Whether you are a solo home-based entrepreneur, work at home mom, freelancer or a small business owner, you can expect to wear many hats.
If you are running a small landscaping business, you may be the overall strategist, marketer, customer service officer, equipment manager, operations manager, and personnel manager all rolled into one. If you’re a graphic designer, you may be acting as the marketer and bookkeeper who prepares invoices and run after non-paying clients, in addition to doing the graphic design work.
With so many tasks to do, the challenge is to be aware when you are working ON your business – not IN your business.
As Ken Boyar in his book “The Practical Dreamer: Do’s and Don’ts of Mastering a Small Business
Nothing is more important than to use time wisely … The key is to draw the line between tasks that move the business forward and those that do not.”
Take this online publisher I’ve met years ago at a conference. Being in the same line of business, we got into talking and comparing notes about our businesses. Working on his website alone with a limited technical background, his main challenge was the daily maintenance of his “stone-age” website. Created in the mid-1990s, his website consists of flat files; with no CSS, no databases, and no content management system. Maintenance was a nightmare and took up a sizeable chunk of his time.
Look at your daily schedule, and determine if the tasks you are doing — especially those that takes up a huge portion of your time — are what you need to move your business forward. Consider the following questions:
- Does the task warrant this much attention from you? Or is there a better use of your time?
- Do you think there are ways to speed up the process and cut down the time spent doing this task?
- Are there affordable technologies that you can use to speed up the process?
- Is there a better way or system that can be adopted to do this task?
- Is this something that you can outsource so you can focus on the most important things of your business?
- Can you hire an assistant or even an intern to do this task for you?
- Is there a way to simplify the process?
Take a critical look at how you spend your time and constantly find ways you can improve how you run your business. Just because you’re doing something doesn’t mean that you really should be doing it. And just because you’re doing something in a particular way doesn’t mean that there are no better ways of doing it. Always be open and on the lookout for ways to better reach your business goals.
Hey, you used to write wonderful posts, but the last several posts have been kinda lackluster I miss your super writing. Past few posts are just a little bit out of track!
Great post. Too many times I have become so overwhelmed with tedious tasks, that my lack of actually working on marketing my business suffered greatly. Frustration usually followed. Like you say, wisely using your time to differentiate between the tasks that move your Home Business forward, and those that do not.
Hello,
Nice writing…I love to do home base business as i am going on with this. I am working in wholesale business of small item like hair bands. It gives me a nice return on my investment every month. But your post is really informative and useful for me. I totally do agree with it that work on your business not in your business.
Great insight, thanks for sharing. A distinction we all need to sit back and consider!
Thanks for the article-I’m always looking to try to maximize my time working on my home business.
Good article! I think it’s very important to work “on” your business and not “in” it. Planning strategically is the most important thing you can do to create success. Some other points that should be thought about is to ask the question, “what is your product?” It isn’t the item you are selling. It is the experience you give your customers all the way from the purchase of the item to the customer service if there is problems.
Great time management reminders.
Great reminders about time management thanks