As an owner of multiple businesses and someone who has owned a business for 34 years, I can attest to the risks and benefits of working ON your business and not only IN it.  Here are just a few reasons why it’s important to work ON your business.

  1. It Impacts Your Sales Revenue – Focusing on building and growing your business increases your sales revenue because you’re focusing on your competitors, your products and services, finding new customers, and giving your current customers an exceptional experience so that they refer you to other potentially happy customers. Happy customers bring you more happy customers.
  2. Time to Look at the Big Picture – If you’re working in the daily operations of your business, you don’t have time to step back, look at the bigger picture, and work on growing your business.
  3. Your Business Needs a Leader – Building your business beyond where it is now dictates you move to “leading” its growth and away from “doing” the day-to-day. The best person to lead your business forward is YOU.
  4. Do Higher-Level Tasks Only You Can Do – What higher-level tasks are you not doing because you’re focused on the daily operational tasks that will increase your business? What are you costing your business by not focusing on long-term planning, strategizing, systemizing the business to work without you and to be reliant on systems, not people, and planning for growth opportunities?  You are the best person to do these functions for your business.  Delegate the daily “working in your business” functions you’re doing to employees and outsource specialty skill functions to the experts.  Accounting, bookkeeping, payroll, and marketing are the areas of small business management most frequently outsourced by business owners due to the specialized skill set required to do them effectively.
  5. Spotting Areas That Need Improvement – Working ON your business allows you time to spot areas that need improvement and fix them. Delegate the work to make those changes to an employee or an outsource resource and then move on to troubleshooting and solving other problems that are impeding your business’s growth.
  6. Have Time to Dream – Have More Time OFF! Owning and running a small business is all-consuming, often leaving little time for personal pursuits, family, friends, etc.  Burnout is one of the top reasons small business owners give up and businesses fail.  You need time away from the day-to-day running of your business to think, dream, and take a breath.