about what you don’t know.  And if you don’t know someone, ideally this blog post will allow you to approach and get to know anyone.

The 7 To Do’s

1.  The person you are talking to is the Messiah in the room

Have you ever talked with someone whose eyes are constantly flitting around the room?  It’s awful. Why? Because as Robert Frost said, “We all have an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.”  Looking around the room signals that there is something or someone more interesting than the person you’re talking to.  One of the most important keys to building powerful relationships is never to avert your eyes when you are talking with someone else.  Holding eye contact, even amidst a bustling room or people chatting nearby enables you to be fully present in your conversations and shows the other person how important they are to you.  You never know who you are meeting and who or what they may know. Assume, therefore, that the person you are conversing with is the momentary messiah. Focus in on them and allow yourself to be genuinely intrigued.

2.  Listen & Learn.  Then Speak.

You would be shocked at how common it is for people to jump headlong into their agenda in conversations without learning anything about the person they are talking to.  If someone asks me what I do, I immediately throw the question back at them with a comment along the lines of, “I’m excited to tell you about the projects I’m working on, but I’m much more fascinated to learn about what you do and why you do it…etc.” When you meet someone, never start by talking about yourself.  Ask them not just what they do (they always get asked that), ask them why they do what they do and how they got to be doing what they do (i.e. their story).  This will allow you to listen and to identify their interests, passions, and what excites them.  Inevitably, if they like you, they will ask what about you.  Now you can speak to their interests and passions. You always want to connect on a human level (not just a professional level) and the key is to understand stories and interests.  Learn what gets them excited and then get them excited.  It’s just that simple.

3.  Be Vulnerable

Your greatest strength in establishing powerful relationships is to be honest about your greatest weaknesses. We have been socially-conditioned to worry about what others will think when we share our failures, sincere thoughts, and what we don’t know with them. The truth is that these moments of vulnerability are the very moments when we connect most with other people. We connect deeply with people who have struggled, who are insecure about something, or who have failed because we’ve all been there. People are also much more likely to find you credible when you’re honest up-front about the risks of your venture or when you answer “I honestly don’t know the answer” to a question instead of trying to come up with a clever defense on the spot. It’s not only okay to be vulnerable, it’s crucial.

4.  Isn’t Networking Slimy?

When we think about networking, words like slimy often come to mind. We think of people who cleverly manipulate others to get what they want.  Instead, Keith Ferrazzi, who has been called the greatest networker in the world and is the author of “Never Eat Alone,” defines networking as “sharing my knowledge and resources, time and energy, friends and associates, and empathy and compassion in a continual effort to provide value to others, while coincidentally increasing my own.” In other words, you should be seeing how you can help other people achieve their full potential. It’s not about what you can get from others; it’s about how much you can give to them. It’s not about asking “How can you help me?” It’s about the great scene in Jerry McGuire, where Tom Cruise is on his hands and knees, repeatedly asking a simple question, “How can I help you? Help me help you!” Relationships are built on trust. You gain trust by helping others, not by asking what they can do for you. Over time, your generosity will come back to you (but don’t keep score).

5.  You Have to Make the Ask (no excuses):

One of the most important rules of building relationships and networking is simply to ask.  It all boils down to being truthful.  If someone can really help you with something, do not be hesitant to ask. Indeed, most people are reluctant to ask for money, for advice, or for anything that could help them to a realized dream. When you ask for help, and if you do so genuinely, the worst anyone will say is “no.” Then you are no worse off than if you hadn’t asked for help at all! Even if the person across the table from you can’t help, there is always one more question to ask (possibly the most important): “Do you know anyone who may be excited about what we are doing or who may be able to help in this regard?”  You would be amazed at how many doors this simple question will open up.

6.  Follow Up and Follow Through:

When I was working on my first social venture as a Freshman at the University of Colorado, I had lunch with a local entrepreneur and asked him one pointed question: “what will set me and my team apart from the rest?”  He simply responded, “follow up and follow through.” After any great conversation, follow-up by simply letting the person know how much you appreciate their time and thoughts. And if you want to distinguish yourself from nearly 99% of everyone out there, follow-through on the promises you make.  The key to this statement is to make certain that when you tell someone you are going to do something, you will have the time to do it well. This will do wonders for building relationships of mutual respect and admiration.

7.  Be Confident and Passionate

If you are going to get others excited about what you are doing you truly have to believe in what you are doing.  Anything less and the person across the table from you may wonder: “why should I help them with this idea when they don’t even believe in it?”  Don’t be afraid to express your excitement and your unreasonable ambition.  Be bold and be confident.  Remember though, you must be confident about what you do know, but also about what you don’t know.  This level of transparency is key to building quality relationships and to networking.  People are perceptive. If you aren’t genuine, they will know it.

So What?

According to Al Gore, there is an old African Proverb that says “if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”  Whether or not the source is correct, I couldn’t agree more with the proverb.  The moral of this blog is that if you want to create Unreasonable Impact, you are going to have to be able to build unreasonably powerful relationships with your teams, partners, investors, networks, and friends.  The key is simple: be human… for in the end, business is not business, business is people.

written by: Daniel Epstein

Each week, the amount a donor can give to any single entrepreneur on the marketplace is capped. The first week, this cap is $10, the second week it’s $50, the third week it’s $100, and so on (until the last two weeks, when there is no maximum contribution limit). This means entrepreneurs will have to galvanize the support of hundreds of people from around the world to raise the full amount and earn a seat at the Unreasonable Institute.

So this post includes our 5 tips for reaching hundreds of people and enlisting their support, based on our experience attracting applicants (almost 700 young entrepreneurs from 50 countries began applications before we ran our first Institute).

1) Maximize Your Strengths. Galvanizing the support of hundreds require you take full advantage of all the assets at your disposal. Let’s consider, as an example, a compelling concern one of our finalists raised on the phone with me this morning. She’d just run a fundraising campaign over the holidays and asked hundreds of donors for financial contributions. She understandably feels it’s inappropriate to ask them for funding yet again to raise $6,500. I totally agree. However, this donor base is not only a source of money, but also an incredible marketing base! Instead of emailing these donors to ask for contributions, this finalist should do the exact opposite. She might email them saying “Please do NOT make a contribution. Instead, tell five people you know about the opportunity to sponsor our venture on the Unreasonable Finalist Marketplace.” This strategy makes sense considering that an entrepreneur on Kickstarter (the online fundraising marketplace that inspired our marketplcae) receives the majority of her funding from contacts of her contacts. You might be surprised how many ways you can leverage your assets!

2) Find the Hubs. As a young startup, the Unreasonable Institute lacks a number of important assets including a credible brand and a proven track record. But in the 6 weeks our applications were open, nearly 700 young social entrepreneurs from countries like Mauritania, Benin, and Serbia, began applications to attend our ten-week summer institute. As much as we’d like to, we can’t take credit for getting the word out to so many applicants. Instead, all the recognition goes to our partners, organizations and individuals around the world that are trusted hubs for young social entrepreneurs (i.e. places social entrepreneurs already go to). These organizations, including Ashoka Changemakers, SocialEdge, and Change.org, helped us to market to their networks by tweeting, blogging, and emailing on our behalf. In total, our 28 partners spread information about our applications to well over 100,000 people. Targeting individuals with vast networks, organizations like the ones we mentioned above, local websites, meet-up groups, communities and blogs where the people you want to attract already go will lay the foundation for your viral call to arms!

3) Give Them the Tools to Market For You. To make it easy for our partners to spread the word about our applications, we did all the hard work for them. We sent them short blurbs they could email their networks word-for-word, 120-character tweets they could post on their accounts, materials (e.g. our logo, video, and diagrams) they could use to blog, and banners they could embed in their websites. By simplifying outreach for our partners, we also opened the door for their networks to spread the word. In fact, 42% of our applicants heard about us from organizations and people we’d never directly contacted (further evidence for Kickstarter’s observation that friends of friends provide the most support). The easier your message is to spread, the more it will.

4) Create a Sense of Urgency. According to John Kotter, author of the aptly titled A Sense of Urgency, any effort to create change is doomed without getting people to see and feel a need for change. Why should people sponsor you to attend the Unreasonable Institute? Because if you are one of the first 25 Finalists to raise $6,500 you receive rigorous entrepreneurial skill training, seed capital, mentorship from 50 seasoned entrepreneurs and investors, legal advice, prototype consulting, web development, a global support network, and the chance to pitch your venture to over 200 investors and philanthropists. No big deal. Oh, and you only have 50 days to edge out the competition!  Including specific goals and deadlines for action also incentivizes your supporters to move quickly (e.g. “Help us reach our goal of raising $500 by Friday by being one of 10 donors to give us $50!”).

5) Make the Ask. According to Dan Zarrella’s blog post 5 Steps to Going Viral on Twitter, the tweets that are most often re-tweeted (shared by other twitter users with their networks) include a request to be retweeted. Similarly, your contacts are more likely to help if you make a request of them that is (1) easily actionable and (2) “sticky.” (1) An actionable request includes specifics. For example, instead of asking people to spread the word about Unreasonable Institute applications, we asked them to get one person they know to apply. (2) In order for people to act, they have to remember your request. According to the book Made to Stick by Dan and Chip Heath, making your request memorable, or “sticky,” is best done through a Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional Story (SUCCESs). Check out our blog post on the subject for more details on how to nail these six principles.

So What? Catalyzing collective action is a vital skill for any successful entrepreneur, Unreasonable Institute Finalist or not. These five key strategies enabled us at the Unreasonable Institute to find our amazing 42 Finalists! We hope you find them useful as well! We’d love to hear other suggestions for rallying support in the comments section below!

One Actionable Request - Go back to the top of this blog post and retweet it. Not only do we advise you on what to do to mobilize hundreds of people, we also offer an example of what not to do. Never ever write a blog post this long. Do, however, communicate its core message in 140 characters or less by retweeting it!

Oh, and always say “Thank You”…thank you!