Living the Journey with Startupblog - transcription

Living the Journey with Startupblog – transcription

By Fiona Boyd |

This post is the transcription of a previous videopost with Steve Sammartino founder of Rentoid called “Living the Journey”. Rentoid is the place you can rent anything and startupblog.wordpress.com is where Steve shares honestly, all that he’s learning and thinking about with his startup.

Fiona: I’m talking this afternoon with Steve Sammartino, who you’ve met already. He runs Rentoid.com, it’s the place where you can rent anything. And lots of people in our world do use it and think it’s fun and it’s great and it’s a way of putting your goods that you don’t want to let go of right now to good use. Welcome Steve.

Steve: Thank you

Fiona: Now we’ve spoken about Rentoid in the past but that’s not the only thing you do. You are an avid blogger. But you’re also really generous by nature, because when you started Rentoid – and this is something, you know, most entrepreneurs keep their idea tight – and they have to, because often there are sharks swimming in the waters around you…

Steve: …sure…

Steve Sammartino

Fiona: …but you started startupblog.com as a way of sharing your experiences about what was going on for you. What on earth made you do that?

Steve: It was funny because I started to get into the web world and I thought, everyone’s talking about blogging. I actually blogged a little bit before Rentoid when I knew I – because when I left the company, the large company and I thought, well, I’ll just share the journey. And at first it was called startupblog and entrepreneur’s journey and it was really like a diary of what was happening on this day, you know, meetings with venture capitalists, and I had another business idea before Rentoid. And I was really transparent, because I’d read about this, I’d read this amazing book called the Cluetrain Manifesto…

Fiona: …yes, yes…

Steve: …it’s gold! Read this book, the Cluetrain Manifesto, it’s like nearly ten years old but it’s as poignant and important today as it was then. And so the whole thing was about transparency, I said, you know, if I’m going to go into this world – and the thing I hated about big companies was the lies that they told – I’m going to live it, I’m going to do it, I’m not going to be this bullshit guy, I’m going to be the guy who lives and breathes and says he does what he does do, so I thought, I’m going to be transparent, and I just thought, I’ll start the blog.

And I just started enjoying it so much that I just continued on with it. And then, it was funny, because, at the end of the day, when you sit down and reflect on what happened and what you thought, it actually becomes a really important process for decomposing all the things, and what you need to do, and what matters and what doesn’t, so I just thought, be honest, and still to this day, I spoke recently on the blog about the whole model change that I’m thinking of doing, and yeah, my competitors can probably see that – so what?

Fiona: What I really love about – I mean – and you’re right, your competitors can see what you’re doing, you’re leaving it out and about. But you know, what we forget, as start up people, and in our case we’ve sold a business – is that, if you don’t share your story, all those people coming from behind, who really are hard wired to be entrepreneurs don’t get the learning and you got that straight away. Hats off to you.

Steve: Thanks.

Fiona: And you decided to share it. I’m just wondering, what was the one thing, in the early days, a story that you shared, that you know no one else would have done, in the same situation as you, but you did because it was honest and the right thing to do.

Steve: I think, er, just sharing how I come up with ideas and what I’m about to do next. That’s one of the things I do on the blog – a lot of people talk about what happened. I actually don’t mind talking about what I’m about to do. Cos then people come on a story, it’s like you’re in a movie, you know, if you’re in a blog entry that someone’s done about what’s happened, they’re saying, this is a historical reference. When you say, this is what I’m thinking of doing in this live business, I’ll let you know how it goes – they’re on the edge of their seats and they want to read about it, what’s going to happen.

So that’s the thing that I try and do, is that risky things, I will talk about what we’re about to do before we do it. You know, I kind of also say, this is a sneak preview, and I always say ridiculous things on there, like, shhh, it’s a secret, don’t tell anyone, knowing the world’s reading it. And that’s OK, but, you know why I do it as well?

Ideas are the cheap easy part, you get feedback, that’s true, but also, you know, execution’s the hard bit, that’s the hard bit, not the idea, so you know, transparency, people stealing your ideas and your secrets is not that important, so why not just open up and say, we’re thinking of doing this. You can avoid a catastrophe as well. And people can iterate, and say, yeah, that would be really cool if you did this as well. You need to be – have the semblance of mind to know which things to take on as advice and which things not to, and that’s your prerogative as the entrepreneur.

Fiona: That’s really difficult, I found that really difficult in the Arts Hub days because we sort of rode the tail end of the dotcom boom, and through the bust, and there were a lot of advisors and VC people who really just wanted to shitcan entrepreneurs because they’d lost a bunch of money, and so the next lot, us – self-funded – who came along seemed to clobber the bare backlash against those they’d lost money on. And I think we learned to be really quiet and just to suppress our ideas. And that’s why I really think, you know, it’s such a refreshing change where – you don’t! You let the cat out of the bag, and people can have their say.

Steve: It’s cos I’m lonely! It’s cos I’m there by myself just chipping away with the small team that we’ve got. I’m like, I’ll just put this on the blog and see what people think. And it’s kind of cool, because you know, my office and my community, and the people on my Twitter feed, they’re my people, they’re my confidantes, they’re the people whose opinions I really value. So I put it out there, I’m thinking of doing this, what do you think, guys, on Twitter or on startupblog or whatever and I get the feedback and it’s like my watercooler, these digital forums are my watercooler, and you know, at the watercooler you don’t hide stuff and tell lies, you talk about the issues, what you’re thinking of doing, what the challenges are in your career, so now I’ve just got a digital watercooler and that’s kind of the way I view it.

Fiona: It is very real, isn’t it, that social interaction? Being a, you know, crazy introvert, or a very, very high level introvert, I am fairly…have been so much more comfortable with the online world since I left corporate. But you’re not, are you, you’re an extrovert?

Steve: People say I’m an extrovert, I actually…

Fiona: …maybe you’re not? Maybe you’re the amiable introvert.

Steve: It’s funny because I find, in a big group of people, if I go to some of the social events like the Hive or the Churchill club, I don’t go around talking to a lot of people and networking, I tend to talk to one person and try and have something that’s in-depth.

Fiona: Yes, yes.

Steve: …have a conversation, and they way that I do that is trying to ask about and learn about the other person, because that’s really where you learn, and that’s the interesting stuff, I think, is the people that you meet. Like we met, you know, at the Churchill club, which was really cool. And so I miss the social interaction cos…entrepreneurship’s really lonely, it’s a lonely sport, and people don’t understand you’ve got to learn to deal with that, and I go out to the local cafés with my laptop and do a bit of work there which looks a bit wanky with the Apple and the little iphone. But I do it because I just need people around me, I need some of that movement and colour and warmth and um, but, yeah.

Fiona: Where do you write your best blogs? Is that at home, or is it in the café, or is it on holiday, or is it under pressure?

Steve: It’s always…I write my best blog entries always at home, but here’s what happens, the ideas come out to my whilst I’m out on the road. The best ideas always happen after a meeting, after a discussion, while I’m reading the newspaper or whatever, but you know what I do, I do two things, and I’m going to grab it here. I’ve got my little Steve Sammartino folder and when I have an idea I’ll just write, blog entry on this, and when I just write that little sentence, it means something to me, and when I get home I’ll go, oh that was what happened today, I’ll write the blog entry about it, but there are those few, you know, I’ll just do a couple of bullet points, because you’ve got to write things down…

Fiona: …straight away…

Steve: …otherwise you forget it. So that’s why pen and paper were invented, because your mind’s not a filing cabinet. So you’ve got to get it out of your brain so you can remember it later. So I do that, and then when I get home at night…I usually do blog entries really early in the morning or really late at night.

So it’s usually, I come up, I wake up in the morning and I’ve got a good thought, or late at night, at the end of the day, when I’m watching TV I’ll just kind of…I don’t even realise, I mean, people say, how do you blog so much? Cos I do an entry every day, religiously, I’ve done that for more than three years, and I say, for me it’s like people watching Sale of the Century or whatever TV show they like, it’s not even work, it’s like a pleasure, I just love it so much, I don’t even realise and then all of a sudden I’ve got, I don’t know, over a thousand entries.

Steve: If anyone wants to have a blog that’s successful – mine gets about 30,000 readers a month, so it’s quite good, and you know, if you type startupblog into Google, it’s number one, all around the world, and I’ve tested it, you know, whatever country I’m in, cos I know that it’s got geolocating. So the one piece of advice – I do one little trick that makes me – that makes sure I’m on topic – I make sure I have the word entrepreneur or startup in every single entry…

Fiona: …yeah…

Steve: It’s in every single entry – you go back to my blog and have a look. If one’s not in their I’ll slap myself. But pretty much every entry has one of those two words in there, and what that does is it ensures that I’m on topic. So sometimes it’s about something that you wouldn’t think is related to entrepreneurship.

Something that I said that’s interesting, but what I’ll try and do is withdraw the entrepreneurial insight, or the startup insight from that idea or that thing I’ve been exposed to or thought about. So that’s what I do to keep it on topic, and then that helps, it makes people come back. If they’re interested in a topic they’re going to come back to that topic every time.

That’s what I do to keep them interested in that thing. And frequency. People want to – it’s kind of like how you get your toast or your cup of coffee – I read my five favourite blogs, boom boom boom, and if you’re not there, ah, here’s a post I like, I’ll go to the next one. So they’re the two simple things I do.

Fiona: Thank you for your time today, Steve.

Steve: Thank you.

Photo: Steve Sammartino

Steve Sammartino is about to share startup learning with a bunch of startup entrepreneurs at two Start Up Schools – taking place in November in Melbourne and Sydney. There are limited places left, so if you want to rocket fuel your startup learning, make sure you sign up for Steve Sammartino’s Start Up School.

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