Category: staff

Business relationships & startups

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Entrepreneurs must build all types of relationships.

  • Relationships with our suppliers and the value chain
  • Relationships with our buyers & resellers
  • Relationships with our staff and business partners / investors
  • Relationships with our audience & evangelists

In fact, when we are small have little or no revenue, the only thing we can do is have conversations and build relationships. These will lead to action and revenue. While having dinner with a colleague the other night, John Colbert of Corporate Edge training he gave me his view on relationships.

He said:

There are two important factors in relationships – frequency & proximity.

How frequently are we engaging the other person? Where frequency, is any type of conversation, communication or interaction.

And what is our proximity to this person? Where proximity pertains to the physical closeness and real world interactions we have together. Do we meet in person? Are we getting to know each other without the use of technology? Simply meeting in the same location?

The more of the above two things we have the stronger our relationships come. If we for a moment think of who we have strong relationships with, we’ll see we have both Frequency and Proximity.


The reality is humans want to deal with people they like, trust and know. This is what relationships build.

So if one of our important business relationships (those listed above) is flagging, maybe we should have more frequent interactions, get closer or do both.

What do investors invest in?

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

While dropping into Startup Camp in Melbourne last week I started chatting with Jonathon from Melbourne Angel Investors. I asked him just one question:

What is more important in their investments, the team or the concept / product?

His reply was a simple one and here it is:

We’d invest in an A Grade team with a B Grade product, but we wouldn’t invest in an A Grade product with a B Grade team.

Startup blog agrees. Though I did here that he was pretty ‘anti-tech’ as far as their investments go…

But the first piece of advice is worth adhearing  to. Above all things build an A Grade team, be an A Grade entrepreneur.

And so again we hear that the people in your startup are way more important than the secret sauce. It is without irony that A Grade teams more often than not find A Grade ideas too.

Game Changing

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Sometimes we convince ourselves in the early days of our start up that the fun stuff is most important. Yes it’s seriously important, and it’s partly why we decided to leave the cubicle.

 

But the biggest reason we left cubiclesville was because we wanted to win. We wanted to do something, change something, prove something and achieve success which other corporate plankton couldn’t claim on our behalf.

 

That said, we ought ask ourselves this:

 

Is what we are doing Game Changing?

 

Will what we are spending investing our time on today be the thing that ensures we win the game in our web domain, category or industry?

 

 

Fact: When Youtube launched there was over 450 other video sharing websites. Youtube won video sharing for these reasons:

 

1.      They had the simplest user experience

2.      They had the most videos uploaded

 

That’s it.

 

So – are we investing our day on Game Changing activities, or just passing time?

Why everything matters

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Here’s a list of things which actually do matter:

 

Our diction and vernacular

Our personal presentation & dress code (Doesn’t mean a suit, but to wear what we wear well, have a sense of style)

The way we engage people and treat them

Our smile and attitude

How neat  and organized our workspace is

Being on time

Our posture

Knowing our next steps every day

Making sure our technology is in working order

 

All these things and others, matter all the time. Not just the day you have to do it right, have the big VC presentation or the day you’re meeting your biggest customer. 

 

And here’s why – they’ll become habit. Good habits. And when things are habit, they’re performed much the same way – time and time again.

 

If we do them well when it doesn’t matter, we’ll do them well when it does.

Great Quote

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

“Being busy is a form of laziness – lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.”

 

Timothy Ferriss

 

Startup blog agrees, and adds – if we blame our employers for the above, there’s no locks on the door…. and we’re still being lazy.

Pop quiz

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Two people went to work on their startup business.

 

Joseph got up early started at 8am and worked until midnight, he finished all the tasks on his to do list.

 

Mary slept in, was tired, got up mid morning flicked through the newspaper, had a few good solid hours in the afternoon and goofed off after 5.30pm. She did not complete all the tasks on her to do list.

 

Question: Which entrepreneur achieved the most in said day?

 

A)    Joseph

B)    Mary

C)    Cannot tell.

 

Answer: C

 

As entrepreneurs the most crucial mistake we can make is confusing activity with progress. The entrepreneur who achieved most is the one who made the most progress towards their end goal.

 

We should not confuse time spent with value created.

Reliability

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

4.17pm – Get email from friend advising of a small bug on rentoid.com

 

4.17pm – I email my main guy from my tech team to ask him to check it out  

4.21pm –  I receive email from my tech guy saying – bug fixed please check it!   

4.23pm – I email my friend advising that it’s all fixed saying – ‘my guy is quick.’ 

4.25pm – Friend emails me back saying “..Wow… that’s amazing.” Blog worthy!! 

As above.

Never underestimate the power strong relationships within supply chains. Strong relationships build efficient supply chains – not the other way around.