ON Your Business vs IN Your Business
The first time I heard the statement, “Working ON your business vs IN your business,” was at a leadership workshop put on by Michael Gerber, author of The E-Myth. I believe this is one of the best business books out there for an entrepreneur. In his book, he distinguishes between working on your business vs working in your business. He further explains with much detail that entrepreneurs who work in their businesses are the ones who suffer from burnout, exhaustion, and confusion. They often finds themselves at a point where they realize that all they have really done by owning a business is that they now own their own job!
Most entrepreneurs default to working in their businesses. It is important as a business owner to carefully and strategically build an action plan with an accountability piece. Trish, my business partner, and I work very hard at working on our business and not just in it. Working in it looks like a lot of daily task lists and to-do’s. When you work on your business you see it from a higher level; we refer this to as the 30,000 feet level.
When we work with clients, one of the first actions they take is to write down how much revenue they want to create by the end of the year. Then we break that down into a monthly goal and often even into weekly and ‘widget’ goals. (A widget goal is the average sale). This simple task of taking stock of where you are and where you want to be will allow you to work on your business.
For example, if you decide you want to venture into social media (most of you are probably here already) we want to ensure that you have a social media strategy.
A strategy would consist of:
· What do you want your social media presence to do?
· How much revenue would you like it to create?
· How will you track or measure its success?
· What adjustments will you make to ensure that you achieve your objective?
One way to ensure success with any of your plans is to systematize everything that you do: sales, marketing, customer service, and all other aspects of your business. Your systems is about having a plan, working it and having what I call a feedback loop, so you know whether you are working towards the plan. For example, you should create your marketing plan so that you can increase the number of inquiries into your business.
Your sales strategy is what converts lookers into buyers.
Working on your business feels and looks quite a bit different than working in your business. As a business owner, it is too easy to get sucked into the daily life and the tasks that need to be done. At the end of the day, only you are looking at how to grow or sustain your business; no one else is doing it for you.
So, take a moment right now and think about one thing that you could do, right now, to work on your business. And then do it.
