Running a business often means feeling busy yet not truly progressing. Many entrepreneurs find themselves stuck in day-to-day tasks instead of doing the work that actually grows the company. If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. The key is understanding the difference between working in your business and working on your business—and knowing where to focus your limited time and energy.
Working In vs Working On the Business
Working in the business means doing the technical work: making the pizzas, filling cavities, editing videos, answering emails.
Working on the business means building systems, improving processes, hiring and training, creating marketing strategies, and setting goals that help the business run without you.
Most owners need to do both, but your long-term success depends on increasing the time spent working on the business.
You Can’t Be 100% “On” Yet
Unless your business is a fully built franchise-level system, you will still wear several hats. The goal is to reduce low-value “in the business” tasks over time through systems and delegation.
Where Should Business Owners Focus?
1. Identify and Fix Bottlenecks
Every business has a flow—from awareness to fulfillment. Somewhere in that flow, something slows everything down. Identify where the biggest delays or drop-offs occur and improve that point first.
2. Track Conversion Points
Analyze each stage of your customer journey and determine where the largest drop-off occurs. Optimize one step at a time for better performance.
3. Delegate and Build Systems
Hiring is essential. Entry-level hires often evolve into strong leaders because they grow within your systems. Document your processes, set quality standards, and build training assets to make delegation possible.
4. Complete the Most Important Exercise
List every task you do in a week. Assign each:
- A value level ($, $$, $$$)
- A “must it be me?” label
Delegate or outsource low-value tasks that don’t require your involvement.
5. Plan for Emergencies Instead of Reacting
Fires will happen. Create systems so your team, not you, handles future emergencies.
6. Stop Undervaluing Your Time
Doing a task yourself may be faster today, but training someone else saves massive time in the long run. Specialists will eventually outperform you.
7. You Don’t Need to Deliver Everything Personally
If you work with clients directly, consider:
- Using past clients as ambassadors
- Incorporating asynchronous coaching (voice notes, screen recordings, text)
- Saving live calls for high-leverage sessions
8. Free Up Time to Scale
You can’t scale while buried in low-value tasks. Freeing time lets you improve systems, build marketing assets, and become the authority in your niche.
Once your business runs efficiently, you can finally focus on building your authority and becoming the go-to expert in your market.
