Developing a business strategy: What's the difference between working ON your business vs IN your business?
“Work on your business not in your business” is a pretty common refrain these days.
In fact, it’s been part of business vernacular for 36 years when Michael Gerber shared that exact advice in his book “The E-Myth Revisited.” While the words seem pretty self explanatory, it’s sometimes not clear what the difference is between the two.
And when you are busy running a business, taking time to figure out the difference is often time we don’t have.
A few months ago, I was in one of my local shops talking to the owner of the business, and I shared that I’ve been interviewing different small business owners in my Small Business Stories about their businesses and the different business challenges they face.
Interestingly, their response was:
“I’m so busy just running my business every day that I’m not even sure what business challenges I have.”
This phrase is exactly what it looks like when you are working in your business.
You have all the skills to execute on the functions of your business.
You’ve created a place you go to work every day. And you fill your days executing - you make or deliver your product, you create content for social media, you process sales, you do all the administrative work...
Sometimes this constant state of execution can lead to losing your passion.
It can lead to a place where you just go through the motions. You lose the joy of running a business, and are just worn out.
I commonly hear things like:
“I don’t know what my challengers are.”
“I don’t know where to focus.”
“I don’t know how to prioritize all of these ideas.”
These types of phrases go right to the heart of working on your business.
Working on your business means you think of the business strategy, not just the tactics and execution.
Instead of just doing the work required for your business to run, you get to think about the way you want your business to work.
You think about the direction of the business and all the processes in the business that help you deliver the kind of customer experience you are dedicated to. You consider your values, how you want to show up every day, what type of people you partner with, or hire, in your business.
You’re creating a vision, a culture.
You are putting as much creativity, passion, and effort into developing the business as it’s own entity as you did creating your products or delivering your services.
If you’ve resonated with this and you find yourself in a place where you’ve been mainly working in your business vs on your business, first of all– it’s OK.
Our businesses ebb and flow, and sometimes it takes a tiny moment (like reading through this blog post) to pull back the curtain a bit and realize it’s time to shift a few things.
And that’s OK.
I want to leave you with a few things that you can do to ensure you are working on your business as well as in your business:
Set aside time (however much you can spare) at the beginning of every work day to reflect on how things have been going and where you want to focus in your business. When you jump right in to the business part of your busines (e.g. emails, order processing, marketing, etc.) you end up letting other people’s priorities influence your day, and it’s hard to shift from execution mode to big picture thinking.
Pick one thing, just ONE, that you would like to improve in your business.break down all the steps it will take to make it happen. Then methodically, work through these steps. It is so easy to get overwhelmed, and feel shame, about all the things we aren’t doing. But the thing is, you can’t do them all at once. So start with one.
Sometimes, you need support. That’s where I come in. Not only can I help you sort through, or come up with, big ideas for your business, I also provide accountability, that space in your calendar, where you know you’re going to be working on your business.
If support is what you need, book a discovery call and let’s talk about how we can make sure you’re working on and in business with focus and ease.
