Category: startups

Business hygiene

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

We wake up in the morning. Stumble into the shower, have a shave (legs or face), wash our hair. We put on deodorant, brush our teeth, and head off to work.

We work all day.

We return home. We go to the gym or for a jog, return and shower again. Cook dinner, do the washing, tidy up the house, do the dishes, wipe down the sinks.

  

These are our daily tasks. Simple things which just become part of the fabric of living daily. They’re about hygiene and health.

                              

Our business also requires daily hygiene tasks. Tasks which must happen on a daily basis: Paying invoices, managing cashflow, ordering stock, doing paperwork, answering emails, returning phone calls, talking with employees and customers, planning our day,  reading industry related information……   ‘business hygiene’ tasks.

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Business hygiene tasks are not game winners, but they keep us alive in a business sense. Forget these and our business can catch some terrible diseases, maybe kill it.

 

The best approach is to get them into a routine we perform on autopilot. Just like brushing our teeth. Then we can focus on the fun stuff.

Exercise your mind

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Really fit people seem to be good at all sports. Really talented at all the physical things they try. They seem to eat what they like at restaurants and yet remain svelte. How?

Here’s the trick. They don’t just play tennis, swim or jog. They do it all and more. They participate in many and varied types of physical activity and sport. So they exercise their entire body. They develop new motor skills all while refining the base they already have. They stay fit and get fitter.

Our brains work the same way. It gets fitter, stronger and more flexible the more challenges we give it. To just read about business and entrepreneurship only builds certain parts of our mind. Occasionally we need to stretch it in other ways. Read something different, watch a nature documentary, undertake some craft activity, do some gardening, go bird watching. Anything.

When we do this the interconnecting synapses in our mind will develop. We’ll then better cross fertilize our ideas and experience. We’ll open up the space for new solutions….

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So please click out of this blog, and do something you’ve never done. Your mind will thank you for it.

Succession planning

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Sadly Roc Kirby the founder of the Village Roadshow empire in Australia died last week. While reading an article in the Australian Financial Review the reporter mentioned how his kids had taken over the organization with great success. But we also were given another clue as to why.

As soon as his kids were old enough they worked the concession stands serving soda and popcorn and selling cinema tickets. Not in junior executive positions. They learnt the business bottom up.

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No amount of explaining spreadsheets, balance sheets, P & L statements, and public company boardroom battles can prepare someone for a running a business like working at ground level can. The real understanding of any business comes from being where the money is exchanged with actual customers. This is what builds the foundations for a deep understanding of what’s important in a business – operationally and strategically.

If you’ve got a business which is succeeding and you need to think of succession. Startup blog says – think bottom up, not top down.

Have an opinion

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Quite often it pays to be malleable, especially in a corporate environment. The powers that be only want to hear about incremental improvements that build on the status quo. Not change it.

Once we leave and get out there on our own. We must make sure do this:

Have an opinion, create change and go beyond the incremental.

Your school teacher was wrong

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

It’s not cheating, it’s collaborating

It’s Ok to draw outside the lines

Neat handwriting is not a pre-requisite

Touch typing is not a pre-requisite

You don’t have to all wear the same clothes

You can have a respectable job and wear jeans

Conforming does not necessarily lead to success

the ‘Soft’ – subjects are the most important

Talking is not evil, it’s the most important skill you ever learn at school

Having a contrary opinion is fine

You can have a future and be bad at maths

Being different is OK

Doodling on your paper is good for the mind

Daydreaming is fine

…add yours here….

School is vital to our learning. But just remember which bits to ignore.