Work On Your Business, Not In It
This is something that’s seemingly simple, but extremely powerful. Luckily it’s something I learned, and a mindset which I developed, before I started up my first offline business years ago, or I wouldn’t be where I am today.
Here’s the gist of it: Work on your business, not in it. That’s it.
Here’s an example:
Let’s say that you’re a painter by profession. If you’re working in your business, that means you’re going out everyday and painting whatever it is that you paint and when you return home, you’re working on things like book keeping and equipment cleaning That hardly leaves any time for marketing, hiring, firing, training and in general, getting more business to earn more profits.
But, if you’re a painter and working on your business, that means that you’re taking some of the time you could spend painting, to work on drumming up new business or increasing the profit margin from the business you’re already receiving, thereby, increasing your overall profits.
Then, once you have full-time round the clock business, you hire and train someone to paint for you and work on getting more business. Rinse and repeat.
Though I can’t remember the exact study, at a seminar some time ago, the speaker quoted a study that found if you take just 2-3 hours a week, and work on your business, not in it, your sales will effectively double. From my experience, that’s 100% reality.
Even though we’ve been talking about painting, the same holds true to internet marketing.
If you spend all your time on tasks like bookkeeping, customer service, article and content writing, web design, copyrighting and so on, how much time is left for marketing and selling?
Not enough!
That’s why the rich will always get richer.
The concept is so simple. They can afford to hire people to do things for them that most people would need to do for themselves.
Think about it. If you had a full time housekeeper, nanny, cook, gardener, driver, pilot, personal assistant etc. how much more could you get done in a day? A lot!
In your online business, you need to outsource, outsource, outsource. You can’t do everything yourself…
I don’t write my own copy, do my own web design, programming, accounting, paperwork, article writing, search engine submission, article submission, editing or anything else that I can sufficiently outsource to someone else.
When it comes to my business, there are only 3 things I do each day; they are:
1. Managing my outsourcing – 1 hr
2. Responding to emails and coaching clients – 2 hrs
3. Marketing, improving on and growing my business, products and services – 2+ hrs
Now, not everyone will want to outsource everything right away. If you’re just starting out, you’ll want to do most of it yourself, but as you and your business grow, you’ll want to start outsourcing some of the everyday tasks that keep your business going.
The more you outsource, the more that you can accomplish and the more successful you’ll be.
Figure out what your time’s worth, and hire someone to do everything that’s not worth your time, or who can do it better than you.
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