Backable: The Surprising Truth Behind What Makes People Take a Chance on You

Timing is a big part of being backable,

Backable people seem to always be acting as anthropologists, looking for trends and changes.

most new ideas aren’t killed inside conference rooms. They’re killed inside hallways and break rooms. They’re shared before they really had a chance to mature. And when we don’t get the reaction we want, we tend to put our concepts inside a drawer.

you need to create room for backers to be a part of it.

What moves people isn’t charisma, but conviction. Backable people earnestly believe in what they’re saying, and they simply let that belief shine through whatever style feels most natural.

70 percent of the people who had received the phone call from a board member were still giving to the organization, compared to just 18 percent of those who hadn’t. To top it off, donors who remained were now giving 42 percent more than they had at the start.20

“You are going to become miserable…your wife is going to leave you. And you’re going to die alone.” That was rock bottom.

Most of us tend to steer clear of the Cheddars in our life. We run away from people who can be the most critical of our ideas. But these are the people who get us best prepared, because backers are a lot like Cheddar. Their job is to find your blind spots. By playing exhibition matches with their Cheddars, backable people discover the hidden proble

“There will be one to three issues that are potentially problematic for your financing,” Hoffman said to me. “Address them head on.”