Tag: strategy

the instant reward society

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

I was recently asked how  a particular rentoid promotional activity went. Which was when we got rentoid on iwearyourshirt.com

Turns out it was pretty cool, he did a good job of promoting our stuff, but there wasn’t a huge upswing in members or rentals. Which is OK – it wasn’t a game winning activity. It got me thinking about our attitudes towards instant gratification. We live in a world where we want and expect instant gratification. In nearly all things. It’s not hard to understand why with Google results, instant video, mobile technology that we want our answer right now, or we’ll move on.

This has a dangerous implication for entrepreneurs – in that the business world doesn’t work this way. Sure we need to move quick, finish things fast, and innovate constantly – but this still wont (or very rarely) will deliver instant results. We need ignore all the stories we read about our heroes who ‘did’ have things work out rather quick. They are the 1 in 6 billion aberration – and believe me it is not us – we are not that lucky. And it is luck, not brilliance. Proof of this lies in the fact we all know a handful of equally brilliant people who haven’t had the luck of Zuckerberg or Sergy.

We need need instead is to stay the course, and have faith in our actions. We must celebrate effort rather than results. Because there is no telling when the results will actually appear. But if we do the right things they will come to fruition. Success which may not be the global type entrepreneurs like dreaming about – but success to a level of great satisfaction.

We again can look to nature to see this in action. If we took societies instant gratification ethos into growing our food we’d all starve to death. In nature things take many months at a minimum, many years as the usual, and oft times, many years before we will yield anything. Whether we are growing vegetables, crops or fruit, we have to believe that doing the right thing will result in in just rewards. But we will not see the rewards until a long time after the input of our efforts. Efforts which must be made consistently every day with nothing to show for it. We must have faith that that the results will eventually come. Without faith the motivation to continue the nurturing will be lost. We wont do what is needed and the crop will fail. There is no instant reward in nature.

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And there is rarely an instant reward in business. We need the same faith we have in nature when we know we have the right ingredients. We must continue to attend to the field regardless of physical evidence of success. We must celebrate effort and not results. Only then will we have the patience and tenacity required for a financial yield.

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Why speed wins

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

In start up land the most important thing we can do is do things fast. It’s the opposite of the perfectionism we learn in graduate school and large corporations especially as it pertains to marketing.

Here’s why:


So the startup blog explanation of my above chart goes something like this:

No project, task or strategy is ever perfect. Even if we spend a large amount of time developing it. At best it will be around 90% of what we need or imagine. If we cut the available amount of time in half (which is this example is 6 weeks) we may be able to achieve 70% of the desired outcome. But what option 2 presents for us is the ability to learn and revise quickly. In fact we can launch another version (version 2.0) of said project for another 70% progression.

The net result is pretty simple – we’ll be a progression of 140 vs 90. Pretty simple. And in startup land the reality is we often don’t know how effective something will be until it is implemented, and from here the lessons will emerge. In addition it moves us up the learning curve and in all probability the next implementation will be far more effective than the first.

The other fact we have to consider is that speed is important for our customers. They like to see progression, even if it is less than perfect. They know things are improving and that we are making stuff better for them. It’s also far less confusing to deal with incremental consistent change than it is a total re-design. We also remove the risk of better ideas and methods putting a kibosh on doing anything at all and creating inertia.

And this is why in startup land, speed wins.

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Entrepreneurial Chat

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Here’s a Skype chat I had with a fellow entrepreneur I am fortunate to know (Michelle) who runs the super terrific Deck of Secrets business:

The chat revolved around a few topics, But I thought I’d share my pearls of wisdom from the chat, as they were written. There is some Adult content – a little swear word or two… but who am I to censor reality?

Steve Sammartino
Yeh, Here’s my new web marketing policy… are you ready?
Michelle Matthews
hit me with it.
Steve Sammartino
It comes with a warning of Adult content…. Still wanna hear it?
Michelle Matthews
now you’ve got me scared but yes i’m ready
Steve Sammartino
do lot’s of sh*t… do it quick as f**k
Eventually something will stick….
and be a tight arse… get that shit free
Michelle Matthews
I like it. Its suits my non-planning, do what you feel like ways.
Steve Sammartino
Planning is a joke – I’m serious. rentoid plan. 1 page.
Companies do it to justify wages… of people who do f**k all
Michelle Matthews
Planning looks good and big companies do it longish term to mess with the small players who can make things happen over night except that they weren’t booked in 18 months earlier.
Steve Sammartino
Well here’s my view on plainning….. This is serious. 1 page per million of revenue. No more than 10 pages of planning regardless of revenue.
Otherwise It simply cannot be strategic.
Michelle Matthews
A friend of mine wrote a book a while ago called Things Big Businesses Do , subtitle that small businesses should do (Mark Brownley) When will you publish the reverse?
Steve Sammartino
I will publish the reverse…. (personal view is I disagree with that maxim…) Companies over plan when they don’t know what to do, how to do it, or how to motivate people to get it done….. Do is key. Mistake quick and often. Find what works, the truth is no one really knows what works because we live in a state of flux.
Michelle Matthews
it must be illustrated
Steve Sammartino
Most of the good shit that has happened in life and business for me has been through experimentation, not planning. Even my life plan is a simple Venn diagram…. wanna see it….
?
Michelle Matthews
Mark had some good lessons but with the pace of change now and the loss of confidence in big companies and governments there has never been a better time to learn from dynamic, nimble companies.
Steve Sammartino
Agreed
Michelle Matthews
yes, please show it to me.
Steve Sammartino
Like you – rockstar… Hoping some will rub off
Michelle Matthews
When I start raking in the $ then I will feel like I’ve made it. Because then I can indulge in more of my ideas.
It’s not about the $ though.
Steve Sammartino
Just look at the visual: Venn
Success = The progressive realization of a worthwhile ideal (as you say $ is not mentioned)
Michelle Matthews
I’d like the $ so I can scoop up all the talented people out there and pay them good $ for them to put their talent to satisfying projects.
Steve Sammartino
Scoop them up now so they can share your success and make it inevitable….
provide ‘options’ for sharing wealth… while you share your dream.
Michelle Matthews
I like your diagram. I think I saw it at breakfast that morning. I should have a crack at my own but Ross keeps distracting me with places to visit on the internet.
Steve Sammartino

Yes – Ross…
hmmm me too – I’ve been getting a bit hungrier lately…. gotta make it happen this year…. my opportunity cost is very high to forgo wages….

Some interesting insightsin the chat. Take from them what you will.

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The Feedback Trap

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

I recently heard an interview with the Drummer from band Midnight Oil, Rob Hurst. He was asked how he felt about a particular record which made it to number 1 on the US charts. His response was this:

‘We were too busy touring, putting on shows to follow the bands progress.”


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It sounded as though serving the fans they already had was more important than gaining new ones. And guess what happens when we do that? Our reputation grows and more fans arrive, they find us because we are delivering something special to those who already appreciate what we are doing.

The formula for success is to continue to focus on delivering good stuff to those who already believe in you. To improve our delivery to them. Just like Midnight Oil was continuing to perfect the live performance of it’s songs. They weren’t worrying if their songs were good enough, they weren’t focused on external feedback from sources like sales revenue or chart positions. They ignored all feedback, except that from existing fans (customers). They didn’t get caught in the feedback trap.

So what are the feedback traps of the modern entrepreneur?
–    Website traffic
–    Google analytics
–    Facebook friends
–    Twitter follows
–    AC Nielsen data
–    Market share statistics
–    (Insert feedback mechanism here)

These tools can be useful, but they also tempt us to change tack.  They tempt us into believing we are strategically wrong, because the feedback is so instant. Where as the benefits of our strategy is never so instant. Strategy takes time to work, it takes belief and patience, more over it takes ‘the real feedback’ cycle to spread before we can truly know if we have something. And the real feedback cycle is what our current customers have to say, and if they spread the word.

Startups out there – don’t fall into the feedback trap.

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Zero Cost Advertising & Social Media

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

I’ve blogged before many times about how to generate brand awareness with limited or zero budget. The list of tools available is pretty long actually. No need to list them here – you know what they are. But to use them effectively takes two important ingredients:

Ingredient No 1: Frequency
If we think are are going to start a brand blog, a youtube channel, twitter account and all our communication problems will be solved over night, then we have really not understood what has happened with social media. If I was to summarize it it succinctly. I’d say – we’ve gone from a ‘produced’ world to an ‘organic’ world. The produced world took large capital investments. The organic world is free, but not everything grows, and those that do take time. It’s a lot like nature, free but time & frequency of events is the asset.

The more often we return to our crop and nurture it, the healthier the return we’ll get. Occasionally something will just click. We only have to do something ‘once’ and it will grow astoundingly with little input other than the raw ingredients. The market will take get hold of the communication and we’ll crack it – it’ll go viral. This is the anomaly – it happens so rarely, that we know about it every time. Best advice is to assume it wont happen to us.

Ingredient No 2: Patience
We don’t have to buy the communication asset. They’re here, we have been given them, but we have to work them. We need to allow time for our compound effort to accumulate. Be patient and trust that our continual effort and focus on frequency, will work in the long run.

Patience has something on its side that the old media world didn’t – digital foot prints. Our stuff stays on line forever. So when a passionate web surfer finds one of our things they like – they can do a back catalog on our stuff. This is when things can work, even months after launch date. A TV ad on the other hand has one shot at the eyeballs. If it’s missed by the target market, it’s all too late.

No doubt, we need to build great stuff for people to care, but in the new world of zero cost communications, Startups can can get it wrong and learn as we go.

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