If your business depends on you - you don't own a business -you have a job.
Have you ever:
- Got lost in the necessary day to day operations;
- Wasted months on a project that never gets finished;
- Got demotivated because of so much to do and too little progress;
- Lost sight of why you are doing what you’re doing…
If yes, it’s because you spent all your time working IN your business instead of working ON your business.
When you’re working ON your business new things begin to happen. Things like fresh ideas, friendships, confidence and vacations.
When you start working ON your business, you remember why you became an entrepreneur in the first place. It reminds you of your wishes to design your own lives, to pursue your biggest goals and to experience freedom.
If you want your business to grow, you must make time to work ON your business.
Here are 10 ideas how to work ON your business:
1. Focus on Your Vision
Get clear about WHERE you want to go with your business and WHY you want to go there. What is your goal? “Be an entrepreneur? Make xx per month? Retire at the age of xx? Make a meaningful impact on…?
2. Have an Exit Strategy in Mind
Even if you have no intention of exiting your business in the near future, it is important to think through your options (sell the business, go public, leave it to your children, hire professional management and enjoy the passive income, etc…) When you have a strategy in place – you will be able to structure and systemize your business so it will start working for you, instead of you working for it.
3. Block Time for Strategic Thinking
An important habit to develop is time blocking and prioritizing that element in your calendar at least four hours a week, at least one weekend every quarter and at least a week (I call it Vision Week) once a year. During those times you focus on the bigger picture, you plan for the future, and you strategize.
4. Get Away from the Office for a New Perspective
Once a week – work from a hotel lobby, a coffee shop, a park bench. Whatever gets you inspired and creative. And when you go for a longer period for a couple of days – it’s best if you can take the time away from everything, including family, internet, email and phones…
5. Ask Yourself Whose Job You’re Doing Now
If you’re too immersed in the day-to-day “doing” in your business, ask yourself, “Whose job am I doing now?” When you do a job that someone else is capable of, you rob that person of the opportunity to do what he/she is uniquely qualified to do, and you rob yourself (and your business) of the opportunity to do what you are uniquely qualified to do.
6. Delegate
It is crucial you learn to delegate and empower whoever it is you delegate to, so you can spend more time working on growing your business. You are losing time and money each day you don’t properly delegate.
7. Do What Actually Matters
Evaluate the things you do and make sure they matter. We all have emails to answer, social media to ‘feed’, networking events to go to… BUT do they REALLY matter?
8. Do Only 3 Things a Day
Intentionally choose 3 things to do a day and anything else needs to wait until you finish those three.
9. Create Systems and Processes
Most successful businesses run on systems. Think fast-food franchises. They nearly run themselves because of their systems and virtually guarantee success for their owners. Your business is no different. Once you set up systems which can be run by others, you can focus on what matters, like growth and profits.
10. Automate
Automation is all about reducing the amount of repetitive, manual processes that you and your team are responsible for. It removes bottlenecks, streamlines your systems, keeps work moving forward and most important – releases you to do what you are uniquely qualified to do.
Now It’s YOUR Turn
For five minutes… come up with as many ideas as you can… what could YOU do more strategically work ON your business?
Let's Brainstorm
Please share your ideas (all of them or just one) in the comment box below… and let’s get WOWing.
Live fully, stay awesome,
Nisandeh Neta
Top Commenters – last 30 Days
Let's Brainstorm
Please share your ideas (all of them or just one) in the comment box below… and let’s get WOWing.
Live fully, stay awesome,
Nisandeh Neta
201 comments
I LOVE THIS IDEA
I am still working a lot of time IN my business in stead of ON. Actually I have never worked so much time IN my business.
And I recognize a lot of the introduction.
1. VISION
Be cristal clear about your vision. How ever, with time your vision can change a little bit. call in insight.
2. Talk to people about your vision. Ask them if they understand it.
3. TAKE SOME TIME even if you are the only one in your family
Even if you are the only one in your family that is thinking like that. A lot of people do not think about there vision
Let alone, spending valuable, billable time.
4. Delegate as much as possible.
It can be little things
5. Automate the most time consuming things that you have to do all the time.
Like making appointments.
6. Take care of your time.
It is very easy to abuse valuable free time. Use it wisely
7. USE SLOW PERIODS in you BUSINESS
When planning ahead, make sure you plan time for yourself. You can for exemple use slow periodes time in you business.
8. Find partners that share you vision or have similar visions an try to have a vision day together
94 comments
Automate, automate & automate more if you can. Use agile tools to automate tasks and data studio to blend data for sales and traffic. If the day is 7 hours plan 4-5 to do work and leave some time to think. Take a few steps back and view your business as a customer - make personas to understand how different customers will react to the product/ service / website.
112 comments
I had a call with Vered about my focus. And Vered gave me very valuable advice about working more strategically and to keep my focus on my business.
For me it is now important to set a goal, like a course, and break down the steps I need to take backwards. It gives me overview and focus and therefore time to work on my business. It also gives one the time to be creative in the ways reaching a goal. During the process you can come up with a better idea to complete a step. And also create processes for the following courses.
Never thought about an exit strategy. So, time to do start thinking about it.
A few things are automated, but I am sure I can automate more.
What is a possibility is to go for a walk with another entrepeneur and during the walk talk about strategics for your businesses. The fresh air, nature and the movement contributes to your thinking and creativity. I wil start looking for someone I can do that with.
160 comments
About the exit strategy: it was good that besides my dance school, I am a medical doctor, so during this C crisis and lockdowns I could fill at least the costs of the dance school with the income of my MD things.
But now, since the inspection is doing crazy stuff, following the absurd rules of the government because of the contracts they signed, I'm not sure if I can stay an MD. So with a growing group of "outlaws", we already created a new profession. Always try to stay 10 steps ahead...
Furthermore have a mentor, and focus on your passion. Be open and attract the right people. Delegate as much as you can, take time off, walk with cool people in nature, and discuss your next steps. This really works for me.
39 comments
Focus on one thing, seems hard sometimes. Never loose focus on the endresult
To reach a goal, there are many ways to go there.
I notice that I like the adventure to try each road and learn from it.
Steady going on. Small steps.
Most of the time, it takes more time. Time will teach more lessons/skills. More skills, more value to others.
175 comments
In the last 55 days, I started every morning with a short moment of focus ON my business (thanks to Nisandeh and Vered). It improved my life! I'm more focused and productive, I have a plan, created better habits and so on. First I just did the Challenge, later on I added similar activities. I do it up to one and a half hours. Starting the day working ON my business works like a charm for me.
#1 Is about vision. Yes, I have a vision and I keep it in mind when I work on and in my business. But I also discovered my company has personal value, it's has a role to fulfill. Sometimes I'm worried about that. What if I'm not able to care for my company anymore? The exit strategy is a great tip.
Connecting with other entrepreneurs is something you should do when you have your own business. When I talk about my business to friends who have a job, they're very interested about what I do but it's hard for them to give feedback (and that's fine, of course).
69 comments
Connecting with other entrepreneurs works for me as well. Seminars, theme events, etc help me to work on my business. As does reading Brooks, which I should do more, really.
67 comments
I enjoy working with customers that's one pitfall. The second one is the need for income. I just can't afford to delegate everything unless we fully automate the service and products and that's not what I desire. So what's my strategy? Grow sustainable and profitable business only year after year. Make sure to balance between freelance and own staff. We have a weekly strategy session with the revenue coaches focusing on out top-5 growth levers. Every Quarter we set new goals and clear objectives to work on the next step.
111 comments
This post is very confronting for me, especially the first sentence of it. I'm in the business of writing stories so how can it be not about ME?
However, when I read the 10 ideas I realised there are things I can do that would be working ON my business.
1. I can definitely automate more - which would free more time for me for the creative writing and I'll be able to finish those scripts and books faster, which is my MAIN business
2. I can certainly delegate more - again freeing more time for myself to focus on writing the important stuff
3. I can definitely take 2-3 days to think strategically where I want to see myself and my books in 5-10 years. Can use that also as my mini-vacation and ME-time - achieve 3 purposes at the same time... YIPPEE!!
What I realised from this 5 minutes of exercise is that I need to define and clarify for myself - what is the most important part of my work that truly generates money for me - in my case it's the books and selling them (or getting the agent to do it) - so this is where my focus should be.
67 comments
Good point in the last sentence. I always ask myself "does this activity contribute to achieving my revenue goal" if the answer is no - it means it's not important and I shouldn't do it (myself). If the answer is yes I schedule it or do it straight away.