Today, I spent a lot of my day working on my business. In fact, I’ve spent a lot of the past few weeks working on my business. I don’t spend all that much time working in my business these days. That’s partly because many of the responsibilities I used to have while running my own agency, are either now handled by someone else far more capable than myself, or are tasks that I’ve strategically delegated to a team member in order to help them grow and allow our agency to operate more efficiently.
Two books immediately come to mind when I think about the process of thinking about and working ON your business: The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber and The Pumpkin Plan by Mike Michalowicz. Both of these books crystalized for me the importance of allocating the time to do the things in your business that lead to greater efficiencies and higher profits.
If there were one lesson I wish that I’d learned earlier in my career, it would be to focus on the work to build a better business rather than spending all of my time simply trying to be the best I can at my particular craft. If you are an entrepreneur stuck in the grind of your business, there’s a good chance you need to stop, step back and take a good look at the business itself and find where things are going wrong.
Look for ways to:
- Remove friction in the sales process
- Explain what you offer more clearly and concisely
- Deliver your work more efficiently
- Improve the quality of your deliverables
- Reduce unnecessary expenditures
In short, look for ways to improve the business itself. Operate in your business as if you were building it as a series of processes that you’d want to sell. Make it simple and make it foolproof.