You may have heard the phrase, ‘As a business owner, if you want to grow your business, you need to spend time working on it instead of just working in it’. But what does that mean – how do I know whether what I’m doing is right?
Photographer Mel Yeneralski Media Studio CUH hospitals
Working ON your business involves long-term tasks like long-term planning, creating strategic campaigns, or coming up with ways to better serve your clients and customers.
Working IN your business involves day-to-day tasks like dealing with customers, making the product or fulfilling the service yourself, or managing staff.
A lot of business owners get stuck spending too much time working in their business. They think they are business owners, but they’ve actually just created a job for themselves.
This can be one of the biggest blockers to business growth!
Here’s a simple question to ask yourself, to see whether you have a business or a job: If you stepped away from your business for two weeks, would it still function properly? If not, you still have a job.
There’s no getting around it: at the beginning of building your business, you’ll wear many hats. You will have to do everything, and all at the same time!
But as a business grows and makes more money, the smart business owner uses those resources to take certain tasks off their plate. This allows them to devote more time doing activities that will really help their business grow and develop.
In a nutshell, identify anything that someone else could easily do – and delegate it, or employ someone (or something) else to do it! Save yourself for the tasks that only you can do, that have a direct impact on business success. Soon you really will have a business worth owning!
