Where should a entrepreneur focus when just starting out? Business vs brand

As most people starting a business seems fun and simple, you have an idea and you want to pursue it, that’s why I thought too when I started my first business but thters more to focus on like red flags and where to shift my focus when growing a business, i will share my mistake i made with my business and how I was so focused on the brand at the beginning that I wasn’t giving my business the attention it needed.

Here is what I was doing wrong, I owned a small recycling business and it was doing ok at the very early when it was strictly business mode, I was making a decent paycheck building my customer base and focusing on setting up routes to make customers happy, well this was at first then my head got bigger and started watching shows like shark tank and I started to learn about branding. So I said why not let me build a brand….and that’s where my focused shifted 360 %, I started looking for a vanity number, I came across a cool number and I decided to buy it, I spent money on designing the logo, then poured money into the website now I needed a trademark which cost me thousands, while all this was happening I was not giving my business the attention I needed because I was more focused on the bigger picture than just being a  local recycling  company, I wanted to go big or go home now, I mean I visioned bigger stuff like a nationwide business and then reality hit me! The small business that was providing me an income started to go down, I was losing customers and I didn’t have the same drive I once did.

What it takes to grow a business

This is why I want to discuss the difference between business vs brand and which you should focus on first and when you should focus on the other. Growing a business requires more of a hands-on approach it’s you and your customers, and your mission is clear making money and making customers happy. If I told you lets order something from amazon in the year 2000 you would probably not even know who amazon is and why? Because they were busy building a business and focusing on branding, amazon launched in 1994.

 What comes with  building a business:

1. Time: Building a business will require sacrifice and it will eat of a lot of your time that was spent on having fun and relaxing, but it’s worth it once the business becomes successful 

1. Physical work: You will need to put in most of the labor to set an example for your team members, Elon musk used to sleep in his tesla factory on the floor, that’s a team leader!

2. hiring: Understand the value each person will bring, which means going over tons of resumes.

3. Customer service: Managing customers, from taking orders to dealing with an upset customer.

4. Growing your customer: Always on the hunt to finding more customers, this can be emailing or a little promotional advertising for your service or goods you have for sell

5. Happy days and Sad days: Growing a business will have its good weeks and bad weeks that will become an emotional roller coaster ride, keep grinding. 

6. Inventory: If you selling goods you need to always keep your inventory stock, find software that can help with that, and if you are selling service manage customers with a scheduling software  

7. Accounting: Preparing your balance sheets, profit and loss, and other documents for your accountant.

8. Billing: Wheter you selling or servicing a business or even preparing for weekly payrolll, this is a commitiment that is recommended to do a littel of daily, dont let this one pile up on you.

Business vs brand

If you take a look closely at these 9 what do they have in common? 

They all require you to be physically involved and focused and the phrase hard work pays off comes from building a business vs brand, making money doesn’t come easy especially if you have your head all over the place.  Now let me discuss what it takes to grow a brand…

What it takes to grow a brand

Growing a brand is the opposite of growing a business, this requires more of a desk job, you basically are saying you want to be recognized, forget the business I wanna be known right? Here’s what it takes to grow a brand.

1. Trust: consumers won’t consider you a brand until you are well know and trusted, That comes with building a great business first.

2. money …lots of it: Hello ventures! Businesses raise money for brand awareness and usually end up giving stakes from their shares in order to get funding.

3. Press release: You can either send these out yourself or hire a firm that can start at $500 to $50,000 a month every time you send a press release out to reporters that might take interest in your business.

4. social media marketing: Scheduling posts for social media, with so many you may want to hire one or two full-time people just to run this for your brand.

5. Lawyers: You will need lawyers for branding, this could be for trademarks, copyright, or other important stuff for your business. 

6. affiliate marketing: Creating an affiliate partnership program for your business is a great and effective tool for brand awareness and marketing, but it will require a full-time person to run it.  

7. email marketing: Building a strong email list, you want to keep your users and buyers engaged.

8. PPC  campaigns: ADS online, you want to be the first on the list when being searched.

9. TIME: And last but not least! Building a brand doesnt come over night and it defintely come with just rasing capital, it comes with persistence, being a reliable business, a trust worthy business.

Brand vs business

Building a brand doesn’t come overnight the reasons consumers can order online or walk into a marketplace and just pick something out is not because of cool designs its because the business built a reputable company that becomes a household brand and people trust it.

Conclusion :

As you see starting a business can have its illusions, it will stress you and drain you and possibly empty out your life savings, that is why I highly suggest building a money-making business and giving your branding a little effort, in the beginning, what a brand if you are not making money, but what’s a business without a brand you say? A BUSINESS! It still will generate income employ people and more, once you have a go-to business where customers are happy your business will speak for itself, when was the last time you saw a commercial for Ferrari or a Lamborghini, they don’t bother to pour millions of dollars when they know they built a reputable business with a nice car. When it comes to business vs brand my final say is to build a business.