Category: business

Brand Manners

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Brands are the personification of things and services. In fact they are the amalgamation of a group of people, which creates an organizational culture and eventually, a set of brand values. Values which in real terms are like those of a person.

In the spirit of the reasoning above here’s an interesting question:

Does your brand have good manners?

That’s actually what we’ve been getting at during this Business 2.0 Post Industrial Complex Devolution. We’ve been getting back to basics. The basics of acceptable behaviour. Moving away from the school yard bully – (read here – large inconsiderate conglomerate) – to something which deserves our attention.

In case we happened to forget – here’s a ready reckoner of ‘Good Manners’

–          Listen to others
–          Have patience
–          Wait your turn to talk
–          Never interrupt
–          Ask for permission
–          Always say ‘please’ and ‘thankyou’
–          Be honest, truthful and pure
–          Be punctual
–          Be tidy
–          Never be rude to anyone – older, younger, richer, poorer
–          Keep out of bad company
–          Be kind to those around you
–          Don’t be selfish, but share your good things
–          Don’t cheat
–          Be polite at all times

Here’s the ironic thing…. some of these sentiments and ideals came directly from the Children’s National Guild of Courtesy – a Good Manners chart which was distributed to elementary / primary schools in UK and Australia from 1898 until approx 1950.

You can download the PDF here: goodmanners

And yet it’s akin to the language we are now hearing from business re-inventionists. In real terms, we’ve just realized that often with success comes bad manners and attitude. Then after the bad manners and attitude comes the inevitable decline. This is why the new world brands are winning – they simply have good manners.

Startups – if we personify our brands, then let’s ensure they have ‘Brand Manners’.

Credit Crunch – advice for Startups

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

So the credit crunch is here. This is great news for startups. Great news because the pretenders leave the playing field and reduces the number of players in the game. They often provide flimsy excuses to themselves and us saying things like ‘It’s not a good time to spread new ideas…’

So we need to think about this:

How to win?

  • How do we win when a lot of money is being locked away from SME’s?
  • How do we win by investing our available funds frugally?
  • How do we win by extracting the maximum value from suppliers in a contractionary market place?

In short, how do we extract more value as a ‘bootstrapping startup’ while the VC funded few fall over… scamble for more cash – and run around trying to ‘monetize’ quickly. How can we turn the fact we know how to operate on a tight budget into our advantage?

Now is the best time yet for boostrappers. Now is the time when real value investors, real value extractors and real value providers win.

Cash flow vs Profit

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Cashflow positive means: More ‘actual’ cash money is coming in than is going out. It does not mean revenue exceeds expenditure. It means physical cash or bank desposts – not promises to pay.

So in order to break it down for the startup crew out there, here it is in simple language we can all understand, whether we are techies, designers, craftspeople or retailers.

Cash vs Profit:

It’s impossible to go broke while your business is cash flow positive.

It’s possible to broke while your business is making a profit.

This is why cashflow is King.

It’s also possible to be making a legal loss, while we are dripping in cash. So startups out there only need to focus on one thing. Are we collecting more cash than we are spending?. Do this, and it’s impossible to go out of business.

Hard Stuff or Easy Stuff?

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Check out the following chart:

We can either,

1. do the easy stuff now.

or

2. do the hard stuff now.

Either choice ultimately leads to the opposite end of the spectrum over time. It’s the same for sport, business, scholarly pursuits, wealth creattion and entrepreneurs. Sure it’s easy to know, but ‘it’s equally easy to forget. When things aren’t going so well, or we are not getting the wins we want – maybe we should consider the chart above, and decide what we were doing a little while ago, and more importantly which tangent we want to be on in the future.

It’s our choice.

Pre-empt reality – success requires it

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Entrepreneurship and startups are a lot like starting out in your career. People want you to have experience before they will hire you. It’s that ironic circular reference in which it is impossible to get the job, to get the experience required until we’ve got the experience – right? hmmm.

Often startup businesses need a lot of people before the idea, concept or thing simply works. Kind of like email or fax machines. They only become useful when everyone has one…. or at least some form of critical mass in which we can exchange things of value. Aside from the fact this proves that the most powerful element in any business mix is distribution, it also indicates we all have a chasm to cross before success can become a reality.

So how do we cross the chasm? How do we make success a reality?

We must preempt it.

We must preempt our future reality. As though it already exists. We must talk and act as if it has already happened. Not just internally, not just convincing ourselves, but to all of those whose paths we cross day to day in startup land. We have to sell the future, before it arrives, as if it’s already happened.

Sometimes we might have to use ‘creative language’ which somewhat stretches the truth (our current reality). We ought not feel bad – every successful entrepreneur in history has done this. Every successful entrepreneur in the future will do this. It’s just a necessary element in creating the future. It’s not lying, it’s part of the creation process. Screw it – sell the sizzle and make it real. By the time the people catch up to the today’s reality – you’ve already created the future version.

Bill Gates sold MS DOS before he even built it. He said to IBM – “we have what you need.” Despite the fact it was metaphysical at that stage.

Generating media and interest in your start up is one of the areas where this must happen. Whether it’s in traditional media, the blogosphere, or other means, people don’t want to cover us until we’ve had success. What they fail to realise is that their coverage is the thing which often starts the success. Then people who read about our brand, website or widget say, “Wow, I better check that out”. They believe in ‘the people’. If other people are embracing it, it justifies them checking it out. it’s the wisdom of crowds, as far as people are concerned, we only count when other people care.

When people ask about your startup and want the obligitory progress report – paint the most positive picture possible. Use creative language that makes it sound bigger, better and closer. No – use language that says it has already arrived. Make the future your present reality.

Best business card 2008 – Goddess of Revenue

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

I recently met Kim Chen from tjoos at Startup Camp Melbourne. Smart girl.

The thing that impressed me the most was her business card. Job Title = Goddess of Revenue. Love it.

So it’s a bit hard to read above, but being a ‘Goddess of Revenue’ says so much. The first thing it says is that Kim ‘gets it’. It says she knows that fun is important, but revenue is vital.

Then on the flipside is more useful stuff.

The kind of stuff which just maybe gives her a permanent place in someones wallet or purse. A good chunk of simple, yet useful information.

It’ll be handy next time in Sydney on business…. and her simple business card made me remember Kim, it even got her a story on this here blog.

If we are going to the trouble of printing business cards – we should make it worth remembering.