Two significant events for the buildabrand.com team occurred in December last year: the roll out of the beta site, and the arrival of Justin’s son Leo.

Here we have picked out some highlights of the interview where Justin speaks about the challenges of starting a business at the same time as becoming a father:

How do you find the balancing act between Leo and buildabrand.com?

“It has been a balancing act from the start. I started working on buildabrand.com full time and the baby was conceived in the same month. It then took nine months to get to “the release date” for both: beta launch and birth. Since then it has been 24/7 of nurturing the business and our son. It is challenging and at times exhausting but extremely fulfilling to see progress in both on a daily basis.”

Is it advantageous to have the flexibility of owning your own company as a young father?

“To be honest, I don’t know how I could make the situation as successful without having the flexibility to be at home when needed and not miss those precious first moments. Mixing being a parent and an entrepreneur is very natural, almost like having twins.”

Justin continues that flexibility is just as important for a web-based start-up as it is
for a father:

“Our team is in multi-locations and having all our assets in the ‘cloud’ enables the business to fit into everyone’s daily life.”

With a young child and a young business, sleep must be difficult to fit in. How hard do you find it to stay motivated and energised?

You find new resources within yourself you didn’t realise existed. The buzz of the birth gives you a tremendous amount of energy, having quick achievable goals and small wins within your daily work schedule is also great for motivation.”

How does starting a business compare with starting a family? Which is the more nerve-wracking – birth or speaking to 450 people?!

“I’d say birth! Talking in front of 450 people is always going to make your nervous until you get started, but with birth you feel the earth move! For me it was euphoric, Katya had a natural birth, 33 hours, it was long a journey and an adventure. When you start a business, you often have a more or less clear idea of your objectives and strategy, but when you have a family, you just want to be happy.”

How does it feel to become a father for the first time and what is your advice to young fathers who are also entrepreneurs?

“When Leo was born, it was the most amazing moment in my life. Use your entrepreneurial spirit to create as many opportunities to bond with your little one as possible, make sure you enjoy every minute of parenthood and have fun!”

Click here to read the full text of the article on pages 65 & 66 in the online version of FQ magazine.

As a start-up ourselves, it’s fantastic to hear you believe buildabrand.com has the ability to “empower small businesses”. What you really highlighted was the growing need for accessible brand building amongst start-ups and entrepreneurs.

We learnt that 38% of you are start-up entrepreneurs, 22% are running micro-businesses, a staggering 52% are technology and web focused and 8% of you have a “revolutionary new idea” (we like that!).

Most of you were interested in buildabrand.com as a low cost way to build a brand. You felt that the site has made branding less challenging and more accessible, leaving you with time to focus on other business activities.

A staggering 87% of you plan to use your new buildabrand brand on a website, followed closely by 66% who would need business cards and stationery bits, whilst 63% of you would want to get your brand out on display and shared through Twitter and Facebook.

Your feedback has been invaluable in shaping up our product and strategy, we’ve been listening and implementing as much as we can in closed beta. Listening to everyone who uses the site is really important to us, its your product and we love hearing what you have to say.

A whopping 1023 wrote us personalised feedback in the survey, we are working our way through them and will contact everyone who has asked us questions. To give you an idea of what’s being said, we created a word cloud below using wordle.net

Some of our favourite words used to describe buildabrand.com were “outstanding”, “inspiring” and “revolutionary” and it’s fantastic you believe the service will “help a lot of people realise their dreams”.

A few of our favourite comments from the survey are highlighted below:

“Love the concept, love the clarity. Looks simple to use and it’s making it [branding] more accessible to more people. Also love the fact that you can do everything and come out with a finished product to do business with. Wish you every success with this.”

“Very good initiative. Reusable and easy-to-reach expertise in all commercial aspects is a big asset for all small size companies.”

“Buildabrand sounds like a great idea for entrepreneurs like me who have little money, but big ideas.”

“I offer business planning and marketing services to other entrepreneurs and small-to-midsize businesses – there is a HUGE need for products like yours. I’m tired of having to help them coordinate amongst web, printer and branding designers/agencies.”

“Your idea is brilliant, I’ve worked with logo designers already but I did not find a single One Stop Shop as you are. Brand building online is very difficult and you make it easy.”

Just when you thought it was all over…

We have a brand new survey (‘Brand’ new! Get it?) click here.

As an incentive to spending 2 minutes filling this out, anyone who takes part will be entered into a competition to win a brand and $150 worth of Amazon vouchers!

We’re look forward to hearing what you have to say next and don’t forget to get in touch!

This event is all about building more influence, more recognition and more results from your business and personal brand. When you consider that getting your brand right is a key part of building a successful and valuable business!

Speakers include…

* Mike Harris – Founder of Egg, which floated for £1.3B just 3 years after launch.
* Kanya King MBE – Founder of the MOBO Awards, seen in 57 countries by 250M people.
* Sabirul Islam – A best selling author and international speaker at just 18 years old.
* Peter Thomson – The creator of over 150 products.
* Dan Wagner - On the Times Rich List, founder of Venda, pioneering internet entrepreneur.
* Justin Champney – Top brand builder and founder of Buildabrand.com
* Mindy Gibbins-Klien – Has helped over 300 people write, publish and promote their books.
* Deirdre Bounds – Founder of i-to-i Travel, which she grew from nothing to over £20M in 10 years.

See you there! Expand Your Brand

The Early Bird Offer allows selected beta-sign ups to download and apply their brand an unlimited amount of times, for the one-off price of only £10! Momblo.com were the first to take advantage of this special offer and within minutes of creating their design, it was up and running on their website – take a look!

They started out as a secondary ticketing marketplace, offering an online portal where customers could access tickets to concerts, sports, musicals and theatre events across the globe… So whether you are travelling to China on holiday or visiting the United Kingdom for a short period, Momblo can offer the best selection of entertainment venues. They also offer a 100% guarantee on authenticity of tickets, payment, and delivery before the event.

Building on that success, they now also offer customers the ability to join free guestlists and book tables at the hottest clubs, working directly with promoters worldwode to guarantee the night is a success!

So what did they want to achieve from using buildabrand.com…

Founder of Momblo.com Pogos Saiadian gives us his thoughts:

‘Branding is very important. What we wanted to achieve with our Momblo brand, was to communicate the trust and professionalism that stands behind the brand, as well as the fact that we are a fun company, specialising in entertainment.’

Did buildabrand.com live up to the task…

‘With a few intuitive clicks, I directly chose what I would like my brand to communicate, a logo that reflected this, as well as the layout and colours. It took me between 10-15 minutes to try multiple variations before choosing my design, at a very affordable price. I think the service is a must for any online vendor; whether you are a reseller on eBay or operate a website, buildabrand will make your services look professional and trustworthy!’

Wow thanks! Check out their new branding and search for an exciting event in your area!

If you haven’t had your invite, don’t worry we are still working through them… and there is still time to sign up – visit our homepage buildabrand.com

We were really impressed with the use of the brand symbols, how it was used on both their website and twitter, and wanted to find out a bit more about Cook Farms history…

They started out in 2004 when Mike retired from the Army, Marci then joined her husband in the family business two years later. What started out as a relaxing activity has now gone from strength to strength; with a speciality of Rhode Island Red and New Hampshire Red Chickens, a jewellery craft line, and regular science projects with the local schools… this is one busy farm!

Here, Marci Cook tells us why she liked using buildabrand.com so much:

“I found out about buildabrand.com through @MGrosheim from www.thesocialtweep.com when I asked him about his logo. He directed me to your site and the rest is history! Your site is very easy to use. I love it!!! I love that you narrow down the choices for us and that if it doesn’t “look right” or fit, we can always go back and rework it. Everyone that I talk to says they love our logo! They ask about it and I direct them to buildabrand.com.”

We are really happy to see buildabrand.com helping a small and inspiring business, keep up the good work! Our designers Gilles and Cecile were equally impressed, having designed the bird as a cool symbol for an independent and confident brand.

So what does the future hold for these new brands at Cook Farms?

They plan to use their new brand on a sign for their yard, business cards, t-shirts and stationary in the future… WOW, we can’t wait to see it all popping up!

A fellow brand builder in his own right, Michael allows companies and individuals to reserve a day in his calendar where he will promote them all over Twitter, Facebook and his daily blog.

The Social Tweep started out as a response to Michael losing his job over a year and a half ago and deciding to work for himself. Finding the perfect avenue to utilise his fondness for engaging with people (and talking in general) has resulted in big brand names such as Starbucks and Abc using his services!

We have Jason Sadler, founder of iwearyourshirt.com to thank for introducing Michael to the site.
Here’s is what he thought of his buildabrand.com experience:

“The website is very easy to use. Creating a logo which allows you to include personality is amazing. Coupling pictures with style, tone, outlook and character options is very unique. Having the option to go back and forth during the process, making changes to find the perfect logo, and the number of logos provided based on some very basic questions helped me find the perfect logo.”

Michael is very happy to have created the “perfect” logo with buildabrand.com, one that shows his fun side, is eye-catching and prompts people to ask more about The Social Tweep. Well… that makes us very happy too! You can even purchase your own jumper or t-shirt featuring the design through his Tweep Store!

The symbol was designed by Gilles and Cecile as part of a series inspired by happy, chirpy, twittering birds – very fitting for Michael’s brand, whoopie it’s working!

So what does the future hold for The Social Tweep?

Michael has big future plans to build on the community effect of his business – prompting followers to engage and be in with a chance of winning prizes from the brand of the day!

We wish Michael every success with The Social Tweep and will be watching his tweets eagerly!

Yesterday Jason Sadler from iwearyourshirt.com hung out in Jacksonville Florida wearing our buildabrand.com t-shirt for the day. Whilst filming, blogging and taking photos he generated a storm of new twitter followers, new beta testers and our first YouTube video, pretty impressive!

You can check out his blog here featuring his daily recap and the buildabrand.com photo “I’m on my DeerPhone at Angies Subs” which made it into Jason’s’ top 5 out of 1,251 taken so far this year!

Jason used buildabrand.com to create an identity in a few minutes, describing one of the best parts as “you don’t need ANY design or technical skills to use it” – see, it really is that easy! You can see the what he created on his blog!

We also gave Jason 10 beta invites to give away to startups who need support with their branding. His tweeting, blogging and videos amassed an amazing 4500% increase in beta sign-ups – we hope the lucky winners below are taking advantage of being chosen!

• Leslie S – Personal Chef
• Christien – Golf Articles
• Andrew Brodsky – DMB Pictures
• Mike – Apartment Locator
• Christopher Hiller – Social Camping Retail
• Nate Clark – Dog/Cat Salon
• Wes Wyatt – Word of Mouth Works
• Becca Tieder – Unite for Change
• Andrea Wrentz – Women’s Apparel
• John Hill – Massage Studio

Thanks to Jason and everyone who followed, tweeted or signed up for buildabrand.com yesterday. Here are some of our favourite tweets:

‘Had an invite to try out @buildabrand. i love it. nice content–actually made me think.‘ @kganderson

‘buildabrand.com looks like a promising brand building site http://tinyurl.com/mgwfco @iwearyourshirt streaming now http://tinyurl.com/546hp6.‘ @Renee3

‘A Closer Look at BuildABrand’s Closed Beta: I don’t think I can say much more about how cool this actually is, othe… http://bit.ly/8v67iO‘ – @CCMSWebDesigns

‘Just been using http://bit.ly/UM7Kv (buildabrand) – very impressive‘ - @PJWilikinson

‘Just had a play with www.buildabrand.com @buildabrand - so slick, can’t wait for @champney and @daveshanley to let this baby out‘ – @eski009

‘@iwearyourshirt dude that www.buildabrand.com is awesome…did all the beta invites go?‘ @alunevans