Working On The Business To Create More Growth And Profits
Posted on February 26, 2008 by
Dave Origano 
Startups 
9 Comments
It’s been discussed a lot lately, and for a good reason: it works. The moment you start working ON the business instead of IN it, you can focus on growth of sales, cutting costs and achieving your goals. When dealing with minutia and doing all the work that your ‘employees’ should be doing, you’re not getting ahead very fast.
However, the moment you decide to spend more time working ON the business it rapidly grows. The tasks you can perform are strategy creation and improvement, setting up new marketing venues, setting up referral systems and creating To Do lists after carefully reviewing the past quarter.
The big difference here lays in the fact that once you work on the business, you take a different standpoint. You look over the whole business as being in a helicopter, and can easily pinpoint problem areas without losing time in the details. That’s where you get stuck working in the business, the smallest problems that come from details.
A business owner is more of an investor. He sees his business as an investment and wants to make the most out of it. This is done by ruling over the company like a true entrepreneur, being strong in your decisions and actions. That could also mean the moment you get ‘honest’ with yourself you might decide to fire a lot of your employees, drop entire projects or even drop a complete set of customers.
You should do what is in the best interest of your company and your customers and lays within your strategy. Reviewing and reflecting once a quarter, keeping the strategy in mind will get you more profits than staying in the business. You’ll just keep struggling and spending time where it isn’t the most profitable.
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Lame! My last comment, which I think was a fair question and constructive criticism of the content was deleted. Not a good way to retain your audience. Consider this blog unsubscribed from.
please leave your URL for us to see who you are…although I think I have a good idea.
Great insight. The day you wake up and work on the business and not in the business represents a seismic shift in your ability to grow your business. For instance, with the dollar so weak how many small businesses are exporting like crazy. I am, but my competitors are fretting over the recession, high transportation costs and inflation. Good post.
nice work!
It seems not everyone likes my posts, and prefer to read more about Adie’s experiences in the marketing field.
What I can try is to write about my own experiences more. From now on I’m going to do just that.
Thanks for the appreciation Alan and Josh!
-Dave
Dave,
Good post. You are right though it would have had a greater impact by sharing some of your personal experiences.
My mentor uses McDonalds Corporate as an example. Corporate is in the business of opening outlets, brand recognition and driving traffic. The corporation is working on the business and the franchises work in the business. Who do you think makes more money?
-Bobby
So many of us find ourselves swamped in the day to day running that we forget about the business as a whole and its growth. It definitely pays to step back and review the businesses progress as a whole.
I agree that the automation is the key to FREEDOM. After all, you don’t want to get your internet business up and running and find out you’ve just invented yourself another J.O.B.
Using products from Aaron Brandon will certainly enable you to have a hands-free business, letting you enjoy life and work ON your business instead of IN your business.
I was the one that originally had my comment deleted. I’ll start by saying I should have manned up and posted my name if I was going to criticize, although I do maintain that I wasn’t rude about my criticism or the validity of my question about the sudden change in authorship, I would call it more of a critique. I did not post my url because I don’t blog about net business, but I did for a time run a forum (fbappdevelopers.com) that I have since stopped running, so I did not think it pertinent.
I was enjoying Adie’s articles about various business avenues related to the internet, forums, hosting, etc… but then I start seeing articles about “secrets” to boosting blog sales by some percent (I was going to go back and read it to try and give Dave a fair shake but can’t find it anymore). Then the article about seeming bigger than you are by using multiple extensions, titles, whatever (don’t you think they would know the jig was up when all phone menu branches lead to the same person?) Finally I’m told to work “on” the business, not “in” the business. It seemed like nothing but bunch of hype and platitudes, sorry if that offends somebody but that is what I was taking from it. I got the sense that the blog was turning into what you hear from all these “real estate gurus” that get rich by suckering people into buying their “secret methods” but have never actually sold a piece of real estate in their lives. That is the same perception I get on the rare occasion that I check out shoemoney or johnchow, (I understand that mine is but one of 6 billion opinions in the world) but reading blogs about how to be a better blogger and increase your readership all the time is beyond tedious.
I followed the the forum series (with it’s somewhat of an anticlimatic ending) and I was enjoying the online store stuff too, I don’t even care if you end up posting that things aren’t working and you are shuttering one of your experiments (again with the forum series even if it was never actually stated), I was usually able to take something away from the articles.
But at the end of the day it’s not my blog, if blogging about blogging is increasing your readership (and revenue) then more power to you. Dave, seeing as how I don’t know you or Adie from Adam, my comment wasn’t personal, even if you took it that way. I still think addressing the original comment instead of deleteing it would have been more productive but I’ll chalk it up to me posting it anonymously.