How to Work on Your Business (Not in It)
As a business owner, it can be tempting to intimately involve yourself in the day to day grind of your company. Just imagine a car. Instead of you being the driver, you're functioning as the engine.
Working on your business means taking the car's wheel and being in control so that you can take your business to where you want it to go.
Let's take a look at Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Mark learned to code not long after receiving his first computer during his 6th grade. He had the knowledge of programming and the ambition to pursue social media as a business. But in order to realize his ambitions of uniting the world as a business, he had to let go of coding and work on the dream of creating Facebook. Zuckerberg exercised an executive status, working on his business and focusing on the bigger picture to make Facebook as it is now.
How can you work ON your business?
Hire people to work on the details
Big projects require effort to be finished, and one man is not enough. Take building a house as an example. An architect cannot draw the house and still be the one to mix the cement and gravel. Work must be delegated to someone else. Not only does it make the business’ goal be realized sooner, but it also puts you - the solopreneur, in a solid executive status. So if you find a task irrelevant to a business owner, hire someone else to do it.
Exercise your role as an executive
You are the boss now so act like it. You have employees that handle base work and employees that manage other employees. If your subordinates present you a problem that you pay them to solve, ask them what are you paying them for. A good executive knows the boundaries of his job while focusing to do better at it. Learn to say no to menial work. Your job is to make decisions as to where to take the business to, not be the driving force behind it.
Read: Dear Solopreneur, Here’s How to Take Back Control of Your Life
Focus your work on the bigger picture
What do you want to achieve by the end of the year? It is time to add new equipment? Hire more employees or open a new branch in the next state? These are the types of questions that someone working on his business asks himself. Such questions are also to be answered by you or with the help of consultation. Remember you are the CEO and you decide on your business’ future so work and focus on that.
Train and trust your subordinates
Don't expect anyone to understand the business right away. As the owner, you have a responsibility to explain your goals and visions about the business as well as train them to deliver your expectations. Strangers are hard to trust especially if your money is at stake but the best way to encourage them in doing their best is to trust them first.
Choose the options but don't make all of them
In the quest of taking the business to a higher level, you will often hog all to yourself the thinking of its future and strategies on how to get there. To not get immersed about working in your business, lend a listening ear and consult with your business family. Make use of those brilliant minds you pay, show them your plans, ask for advice, but make the final call.
To work on your business and not in it, you must seize an executive status. So focus on directing the business where you want it to go from the front and not drive it forward from behind.