How do I work “ON” my business and not “IN” my business?

If you don’t work take your business as serious as your clients’ well you won’t be in business for long.

Have to be disciplined on protecting that time.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s episode, when you are freelancing or consulting, you have to be extremely mindful of your time.

It can quickly get out of hand where you spend a tremendous amount of time on things that you shouldn’t be.

Now working “ON” your business really isn’t something that is a choice if you are running a business. But I get the idea here.

The question basically is asking about doing all the sales, marketing, support and administrative work that isn’t your client’s business.

It ultimately comes down to having discipline. Will power if you must.

Carve out and schedule the time

What I did very early on in my career was block out time on my calendar and get up an hour earlier every day.

Just knowing that I wasn’t taking time away from clients but still moving the business forward allowed me to not feel guilty and build my business.

Now there are whole days on my calendar devoted to the business. Which means that I don’t take any client calls or do any client work during those days.

Google has the 80/20 rule that they put in place for their employees to explore their own passion projects.

I like this split because even doing 20% work on your business will make a tremendous impact in a very short amount of time.

Get support and accountability to make great strides

Having that schedule and committing to moving the needle of your business is critical to the grow and sustainability of your business.

Inside of Feast we hold a 90-Day Challenge called “Moving the needle” because it’s that important. Folks in challenge meet up every week and check-in on the progress of what they need to do. Sales processes, libraries of operating procedures, building a team, and even content marketing have all been made as tremendous strides from these challenges.

If you are more of a person looking for 1:1 support. Having someone holding you accountable has made the biggest impact on improving my business.

If you are disciplined enough to do it yourself, then just do it. If not and you need that support from someone to hold you accountable, then find that person or community to do so.

Tools

Use a tool like Calendly and give links out to people.

This tool is great because it allows for you create blocks of time that you are available, sync it with your calendar and then people can go ahead and pick from the time available that works best for them and you to be able to schedule calls, etc with you.

Working “on” your business starts with the management of your time. Setting aside that time and making it as important as the time you give to your clients.

Let’s face it, if your clients value your service, they’ll value the time you put into your own business to stick around. Otherwise you’ll find yourself out of business and your clients won’t have you any more.

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