strategy Archives - Page 13 of 15

The AFL Gestapo

Posted on August 4, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

It’s often said that a fish rots at the head first. I’m glad this is true because I’m getting pretty sick of Andrew Demetriou proclaiming these words…

‘The game has never been in better shape’

‘We have record attendances’

‘Our media deal is the most lucrative in Australian sport’

Yep, you’ve heard them all before. What Andrew doesn’t have the wisdom to understand is that the business graveyard is full of businesses who got it wrong well before there was any evidence in the numbers. It might not hurt to listen to the supporters once in a while.

A few things Andrew Demetriou ought remember:

Andrew not only do they pay your wage, but the media deals are also dependent on supporters.
Love will endure a lot of pain, but eventually the relationship will break if things don’t improve. Yes, AFL supporters currently love the game.
You are servant to the clubs, they are not servant to you…. Kind of sounds a lot like Communism….. For the good for the game? Or the good for the AFL commissioners egos & back pockets?
Your salary cap is a hoax. Especially when ‘chosen players’ can become AFL ambassadors and receive non salary cap income when they are feeding from the same income source.
Silencing the media (Grant Thomas) and fining club presidents (Jeff Kennett) for their ‘harmless commentary’ is sounding a lot like what the Gestapo did in Nazi Germany.
Ignoring long time supporters and existing markets (Tasmania / North Melbourne) and using the general AFL bursary to enter territories in which you are inherently ‘unwanted’ (Western Sydney & Gold Coast) is also sounding like events which lead to World War 2. Both West Sydney & GC will be money pits. You need a few lessons in Global marketing at the AFL. Culture is difficult to change, and you may as well be operating in another country in this case. There’s only so many Victoria Ex-pats available.
AFL tribunal – having to prove your innocence at the risk of a more severe punishment is unheard of Western Society. Let alone trying to quantify someones intention in such incidents. I didn’t know the AFL could read minds. Congratulations.
Rule changes – It’s a game, not a government – let it evolve.
Tanking does exist. The simple reason you believe it doesn’t is because the ramifications of admitting it are too dire for anyone to be honest. Just because something can’t be proved, it doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

The main issue is this. You are not listening, and your time will run out.

Startup blog says: If you want to run a successful business, don’t be like the AFL, listen instead.

I am on Twitter – Click here to chat with me

Startup philosophy

Posted on June 9, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

I just had a great meeting with a Mick Liubinskas. He runs a business called Pollenizer. Nice guy.

The thing that struck me is that Mick has a really cool philosophy which is evident when you meet him. And it was exactly the same as the philosophy I imagined when I read the words on the Pollenizer website. Which is very cool, because all too often people don’t act the way they claim too.

Actually it’s a pretty simple business or startup philosophy. Are we what our customers imagine? Do we meet or beat expectations? Turns out this has little to do with technology, more to do with attitude and it has a lot to do with our ultimate success.

Boring and Stealth

Posted on June 5, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

There’s been a lot of conjecture as to my post below – that ‘boring is profitable’. I’ve been inundated with tweets from people providing examples of exciting yet profitable companies. And yes, exciting can be profitable. But that wasn’t the point of the allegory. The point is that Boring is Stealth!

Stealth bombers are about being undetected. If you can’t be seen, you can’t be shot down. Pretty simple concept really. The equivalent of stealth in business is boring. Because boring stuff is invisible to the majority of consumers and entrepreneurs. Given the way we are ‘attacked in business’ is by competitors, then the best way to avoid competition – is by being invisible. Which for startups is much more probable than developing a monopoly through competitive barriers or brand loyalty.

What to change

Posted on May 18, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

There is no limit to the available resources available to entrepreneurs these days. Everyone is an ‘expert’ on what ‘you’ should be doing with your business. This blog included.

So with all the recommendations of what makes sense, it really comes down to one thing: What to change.

What should we change to make our startup more successful, and the answer is this:

Only change things which aren’t working.

butterfly

Regardless of who the advice comes from – even if it is advice from the uber successful. Their method might not work in your industry, with your team, or maybe, they got lucky. If you’ve worked out a method that works, stick with it.

Only take advice, where advice or change is needed.

Know what to do

Posted on May 10, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

I was thinking about my business rentoid.com and why I believe we, the rentoid team can succeed making this business something incredibly valuable for all our people. (I’ll do my next blog entry on those two important words, valuable & people).

These are the 4 reasons:

Our concept has been validated in market.
We know what to do.
We know how to do it.
We are are actually doing it – right now.

If you have these 4 factors working in your favour, then success is inevitable. Of course all of these elements need some explaining.

1. Our concept has been validated in market.

Firstly let’s look at the last two words in this sentence – in market. This means we have launched, we are live, we have customers, and revenue. We have gone beyond the idea (the easy part), and launched something which makes the original business launch plan a historical & irrelevant document. Concept validation – this has occurred when people are buying what we sell as well as any positive coverage we have. Coverage includes people and media talking about what we are doing for other people, the people who buy from us, not us. Basically – the business has potential and isn’t a stupid whim.

2. We know what to do.

We’ve been doing what we do, selling what we sell long enough to know the crappy parts of our business. We know what we must improve to make our semi-broken, yet still alive startup get better. We’ve been around long enough to have feedback from the market which gives us a good indication of how to improve our ‘thing’. Until this point innovation, location, good people and lots of saying sorry has kept us alive. But time has nearly run out, and we’ve learned what must be done to grow and eventually thrive.

3. We know how to do it.

Not only do we understand the above conceptually, but we actually know how to make this stuff happen. We’ve gone beyond ideas for improvement like – make the website more usable, reduce the price of the widget, create national brand awareness or increase distribution, and actually have an executable plan in place. A plan which isn’t a pipe dream, but an achievable reality. A reality in which we have the team, the skills, the financial resources and the time needed to bring our improved offer to market.

4. We are actually doing it – right now.

The plans have been put down as discussed in parts 2 and 3. In fact we won’t even look at them again. They are now ‘historical documents’. Instead we are fully engaged in implementing what we have agreed is the correct strategy. They are live projects the team is actively engaged in on a daily basis which will fundamentally change the marketing mix of our business. The projects have budgets and deadlines and we will not rest until they have been completed. Only then will we go back to part 2, 3 and 4 again.

When we do this – we are on the path to success.

(Which by the way we should define as follows: Success = the progressive realization of a worthwhile ideal. )

Magnation – great battle story

Posted on April 22, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

Last night Sahil Merchant the founder and CEO of Magnation (uber terrific magazine retailer) gave an inspiring talk at the Hive.

It was great to hear a great battle story, and not some story by an egoistical rich guy. A real battle story. His honesty was brilliant, and everyone loved it. Rather than re-tell it – I’ve used the power of twitter and and captured all the tweets with #hivemelb from last night which occurred while he was speaking in real time. It’s very interesting to see what caught peoples attention.

Read bottom up to see the tweets in order of occurance.

Steve Sammartino

The strategy is fine

Posted on April 20, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

Today I had a discussion with a fellow entrepreneur who was wondering whether to reduce his pricing on a new business. His point was related to the fact that his very new business hadn’t achieved a great deal of sales volume just yet.

Then I asked him if he had implemented any of the sales generating activities we had discussed last week – to which the answer was no. My response was straight and simple:

If you haven’t been out knocking on doors selling your product to the potential target market, then how is it possible to know if the marketing mix is wrong?

It was at that time he knew he had some boot strapping work to do and get out there and sell.

picture-3

The point for entrepreneurs is that it is easy to get tempted to constantly revisit the strategy. To go back to the plans when things are not automatically falling into place. Instead of doing the really hard stuff – we look for a simple revision of ideas, the plan and all that shiny stuff. The thing we often avoid is the hard effort of selling and facing rejection. But until we go out into the market and try to generate revenue, it’s impossible to have real market feedback of what needs revised.

So before we re-design our plans and process, we have to test the current one in market. We do this by trying to sell what we already have at every possible distribution point. Until we have done that, strategy revision is just an excuse for not putting in the effort required.