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Neil Patel’s introduction of the author: When I think about branding, logo design, and designing great products, there’s one person I love working with. He has worked with me for many years and for several of my companies. His name is Ian Main, and this post—based on his latest work helping me rebrand Quick Sprout—is about Ian’s thoughts on how to create a great brand.

When I was growing up in Australia, my family would drive seven hours every Christmas holiday to visit my grandparents. There were five McDonald’s restaurants on that trip, and I knew exactly where each was and the distance between them. The sports teams I played for gave out McDonald’s gift vouchers, and McDonald’s sponsored our team equipment and ceremonies.

The colors, sm...

In 2014, my friends and I set out to build the best possible web design tools. We built UI kits, Admin Dashboards, Templates, and Plugins. We’ve always tried to create web products that are helpful in the development process, and that we would use ourselves for building websites for clients.

From a revenue’s perspective, if we don’t take into consideration the Black Friday sales (which doubled the amount that we made in November 2016), we are grossing around $22,000 per month. Part of that goes toward paying our affiliates’ commissions, collected VAT, payment vendors’ taxes, and other expenses. We end up netting around $17,000 each month.

In this case study, I’ll share exactly how we built our products and grew our business. You’ll hear all...

There’s a limited number of colours and shapes in this world, so your logo isn’t your whole brand. Your colour could remind a potential customer of a completely unrelated business (I recently thought of a well known auto care shop when looking at the website of a debt refinancer) and you need to rely on more than just that one aspect of your company to raise brand awareness.

If you have a marketing campaign, do you use just one channel? Only one ad image? Of course not, any campaign is more effective with multiple channels. It’s the exact same principle for “startup branding”.

Have you ever answered the phone without looking, heard “hey it’s me” and known exactly who it was? This is essentially what you want for your company. You want your...

“The trouble with not having a goal is that you can spend your life running up and down the field and never score.”
~Bill Copeland

It’s not exactly a groundbreaking claim to say that setting business goals is crucial to the success of any company. But sometimes, as Founders, we get so focused on the big-picture goals we have for our company, we forget about another set of goals we should be setting: goals for our team.

Trying to run a company without setting team goals is kind of like a football coach sending their team onto the field without a game plan. You may score a touchdown, sure – but the more likely outcome is chaos, confusion, and a whole lot of hurt.

The big-picture goals you set for your company may be the roadmap that shows yo...

“While culture might eat strategy for breakfast — cynicism will devour your carefully-nurtured culture for lunch, dinner, and snacks in between.”

–Jason Eckenroth, Cynicism: Predator Of Your Company Culture

We all know what cynicism looks like. It isn’t hard to spot. It’s all around us. Maybe what’s hard to accept is that it can’t be stopped, to admit the scary truth that it’s highly contagious. Anyone can succumb to it who isn’t willing to examine oneself. Or step outside of a group that has been infected and begin the hard conversations that can cure the poison.

But where does it come from? What causes cynicism? How can you protect yourself and your company from it’s corrosive effects? In today’s Startups Live, Founders fearlessly confron...

The end of the calendar year is an extremely busy time for most entrepreneurs and business leaders. From the months of October-December, most of us are busy converting new customers, fulfilling last-minute orders, launching special holiday campaigns and offers, and trying to drive as much business as we can before the new year.

In addition, a lot of us spend the last few months of the year evaluating successes and failures, adjusting budgets, and deciding how teams will grow or shrink in the year ahead.

It’s one of the most taxing times of the year for anyone managing a business.

It’s also the time of year when it’s easiest to neglect friendships, personal hobbies, and family life.

When business is booming and you’re quickly approaching...

When I started my company 12 Labs, I initially struggled. But once I learned how to be productive, I was able to grow my app to 450K+ downloads, a 4.5-star rating and a place in the top 100 Health and Fitness apps in the app store. In this post, I reveal my secrets for getting things done.

I used to perpetually procrastinate—even to the point of missing bills. I needed inspiration before I could be productive, but it never came. The first two winters of building my business I also struggled with depression, until figuring out how to master things. The core reason for my startup depression was stress.

Quitting a nice-paying job is stressful, though it wasn’t obvious right away. I only recognized it as guilt for not getting things done. A few...

“The problem here: a) making a business that didn’t give us money early on, and b) not giving up; we kept putting money into the business without knowing we were already dead.”

The special guest of this Startups Live session, Caya, has some great stories to tell. “Started my first business in 2011 (I was 22) and it failed terribly. I ended up with $15K in credit card debt that I just finished paying up last year. The problem here: a) making a business that didn’t give us money early on, and b) not giving up; we kept putting money into the business without knowing we were already dead.”

Well, this may not sound ‘great’, but even this painful experience, which Caya freely shares, comes with silver linings. You might say that he has a knack fo...

As your business grows, so does your need to scale sales efficiently. Scale can be your best friend, or the elephant in the room threatening to knock your growth off course. Your sales team needs special attention to scale efficiently. They’re a huge part of why your company is successful, don’t lose the magic that makes you special. Here are the areas to pay attention to when it’s time to scale your sales team.

Sales Training & Mentorship

Training a small team is easy. You know exactly what works and how to communicate it. Communicating the skills and strategies your team needs as a big organization becomes much more difficult. You won’t always get 1-on-1 time with each rep who talks to your customers.

It’s important to develop internal...

People are hardwired to value transparency. From an evolutionary perspective, transparency has always been essential for survival. Our safety has depended upon determining whether other humans are trustworthy. Complementing this need to understand is the psychological desire to understand and be understood. Transparency is an integral part of the need for belonging, which Maslow ranked next to safety in importance.

When you first meet someone, there’s little transparency, and little trust. Over time, as your new friend shares experiences, opinions, and insights, transparency — and trust — increase.

We, as humans, like transparency. And not just in friendships. Transparency makes business sense because we like companies and brands that are ...