Category: business

12 seconds

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

I really like the idea of ‘small’ – Making the macro, micro. 12 secondsTV does it: www.12seconds.tv

As far as marketing insights are concerned it proves that categories don’t converge – but split.

We recently used it for rentoid to kill a few birds with one stone:

  • Rewards passionate fans with a bit of fame,
  • Create an important dialogue
  • Generate some ‘realworld’ market research to boot.

The cool thing is that we’ll publish what people think about rentoid good and bad – so then we have to act on any mooted improvements. Check it by clicking here:

So in the spirit of involvement – I’d love to get a 12 seconds.tv spot from the startupblog crew – ‘yes that means you’ with any piece of business / entrepreneurship or life advice you feel approporiate.

Put your 12 seconds link in the comments and I’ll put it up as it’s own post with a link to your blog / startup / business or whatever.

Get on it.

The bucket & the pipeline

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

The reason most entrepreneurs fail is that they give up too quick. Forget the old nag ‘you only fail when you give up’ – I don’t mean that. I mean that they forget that the “context” is very different as an entrepreneur versus being an employee.

From our first job flipping burgers or whatever we chose to do while still studying we had – “Instant rewards”. Instant pay for a job done at the end of the day, week or month. It teaches us a really bad habit. We expect instantaneous benefits for effort rendered. For every bucket of water we carry we get a piecemeal wage.

As entrepreneurs we are building a pipeline. It’s a large project of capital works which takes a long time, and usually much longer than we ever expected. There are no payments along the way. In fact we get nothing until the pipeline is complete. We may run out of resources before we finish….But if we stay the course the water can come gushing.

Unfortunately we can’t know how close the pipeline is to completion. We need a bit of blind faith. But if we go the distance, we’ll never have to carry a bucket of water again.

Dreams for sale

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Here’s a truth all entrpreneurs must know, embrace and accept. Our selling skills are more important than our technical genious, web wizardry, or financial footwork.

If we can’t sell we better find someone who can work with us. Running a succssful startup requires the dream to be sold – for someone to buy our dream. Until we’ve sold this dream we are nothing – We do not exist.

Good news – we can always learn or outsource it.

Emotional Insurance

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

If you ever sell your startup and make a good amount of money, you should be happy. Even if it wasn’t the billion dollar payday that the Youtube or Skype founders had. But the reality is the buyers think they can do more with it – make more money out of it. And just maybe cause you a little anxiety.

Here’s where it’s often worth getting some Emotional Insurance:

Startup Blog Definition: Emotional Insurance is the small percentage share of a business you hold onto in case it goes ganbusters when you’re gone.

It just might help you sleep at night once you sell your success.

Startup tips

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Tonight I was speaking with entrpreneur David Eedle who sold his start up www.artshub.com.au for some big money in 2006. When asked what matters for web startups he said the following:

The same principals which matter to any business. The principals never change. He also said these things in particular matter:

  • Earn more than you spend
  • Get your value proposition right – clue it’s not ‘free’
  • You have to sell something before you sell the company
  • You can’t do it by yourself – you need some awesome people to help you, but less than you think. Think in handfulls.
  • You don’t need dedicated resources and high end tech stuff. It never wins.

And startup blog agrees with every word.

Buying vs Selling

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

The ultimate goal of any entrepreneur is to have people buying stuff from you. Our job as entrepreneurs is move our brand from a position of selling, to place where people come to buy. This takes time and continuous refinement of whatever we make, do or market. Truly successful brands don’t really sell stuff – it’s bought.

As Gitomer would say:

People don’t like to be sold, but they love to buy.

And so the most profitable sales interactions are defined by the audience. Women tend to say ‘They bought a pair of shoes’. Not that the shoes were sold to them.

Startups should remember – We start out selling, in the hope that it evolves into buying.