As your business grows, the demands can be a bit overwhelming. There are a lot of non-core functions that eat up so much time and resources that, sometimes, it compromises accomplishing the more important tasks.

Remember that you are an entrepreneur, you designed your business out of your passion and to achieve your goals. But if you are too busy doing all the functions in your business, you might not achieve the sole reason why you started it in the first place. As an entrepreneur, your business should work on its own without you physically working in it. How can you achieve this? By starting to work on your business?

You may have heard this advice popularized by the author Michael Gerber on his book The E-Myth Revisited. So what’s the difference between working IN your business and ON your business?

The Big Difference

Working in the business is being hands-on with it, doing even the smallest details by yourself. This includes receiving calls from your clients, doing the bookkeeping, managing your social media and online marketing.

By doing these tasks all by yourself, you can ensure its quality, but being a human, this can take longer than it has to be and it will definitely wear you down.

Working on the business means focusing on the core activities, you step out doing all the small tasks. Instead of doing the financial entries in your books, you start to look at the business’ cash flow – which goods and services generate more profit and which aren’t.

When you are working in your business, you create all the marketing materials – from designing the graphics to printing it, to publishing it online. If you start working on the business, you research on digital marketing trends, you focus more on creating campaigns and designing marketing plans.

Working on the business is freeing up your time and investing it to build strategies on how to scale up. You start to identify the problems and make planned decisions. You attend training, listening to podcasts, reading more books and start looking for a mentor. You take on the leadership role and you are overseeing the bigger picture of your business.

Start Now

Working on your business is very important, but it will take a while for you to get that. Start delegating tasks. Document everything that you are doing. Create a clear system and standard procedure. Remember that when you start delegating tasks, you are managing systems not people. So stop micromanaging your team and put your whole trust to them.

Your business is meant to grow. Don’t just survive another business year, make sure to make a progress every single day. Your goal is to create a business that can stand on its own with your minimal supervision. You are an entrepreneur not a self-employed, stay true to your principle and go back to the deep-seated reason why you want to begin your business in the first place.