Ideas Archives - Page 28 of 30

Business Plan Template

Posted on July 28, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

It’s well documented that I’m not a big fan of business plans. Mainly because we live in a world of flux. But if you must use one – which I’ll call a 1 page mud map – then here’s a template. I’ve used this and I’d recommend it for ‘real entrepreneurs’ – that is non VC seeking bootstrappers.

What is it?
Describe your business or service in a single sentence. If you can’t do this, you don’t know what you’re doing.

Who is it for?
The audience who need or want this thing you’re about to create. Define them in whatever terms you please, demographically, socially, behaviourally, geographically. Just be succinct and tight in your clustering.

Why do they need it?
How is it better than the current substitute options?

How will they find us?
Where will we gain distribution? Maybe we’ll leverage a strong retail chain. A singular high traffic location. If web based strong SEO / brand awareness will be required. Maybe we already have an audience who we’ll bring a product to. This should be the most detailed part of the plan. It should include brand awareness activities and promotions. It still should only be a round 1 paragraph long.

Cost to build Version 1.0
Just estimate it – then double your estimate. Now this is the bare bones version, the absolute minimum required for launch. Outsource every element of production were possible, unless you are the major factor of production. Keep the cost low. It enhances speed, and reduces fear of failure and inertia.

Revenue Stream
There is no such thing as ‘Free’ – just a delayed revenue model. Ideas include: Sell item for price, Percentage of sales, memberships, premiums, selling advertising among others. Your plan is not finished unless you can answer this in a way your mum can understand.

Next Steps
These steps are related to launching the product. We stop typing and start prototyping. Here’s where we have 3-5 bullet points on how to get to version 1.0 The quickest possible route to being live in market. The steps to when you can out there and start selling & promoting.

That’s it. In fact you final plan should be as short as that we see above. Print it, put it up in your office and get to work.

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Trim the ‘to do’ list

Posted on July 20, 2009 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?

Idea vs Execution

Posted on July 11, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

boxing-gloves

For tonight’s heavy weight bout for the Boxing Entrepreneurship Championship of the world we have a much anticipated battle with:

“Excellent idea with Average execution”

vs

“Average idea with Excellent execution”

After 10 rounds of fighting the undisputed defending champion of the world title belt was awarded to Average idea with excellent execution who has managed to defends the title for time in perpetuity. In fact Average idea with excellent execution has an unbeaten record versus all other challenges in too many matches to remember.

Startups – your idea isn’t nearly as important as you think it is.

10 steps to web start up

Posted on June 2, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

It’s never been cheaper to start a business in the history of man. Especially on line. Startup guru Guy Kawasaki proved it with his $12,000 example for www.trumours.com – But startup blog says you can do it for pretty close to zero. In the spirit of sharing here’s the startup blog list of the 10 things you need to get started, and resources to help perform these necessary tasks.

Idea generating – Ideas these days are free and omnipresent. Steal ideas from www.springwise.com or www.idea-a-day.com – Just take one that suits you and do it. Maybe bring their idea to your geography, or just copy something already successful and do it. There is no currency in ideas. They are free. Take them. Any successful entrepreneur will tell you that is the easiest part of any venture. And they are right.
Name Generating – Actually your business name has nothing to do with success. There’s only two things to consider. Firstly that it’s available (.com?) and secondly that people can say it. Check out www.nameboy.com to help you generate some.
Idea testing – I loved the idea from Timothy Ferriss who tested the idea for the best book name (4 hour work week won it) by using Google Adwords for the various options and seeing which one got the most clicks with certain key words. Inspired stuff. Steal his idea and use adwords to test your business proposition before investing heavily.
Project Managment – Keep your project stuff all in one digital location. The crew over at 37 Signals provide some awesome tools for free in doing so. We’ve used it extensively for rentoid.com
Communication – Get skype set up for all your international dealings phone calls and chats required in managing your project and team. I work with with people all over the world on rentoid and have never paid for a phone call yet. You can even get it on your iphone to make free calls from – Giddy up.
Design – Don’t get stooged paying a zillion dollars for an agency to design your stuff. Leave the agency work for big companies with big budgets, you’re a bootstrapper and need to get it done cheap. But lucky for us these days cheap doesn’t have to mean crap. Check out 99 designs to get your site designed. If you need digital icons or related visuals check out istock photo for great up to date design. For pictures use Flickr creative commons.
CSS (Cascading Style Cheets) – Check out slice and dice it to get your shiny new designs ready for coding.
Coding / Programming – Yep, that tricky stuff which makes it all work under the website. Easy, go straight to Elance or ODesk to find coders for HTML, PHP, Rails, AJAX – anything. They’re all there waiting for your brief. (this should be the only biggish expense for your web startup – which means a few hundred dollars with a currency advantage)
Payment gateway – Use paypal – free set up and the cheapest, most trusted way to accept credit cards and multiple payment forms on the internet.
Promotion tools – OK this is the stuff you’re all familiar with and using daily. So turn these fun parks into business tools by using them properly. But just choose a couple of them and use them well. My favourites are youtube, twitter, blogging (recommend wordpress).

So there you have it – web start up in 10 easy steps. Feel free to add any other cool tools and ideas in the comments.

What are you waiting for? Get started.

Steve.

A real bootstrapper – literally

Posted on May 19, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

The other day I was in the RACV club when I ran into a business I had heard about.

shineshoeshine – which as you’ve probably guessed is a shoe shine business run by bootstrapping entrepreneur Kate Kay.

I had a chat with Kate who has a permanent shoe shine location in the Rialto Towers in Melbourne – a classic corporate targeted location. But also sets up in lots of temporary locations as can be seen above in the RACV city club.

There’s a lot to like about this business:

low startup costs (Some polish, foot stools, a chair…)
Reinvents old world values and personal service
Instant cash payments for service
Ability to be mobile

and my favourite part which I’ll talk about in more detail….

What Kate is now doing is offering her services as a promotional tool. Where brands & company’s can hire her services as a special offer to their staff or customers. The cool thing about this idea is that Kate can become your personal selling agent and talk to her ‘captive audience’ about which ever topic you choose, while her and her staff are busy shinning.

I think it’s a great idea, with a cool point of difference – You can contact her here.

Mistakes are awesome

Posted on April 29, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

I’ve made so many mistakes since I started rentoid, but everyone of them has lead me to a new insight, idea of method. And I’m not alone, so of the greatest inventions, business and ideas are the results of mistakes or unexpected evolutions. The terrific photosharing website Flickr.com started it’s life as an on line game before evolving. The point is it’s worth letting things develop before trying to patch everything. See what path it takes us on. Especially for websites, where unintended uses often lead us to great enlightenment.

While watching this old school break dancing lesson on Youtube – one of the great forefathers of BBoy-ing Crazy Legs said something in the first minute of the video below regarding mistakes. Advice worth remembering in startup land.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bF3tTzW2Ik]

Digital Footprints – the power of

Posted on March 25, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

Recently I took a photo in New York of something I thought to be particularly interesting. I uploaded it to twitpic and posted it on my twitter page. The net result was approx 100 views of the image. Here it is below:

Fast forward 2 months and the image is ‘re-tweeted’ back to me from someone else after it has made the rounds and it now has more than 38,000 views. Holy Wow. (You can click the image to see the current view count)

How did it get 38,000+ views after only 100 people cared when I first posted it? Well the answer is simple, it’s digital, which means its footprint stays forever – the digital footprint. And when someone more influential on the web than me share’s it, it spreads in a compound fashion. Sure it got shared, call it viral, call it what you please. But the thing of true power here is the digital footprint. It wasn’t an instant in market reaction. The spreading happened 2 months after the launch. Not the day it went to air, like a TV advertisement.

The lesson for startups and marketers is simple. The real power of digital media is the footprint it leaves, the permanency, and the ability for people to catch up. This is something traditional media (newspapers, radio, billboards, Tv) just don’t have.