Working ON your business vs IN your business

Like you, one of the reasons why I started my business was because I wanted to have control over my life.

I want to work on projects I enjoy.

I want to create my own schedule.

And I want to be free to make my own business decisions.

But sometimes, instead of being free, it can feel like we’re trapped in our businesses.

It can feel like we’ve exchanged one boss for many.

There can be times where we are uncertain about our future while we’re waiting for those checks to come in.

It’s during those stressful business times that it’s important to take a step back and look at our businesses.

Are we controlling our businesses or our businesses controlling us?

Are we making time to work ON our businesses or are we just working IN our businesses?

Working IN your business achieves results for your customers.

Working ON your business achieves results for yourself.

If we want to have a long term, sustainable business we need to do both.

I know just how easy it is to just work IN your business for months without doing anything to work ON your business.

If we don’t pay attention we start to run our businesses in a re-active way instead of a proactive way – and we become stagnant in our business growth.

The key is awareness and planning.

Be aware of when you’re working IN your business and schedule time to work ON the growth of your business.

It helps to keep a log or journal of tasks that you do for a week and then categorize everything into either IN or ON your business.

Here’s some ideas that may help:

Working IN your business:

• Meeting with clients/customers/patients
• Answering emails
• Performing your services for clients/customers/patients
• Dealing with crises
• Invoicing
• Scheduling

Working ON your business:

• Education - podcasts, blogs, magazines, books about your business
• Researching trends
• Automating systems and processes
• Working on your marketing
• Setting goals and planning for the future

Do you face similar issues with balancing working ON your business versus working IN your business? If so, how do you find time to balance both and do you have a system that works best for you?