Are you spending time ON your business?

As a business owner, you do it all. Your days are busy. You are responsible for every function of the business and accountable to your customers. Whether executed on by yourself or other team members, you are never far removed from the product or service going out the door. It is a lot of pressure. 

Frequently business owners take that pressure and spend every minute of their day focused on execution of every detail. They are heads down to cross off the many tasks on their list knowing that with each task they are closer to a sale, hire, or happy client. 

The problem with the heads down, task orientation is you fail to pick your head up and see the full landscape of the business. There is no space to work ON your business. All your time is spent deep IN your business.

Working ON your business allows you to plan for how to make your vision a reality and see what is happening that might require changes in how your business delivers on its purpose. Working ON your business includes strategic and high-level activities and thinking across the functions of the business. From dreaming, to planning, to goal setting, working ON your business allows you to make your business dream a reality.

As you look at how you spend your time each week, evaluate which of the activities are focused ON the business and which are deep IN task execution. (For guidance on how to evaluate how you spend your time, check out this article) Reviewing where you are spending your energy provides insight in what areas of your business you are going deeper than necessary. You will also gain visibility into which of the tasks only you, the business owner, can do. 

Depending on where you are in your business lifecycle, the size of your team, the type of service you are delivering and many other factors, you may not have a large quantity of time to dedicate ON your business. That is okay. Whether it is fifteen minutes a day or a day a week, spending a small amount of time looking at the broader picture of your business will lead to significant progress for your business.

If you need help getting focused ON your business, take the “ON vs IN” Challenge and learn how you can integrate working ON your business into your daily routine.