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Celebrating adding staff is like celebrating the cost of a wedding — it's the liability, not the achievement.

It seems like everyone loves to champion the importance of "scaling our staff," whether it's the media or our local government talking about job creation (when is the last time a startup was successful because it met a job creation metric?) Of course, we proudly announce we're hiring because it implies that our business is doing well, right?

While that may be true, the reality is adding staff still falls under the cost bucket of our income statement, and while those important hires may help us grow revenue, the important distinction is that they are not, in fact, revenue.

They are actually a massive cost, and in most startups, by fa...

Search engine optimization is an area of digital marketing that involves using certain tactics to help your website climb the search engine results pages for queries relevant to your business.

Focusing on boosting your SEO should be a key part of your plan to build an audience, as it can help you to reach a lot more of your target customers.

In this guide, we are going to outline 7 different tips for improving your on-page SEO and improving your site’s search engine visibility. Read on to find out more.

What is on-page SEO?

When we talk about on-page SEO, we’re referring to changes you can make to your own website in order to boost your search engine rankings. This can involve writing optimized copy, creating SEO-friendly content, and e...

One day we wake up and realize our startup is working great for everyone but us — the Founders.

What the hell happened? We started out with big dreams of building our dream job, creating true financial independence, and just being able to do whatever we wanted on our own terms. That sounded great, right?

Yet here were are, spending our days at everyone else's behest. Our days and schedules are driven by the needs of staff, customers, and investors, all of whom mean well, but have essentially put our own goals and needs well into the back seat, and in some cases, forgotten about altogether.

When was the last time we got paid first (or at all)? Or took a vacation without being pulled away 100x by everyone else's needs? Or spent our day the wa...

The one thing everyone remembers about a relationship is how it ended.

As Founders, if we're around long enough, we're going to see the end of a boatload of relationships, and as such if we're not keenly aware of how important it is that we end those relationships gracefully, we're going to end up with a whole lotta angry exes.

There's really no way around this. Unlike our lives as an employee, where it was just us and our boss, when we are the boss, we're at the center of so many important relationships. Whether it's investors, staff, customers, partners, even the media — all of those relationships have a cost, and when they end, those costs actually multiply.

Later on in life, we learn how important it is to have "good breakups" because w...

The best way for Founders to gain power is to create it for themselves.

When I was a kid, I spent my whole existence feeling powerless, like all of my needs and dreams were tied to someone else's rules. I dreaded that feeling, but at every turn the reinforcement of the power dynamic was there, whether it was from my parents, my teachers, or Leeno who owned the pizza place that I worked at when I was 14. They had the power, they had the say. All I could do was make the best of their rules.

And if my adolescence taught me anything, it's that I absolutely hate being told what to do.

While I was a happy kid, I was miserable at my station in life. I thought I'd be the unwilling pawn in someone else's game, always working just smart enough to ma...

I don't remember going to college. I know I went, but I don't remember anything about my college experience, because unlike everyone else, I was too busy working on my startup.

I remember rollerblading (1990s!) across the quad to class on a beautifully sunny day and watching a bunch of my friends playing volleyball and having an amazing time. I wanted to play so badly, but I didn't. I had to get through class so I could skate back to the office for an all-night coding session on a new client project.

This isn't a story about how that effort paid off (it did), this is a story of how badly I regret never having played that day. It's a story of how so many of my life experiences were mortgaged for the sake of building my startup, and how looki...

Show me a startup that was once hot and I'll show you a Founder that got totally distracted by their own bullshit. As Founders, we're in the business of making dreams come true — particularly our own — so when everyone around is telling us how amazing we are, it's really hard to wake ourselves up and realize none of it is real.

Once hot startups all had a moment when everyone was praising what they did. The reason they are "once-hot startups" is that in the very moment they needed to be the most focused, they went off track believing their own press. It's a challenge that as Founders, if we understand, we can put ourselves in a position to avoid altogether.

When We're Up, We're Blind

When things are going well, we assume we've finally "made...

The idea of bringing on a "Superstar Advisor" is usually a total sham.

This isn't because the advisors themselves are a sham (they may be), but more so because our expectations of what these superstar advisors can do are way out of line.

The cost to this notion is giving away valuable equity or creating lob-sided revenue deals without really thinking through what these folks can realistically contribute. It's so easy for Advisors to make bold claims about what's possible, but like the rest of us, it's incredibly hard to back them up consistently.

But again, this normally isn't the fault of the advisors — it's our fault. We lull ourselves into expectations of these heroes that are totally unrealistic, and in many cases, not even what these ...

That's not how this works. We don't get the benefit of sitting on our thrones and commanding our armies until much, much later in life — and in many cases, never. What we are guaranteed along the way is a wraith-like drain on our life force (D&D reference there, fellow nerds) in every possible facet.

What we need to understand, and accept, is that our startup's future can very easily come at the expense of everything we hold dear. It's very much hard-coded into how the Founder Journey works, and damn, do we pay a lot of bills along the way.

First, We Pay With Our Savings

Long before we raise money or earn some revenue, 100% of our "income" is just our personal savings. We use terms like "sweat equity" as if working for free somehow magicall...

We all want to do right by the people connected to our startup, but when do our sacrifices ever get paid back in kind? Or more specifically, do they?

I recently had a tough heart-to-heart with a fellow Founder where they talked about having to move on personally from the startup. They were burnt out, they had diluted all of their upside in multiple rounds of investment, and they felt "stuck."

They were stuck because they felt that if they left, they would first need to do right by all the people around them — their team, their investors, and their customers. All of these people were incredibly hard to convince to work at their startup, so the idea of "leaving them" seemed like an impossible leap.

My advice was blunt: "Do you really think an...