Working On Your Business vs. In Your Business

Small business owners are used to wearing all the hats, but if you want to grow your business (and who doesn’t?), you’ll soon realize that you’ll need to make some adjustments if you want to put your business on the quickest path to success.

For most owners, working efficiently means using your time and energy on the most strategic, value-adding tasks and offloading the other areas – those where you’re not an expert – to someone else. If you don’t, you’ll spend all your time working in your business and have zero time to work on your business. Here’s what we mean.

What’s the Difference Between Working On versus In Your Business?

To get a startup off the ground, you must give blood, sweat and tears to every aspect of its operation. This requires you to work in the business.

Working in the business means you’re doing both the job itself and the management of that job. This could include hiring employees, managing the books, monitoring the production line, and anything and everything in between. If you have your hands in the daily operations and execution of the work itself, you are working in, or for, your business. And this job is certainly important. You (or someone) must do the work to keep the lights on.

But there’s another equally important component to growing a business – and that’s working on the business. When you work on the business, you are giving yourself time and space to think strategically about where you want the organization to go.

This involves mapping out your overall business strategy, developing short- and long-term goals, dedicating time and resources to product development and innovation, and creating the business and brand vision you want to take your SMB to the next level.

If you only work in your business and never step back to work on your business, you could be losing out on significant growth opportunities. Optimizing processes and taking steps to streamline your business can help with this effort. Our team at The OIS Group is also here to help. We offer custom human resources, employee benefits and insurance solutions for small- and mid-sized businesses looking to maximize their time and resources. Contact us today to schedule a full review free of charge.