In this internet age, it’s not unusual to hear of multimillion-dollar businesses that were started in garages and basements

Many of the big businesses we know started small and then grew gradually to where they are today. For many entrepreneurs, however, launching a business successfully and watching it experience exponential business growth can be a bit overwhelming.

As an entrepreneur, there are too many things to focus on, and too many aspects of the business that could go wrong if left unmonitored. But attending to everything can become tedious and cause burnout.

In a 2017 study on startup failure, burnout was responsible for nearly 10% of all failed startups. Luckily, entrepreneurs of any experience level can learn to focus on their business and make better use of their time. Here are five easy tips for building a strong brand to attract customers.

1. Create a business strategy to guide your growth

The two most important business goals for small business owners is increasing profitability and business growth.

When you are trying to accomplish these goals for your business, a business strategy is a key determinant of your success. It helps you identify the steps you should take to reach your goals and gives you a clear roadmap for you to follow.

Time is money. If you don’t have a clear roadmap, you’ll waste a lot of time figuring out your next steps. By making a business plan early in your startup, you can concentrate on carrying out the strategies you’ve developed.

Also, your time is only spent productively if spent on activities that bring you closer to reaching your goals. As such, take time to analyze your progress based on the milestones you’d set in your business plan to determine what needs to be optimized and what is not working.

2. Hire the best skill right from the start

When you are trying to stay productive and focused, you need a clear head with minimal distractions. Hiring skilled members allows you to focus on other important business activities such as high-level decision making and sourcing funding for your business.

With the right team, you can trust that they will be able to run the business autonomously with little need for monitoring. In the early stages of your business, hire the best skill that you can afford. Don’t cut corners and hire cheap skill.

Cheap skill may mean incompetent workers and their mistakes will surely distract you from important entrepreneurial duties, reduce your productivity and derail the growth of your business.

3. Monitor your cash flow

Cash flow refers to the amount of money flowing in and out of your business. The cash flow of any business needs to be positive; more money is coming in than going out, for it to be profitable and grow.

If you want to stay focused on growing your business, you should not be weighed down by loses or the threat of bankruptcy. You need to ensure that at all times, you have more money than you plan on spending.

Having a negative cash flow means that you are spending more money than you are making. This could potentially lead to a lot of stress, distracting you from important activities such as team building or client meetings.

To avoid stress and stay focused on growing your brand, you need to employ basic lessons about money management such as budgeting, keep tracking of your money, and spending resources on the essentials only and leaving the rest for later.

4. Learn from your competitors

If you are in any competitive market, you probably have multiple competitors, most of whom are more established than you are.

As the owner of a budding startup, it can be tempting to try to beat your competitors by trying new ways of doing things. However, starting from scratch and finding new ways to market your products or run your business takes a lot of trial and error. It can consume a lot of time and resources yet does not guarantee business success.

Your time would be better spent learning from your competitors, instead of letting their success intimidate you, learn to study them to find out what methods of doing business are working and which aren’t.

For example, instead of trying to test out all methods of tradeshow displays to find out which works best, why not observe your competitors and learn the current trends in tradeshow display, then implement them in your business.

Later on, after your startup is well established, you can invest your own time and resources into finding new ways to optimize your business.

5. Make excellent customer service a priority for your business

As an entrepreneur, you know there is more to business than just looking for customers, and if you neglect great customer service, you will be looking for new customers on a daily basis just to remain profitable.

Customer service is directly proportional to the customer experience. The better your customer service, the more satisfied they will be. And satisfied customers will stay with you longer than dissatisfied ones; thus making you more money.

Perhaps the most important advantage of increasing customer satisfaction is that satisfied customers will bring new customers to your door. A customer can only refer you to their friends if they trust your products and if you have proved that you care about them by serving them well.

Give that referred customers are four times more likely to refer more customers to your business, making customer service a priority in your business can reduce the amount of effort and resources you use to acquire new customers, and this eventually gives you more time and space to focus on other important aspects of business growth.

Conclusion

During startup, stay focused on the essentials and avoid engaging in trivial tasks that could kill your focus and productivity.

Although there is enough space in the market for new businesses to grow, roughly 20% of new businesses survive the first year. By maintaining focus on business growth and avoiding distractions, you too can not only survive through the first year but also thrive afterward and grow into a multimillion-dollar business.