Category: Ideas

Chief Mojo Officer

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Chatting with Chris Mander from docolo.com and he came up with an awesome idea – which every business should have.

The Chief Mojo Officer, or the CMO.

Sure, I asked him what they did and here’s what he told me: (with some embellishment)

“Firstly you have to believe in mojo. If you don’t believe in mojo, then forget it. If you do, the CMO is in charge of general “Vibe Strategy”. The CMO has to make sure that the ‘vibe’ is right. There are no real quantitative measurements for mojo – you can just feel it. The CMO is the type of dude who can just feel it. They’ll know when it’s out of whack. The CMO is in charge of things which are nebulous, but actually matter. When the CMO has the general vibe grooving, the mojo is right, and revenue happens.”

Good news for startups with small staff is that we don’t have to wait for the employee head count to justify a new CMO. We can  and should be doing it anyway. It’s our job!

But when you make it, I reckon it would be the best investment any company could ever make. 

Brand Definition… kind of

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

An actual definition of brands here on startup blog would be both boring, and downright insulting to my readers… Instead something better; A bit of brand anthropology reverse engineering.

We use brands to tell our story, to make short cuts. To define ourselves.

That said we all have brands we use to define ourselves to others. Brands like the suburb we live in, where we were educated, the companies we have worked for, the job titles we have got, the past times we participate in, the beer we drink and the car we drive….

So then we must consider this; How would our people, our customers and our brand users feel if they had to define our brand as part of them?

Would they be happy to do so? To reference us as part of them?

If yes – we are in an awesome place.

If no – we have some work to do.

Beer is the new wine

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

I recently had some beers and a meal at a place called Little Creatures dinning hall in Melbourne Australia.

For the uninitiated, Little Creatures is a craft beer which has it’s origins in Australia and has recently opened a flagship ‘dinning hall’ – seen below.

little-creatures-dinning-hall

They’ve simply taken this to a new level. I’m not taking about the fact that they have weird and groovy beer flavours, all naturally brewed. I’m talking about the way they take you on a personal journey with their service.

My favourtie was the beer education programme. They have a ‘pony show’ – I don’t think it’s called that, but it is what I’ll call it for this post.

You get a taste in little groovy pony glasses of all their different beers, then choose one you like. One of their ‘Little Creatures Beer Experts’ comes and sits down on your table with you and they explain all the different types of beers. A real sit down for 10 minutes. A rare treat when the usual sitiation is waiting 10 minutes for crappy service in bars and restuarants. They teach you how to taste each beer and the slight nuances of each. They even provide an idea what type of people generally like the different types.

pony-show

It’s really nice and fun. I even heard the word “sessionable” to describe a beer – They invent some nice jargon to make you feel part of a tribe. Cool.

No need to advertise this little venture. We’ll do that for them….

And this is what cool startups are doing in retail.

Ideas are free

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

This is nothing new – but when was the last time you checked out Springwise?

springwise

Springwise is a daily blog featuring new, cool and groovy business ideas, concepts, brands, products and organizations from around the world. Springwise is for everyone, everyday. Even if you don’t need an idea, or you are merrily changing the world already with your startup, it’s a great way to do the following:

Keep up with the world

Be inspired

Find potential collaborators

Cross fertilize thinking and transfer ideas into what you’re doing

In today’s world ideas really are free, but as a startup a more important question is how we take advantage of them.

Best advice ‘ever’ for entrepreneurs

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

I often get asked the following question: “If you had to give one piece of advice for entrepreneurs what would it be?”

Here’s my answer:

Revenue must exceed expenditure.

The more it exceeds it by, the better.

I like doing cool stuff as much as the next guy, and no I wouldn’t sell tobacco to kids in Africa to make money. But it becomes really hard to do cool stuff if your business doesn’t survive.

2nd worst shop front of all time

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

I took this pic of this shop front / side in my local neighbourhood. It’s easy to see when you drive past.

hexworks

Startup blog prize (free book) for anyone who can tell me what they do without calling the number (or knowing someone who works there / digging around).

I’m all for single minded simplicity, but if we are going to go to the effort to paint the brand and phone number, it’s also handy to have a tag line which tells people what we do.

Steve – rentoid.com

Cast the media net wide

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

When aiming to generate media coverage for our startup or business. We often get one thing wrong. The thing we get wrong is related to our training as marketers.

We are too targeted. We are too fussy on who’s right for our product.

Answer – the right media vehcile is the media vehicle who’ll ‘cover it’.

In fact we need to do the reverse and cast the net wide. In fact cast the media net as wide as possible. What needs to be targeted is ‘the message’. The message needs to be written for the forum. But, in truth most of us have way more messages in our business than we have bothered to think about, or even invent.

fishing-net

The message or pitch is all about them, their readers and their viewers. The bait has got to be right as well. So before you pitch – work out how many angles you’ve got and you’ll be surprised what you can dig up. Especially for startups – who can exchange at a minimum, a few learning’s from the battle field, some business insights.

Here’s my example of Media angles for rentoid.com

Altruistic – Helping people

Business methods

Making Money from idle assets

Saving money – rent instead of buying stuff

Web news – first of its’ type

Startup stories

Technology used

Ecologically sound (no we don’t mean carbon offset)

Green message

Making the web physical connect – going beyond virtual

Helping the financially challenged

Temporary needs

Temporary residents

Reduce storage requirements / household clutter

Virtual organisations / outsourcing

Vicarious living (renting things you can’t afford) ….

There’s more, but you’re bored already. I’m just showing what’s possible. And if you have your doubts check out the rentoid media page here, of which not a cent has been paid for.

How many ‘media angles’ does your startup have?

Steve – rentoid.com