What to hold in your head.

2014. Justin Mares ate paleo and kept hearing about bone broth at his CrossFit gym and on paleo blogs, but he couldn't buy it anywhere online and it takes 20+ hours to make. Google showed several thousand searches a month and nobody selling it. Before making any broth, he built a basic page with a $5 logo and an Order Now button to a PayPal checkout for 16oz at $29.99, then spent $50 on Bing ads. About 30% of visitors clicked Order Now and he took about $500 in two weeks. After each person paid, he emailed to say it wasn't made yet and offered a full refund or 50% off to wait a few weeks; most waited. He worked out how to make and ship it after that. It now does over eight figures a year.

For the room: Find proof people will pay before you build the thing.

2009, Austin. Mikaila Ulmer, age four, was stung by bees twice in one week. She was scared, then curious, and learned that bees are in trouble and that a lot of our food depends on them. Around then her great-grandmother Helen's 1940s cookbook turned up with a flaxseed lemonade recipe. She added honey and decided part of every sale would go to saving bees. She sold it first at Austin's Lemonade Day and the Acton Children's Business Fair; a local pizza shop asked her to bottle it; then came Whole Foods and $60,000 from Daymond John on Shark Tank in 2015.

For the room: People already buy lemonade. Her twist, and her story, gave them a reason to buy hers.

Domino's promised hot pizza delivered in 30 minutes or it was free. The promise, not the pizza, was what customers remembered, and it helped build the chain. Domino's dropped it in 1993 after lawsuits over accidents involving drivers rushing to beat the clock.

For the room: A guarantee can be the whole offer, but only promise what you can keep safely.

1999. Nick Swinmurn couldn't find the shoes he wanted and wondered if people would buy shoes online. With no money for stock, he photographed shoes in local stores and put the photos on a simple website. When someone ordered, he went to the store, bought that pair at full price and shipped it. He lost money on each pair, but he proved people would buy. Amazon later bought Zappos for about $1.2 billion.

For the room: The smallest thing that takes an order is enough to learn if people will pay.

Girl Scouts have sold cookies for over a century. A scout starts with family and friends, then goes door to door with an adult and sets up cookie booths outside shops, and each step reaches people she didn't know. Many order forms also go round a parent's office, which is the one part we don't copy: here, parents can give a name, but the student makes every ask.

For the room: Start with the people you know, and ask each of them who they know.

At 12, Steve Jobs wanted parts for a frequency counter. He looked up Bill Hewlett, co-founder of Hewlett-Packard, in the phone book and called him at home. Hewlett talked with him for 20 minutes, gave him the parts, and offered him a summer job at HP. Jobs told the story in a 1994 interview: most people never ask.

For the room: The worst answer is no, and most people are glad to help someone who asks.

1978. Two friends, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, took a $5 correspondence course in ice cream making and opened a scoop shop in a converted gas station in Burlington, Vermont, with about $12,000, some of it borrowed. The shop was a hit, and they grew by packing pints for grocery stores, which meant solving how to make and deliver far more than one shop could scoop.

For the room: Know your numbers per cone, and plan how you'll keep up once people want more.

Moziah Bridges, age nine, couldn't find bow ties he liked, so his grandmother taught him to sew and he made his own. He sold them online and at local shops in Memphis. In 2014, at about twelve, he pitched on Shark Tank; Daymond John didn't invest but became his mentor, and he later landed an NBA licensing deal.

For the room: A clear, true story, told by the founder, is the pitch.