3 Ways to Ensure You Work on Your Business, Not in Your Business

As a business owner myself, I know the struggle is real. There’s a real temptation to be involved in every granular detail of your business, from production to petty cash, from staff interviews to stationery purchases. To work in, rather than work on my business.

More than that, while we’re being honest here, you’ll agree that we business owners get a bit of a buzz out of being so intricately plugged into our businesses. We feel important, irreplaceable, terribly responsible and justifiably exhausted. We make jokes about how close we are to burnout, and love telling people how we lie awake, night after night, worrying about jobs that may or may not have slipped through the cracks or staff members who may or may not be pulling their weight.

However, if we hope to grow in 2016 we need to change. As Infosys co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy so aptly said, “Growth is painful. Change is painful. But, nothing is as painful as staying stuck where you do not belong.” We can’t keep doing things the same way, hoping for a different result.

3 Things to Change So You Can Work on Your Business, and Not in it

1. I Want That 

You need to want to change. Unless you’re happy being the sales rep, accountant and production manager all in one for the rest of your life. Sherrie Campbell, PhD says, “Growth is painful. Growth is painful because it requires us to get outside our comfort zones.” We are limiting our businesses by trying to do everything ourselves, even if that is where we feel comfortable. The temptation will be strong to start doing everyone’s jobs again, but try to remember this frazzled, ratty, irritable version of you that you are right now, and the right choice should come to you.

2. I Want You

Hire the right talent. The better people you have, the more you can trust them with the things that you usually do, giving you the unheard-of luxury of taking a step back to actually strategise and plan your business’s future.

Hester Taylor Clark, the founder of the multi-million dollar project management company The Hester Group, spoke to Forbes about learning to delegate, “I had to come to the place where I know that the staff I have is capable and then let them go because they are ready and can handle it… if you hold on too tightly, (your business) doesn’t grow.” Hire people who are more talented than you are, let them do their work, then sit back and enjoy watching your business grow.

3. I Want Easy

 Every time something goes wrong, you should be asking yourself ‘What can we do to make sure this doesn’t happen again?” The best way to do that is by setting up procedures, systems and tools that keep your business on track and ‘think’ for you so that you don’t make the same mistakes. It’s easy enough to set up reminders and spreadsheets to track orders, production and deadlines; the challenge often comes in the form of training the staff on these systems and ensuring they follow procedures.

That’s why I like QuickEasy’s Business Operating System (BOS) as it integrates all of these into one system that is so simple to use and powerfully integrated, that it only needs one of your resources to manage it. Plus you can access it from anywhere in the world and have real-time insight into your business.

There’s always a better, smarter way to work on your businesses.