Category: entrepreneurship

Start Up Blog live v2.0

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Given the success of Startup blog live this week, I’m doing it again next week.  We had over 50 people tune in, with virtually no planning, or promotion at all, and had a 1.5 hour Q & A on all things Entrepreneurship and Start up. I really enjoyed it.

Steve Sammartino on twit cam

So I’ll be back on live this Wednesday Night 7.30pm (Australian EST) on www.Twitcam.com

– To see what time that is in your part of the world click here

– I’ll be doing it using my twitter log in which is @sammartino

And you’ll see on twitter when I’m live – and I’ve got the technology sorted now which is really simple to use. In fact, I reckon I came up with some of the best ideas I’ve ever had while talking. So spread the word to your entrepreneurial friends, they’ll love it too.

Best question of the night wins a rad Pez Dispenser as show below:

See you Wednesday night!

The power of templates

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Henry Ford built a template for mass manufactured vehicles.

Bill Gates & Steve Jobs built templates to enable computer usage in the home. (They also stole some ideas)

Netscape built a template to enable people to browse the web.

McDonalds built a franchise template.

Ebay built a template for selling and on line auctions.

Write a book once, sell it for years. Record an album once, sell it over and over. The same holds true for movies and all paid software. The production line also exemplifies this. Pretty much every successful business we see – has built a template that works. And often it takes a long time to work out what that template should be. Which is why we usually run out of time before we run out of money.

What we need is a replicable formula: Something that can be built, designed, made, or bought once, but sold over and over again. It’s all about efficiency and the multiplier effect. Some of the oldest business models in the world follow this maxim. Think about real estate. You buy an investment property once, and you sell it over and over again, every month as ‘rent’. Efficiency is not necessarily evil. More importantly, this is also the component of your business model that helps it grow beyond the founder. If our business can’t survive and grow without us, the truth is, we haven’t really got one.

I am on Twitter – Click here to follow me

Shiny new business

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Have you ever had a new girlfriend? You can’t stop thinking about her. You want to make it work. So you start putting in an extra effort to give this relationship the best chance of success. You start buying new clothes, ensuring you look your best, maybe even start going to the gym everyday. In this situation everything matters. You want to spend every waking moment with her, because it is so enjoyable, so much fun, the future looks so bright, the whole thing is so new. At this time we can’t imagine the joy of being involved in this thing ever diminishing.

Eventually, the emotions driven by newness wear off. It doesn’t necessarily mean we love our new girlfriend less, we might even love her more. It’s just a different set of emotions. And this new set of emotions often mean we, are less enthusiastic to prove ourselves, and or make it work – she moves from a chase, to a catch.

new GirlfriendPhoto by Sami

A new startup isn’t much different. Just re-read the above two paragraphs and think back to when you got going on your latest startup. It was a lot like the new girl friend. It was love. The emotions and behaviour have a strong analogy. What matters as entrepreneurs, is having the ability to keep up the momentum when the newness wears off. And there is nothing more certain than this. It will become less fun, less exciting and more arduous. It’s especially evident when we need to undertake administrative tasks with our start up – or keep door knocking after many rejections. It’s our ability to stay focused on ‘old projects’ that will determine our ultimate success.

I am on Twitter – Click here to follow me

Startup Blog Live

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

I’ll be doing a live chat on all things StartUp and Entrepreneurship this Wednesday night Australian EST at 7.3opm.

Problogger has inspired this idea from his session today – big ups.

Pro blogger on twitcam.com

I’ll be using the relatively new service www.twitcam.com – where you can ask live questions which I’ll answer.

It’ll be using my twitter sign in which is @sammartino

here is the url: http://twitcam.com/user/sammartino

Here’s where you challenge me, ask me, disagree with me for anything I’ve written on this here blog. Ask me questions about marketing, startups, outsourcing, getting to revenue, and generating massive free TV coverage. I’ve done them all successfully. These are the things you start up needs to rock the world. Looking forward to chatting with you.

Steve.

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Invested customers

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Something strange happened when I updated my preferred twitter iphone app ‘Twitterific’.

The default twitter photo application changed from www.twitpic.com to www.yfrong.com

Here’s the problem: As a customer (albeit non paying) I am hugely invested in twitpic as an application. I already have well over 100 photos of my digital life, ideas, observations and witty comments live in twitpic. Whenever I take a new pic and post it to twitter I’m hoping people will browse through some of my other cool photos, ideas and adventures. My personal brand depends on a consistent distribution channel. Which in this case was and ‘is’ twit pic. Not Yfrog. I can’t have a ‘fragmented effort’.

Twitpic home page

Once I found out I could change the preferences for pics in the twitterific app, I did so immediately. Even though there was some effort and research involved. I did this because I am ‘invested in Twitpic’. I don’t want to start again. I don’t want to lose my old pics. I don’t want to lose my compound effort. I don’t want my digital stuff to get lost. I don’t want to lose my fans. The switching costs are too high for me.

The question for start ups and webpreneurs is how do we get our customers invested in our stuff?

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Trim the ‘to do’ list

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Small tip for startups for today.

Trim the ‘to do’ list and actually deliver on something.

All to often we get caught up in ‘options’ and priorities and a simple solution is to have 1 priority, and 1 thing to do.

Then do it.

Take your to do list and put everything which isn’t number one and file it in a digital format somewhere to return to later. This way you’ll ensure that the ideas and projects aren’t lost.

I know, you know this. I know you’ve heard this idea before…..

But if you’ve forgotten it, or you don’t do it – do you really know it?

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