A common situation that business owners find themselves in, is spending all of their time working in their business. They either don’t have (or don’t make) time to work on their business. There are a number of different reasons for this, but most commonly it is because they are often too busy“fighting fires”. This means that they are dealing with urgent issues and solving problems at the surface level to ensure that the business keeps functioning.
So why is this significant? Because not working on your business will leave you stuck right where you are, fighting fires and not being able to create or accommodate business growth. It’s also very stressful and frustrating for everyone involved- you, your staff and customers. Your business will not deliver the results you want financially or the lifestyle you want until you start to work more on it than in it.
Working on your business includes tasks such as planning, goal-setting, systemising, marketing and generating new ideas for products or services. Have you done any of these tasks within the last few weeks? If you haven’t, then now is the perfect opportunity to start. The more time you can spend working on your business, the more business growth you can create and manage sustainably.
Here’s my 5 Step Process to Working More ON Your Business:
1. Shift your mindset
It’s easy to stay on the front line of your business, caught up in the day-to-day because there is always something else that needs doing. Your to-do list will never be empty, so don’t wait for that! You need to start to value time spent on the“non-urgent” tasks that are not associated with the basic functioning of your business. These “non-urgent” tasks are the tasks that make your business sustainable in the longer term and eventually will become urgent if you let them go long enough! Creating business growth and managing it requires systemisation, planning and a strategy, all of which require you to step away from the day-to-day. So you need to shift your mindset about how you spend your time.
2. Prioritise it
There’s no magic formula here, you just need to prioritise spending your time working on your business. You can do this simply by blocking out 2-3 hours of your time every week when you will work solely on these types of tasks. Then, commit to it each and every week, no matter what comes up or seems to be more important.
3. Systemise
You can create more time to work on your business when you systemise your business. If you have no written systems for business transactions and operations, then it is running inefficiently and you are spending more time than is necessary working in it. Creating a step-by-step process for the main functions and transactions within your business means that each time you do a specific task, you follow that specific procedure. This speeds everything up! It also makes you consistent in how you do things. The end result is you have more time to spare to work on your business.
4. Delegate or Outsource
There are some tasks within your business that you do not personally need to do. Delegating and outsourcing some of these tasks frees up your time so you can work on your business. Instead of spending your valuable cognitive energy on tasks that don’t directly affect your business growth, spend time on tasks that do! Do you need to personally clean your office/ do your bookkeeping/pick up your dry-cleaning/update your website? If you don’t personally need to do it, consider not doing it.
5. Get a coach
A coach can not only help you implement all of the above steps, but they will also work alongside you to keep you focusing on your business priorities. Any time spent with a coach is time pent working on your business and you are not working on it alone. A coach can provide an un-biased sounding board, support and the resources you need to assist you in implementing the changes you want to make in your business.