I saw a brilliant quote the other day: ‘Gardens are not made by singing, “Oh, how beautiful,” and sitting in the shade.’ And what Rudyard Kipling gave me in that moment was the perfect analogy for business too… Both gardens and businesses require nurturing, tending, weeding, feeding, careful planning – and enjoyment. So, this begs the question, how long should you spend working ON your business, rather than working IN it?
This is a question of how you transition from being a busy employee of your own business, to being the business owner/manager.
You are likely to have become a business owner because you love what you do, so the thought of not doing it to become an ‘accidental MD’ might fill you with dread, but you don’t have to stop getting your hands dirty if that’s what you want. Going back to the gardening analogy, your business won’t grow if you don’t put time into it.
Working on your business just takes 90 minutes a day
In the Entrepreneurs Circle we call the 90 minute chunk of the day spent working on your business, ‘getting out of the weeds’.
It’s where you step back and focus on the most important thing you need to do to make your business a success. Usually, that important thing is to find new customers to hold on to. So, let’s think about what we can be doing every day to either find new customers, or take care of existing ones…
My first tip would be to make sure you can spend 90 minutes without being interrupted! And there’s some advice on how to handle interruptions in ‘Beat Distractions and Procrastination’.
Here are some ideas on what constitutes working on your business
These ideas are not meant to be set in stone, or worked on every day, in any particular order. They are meant to spark your own ideas, to give you some inspiration. Soon enough you’ll be making your own list at the end of the day as to what the following day’s 90 minutes will be focused on.
- Measure the ROI: Networking | social ads | PPC ads | conferences & expos
- Look for new ways to reach your ideal customer: New social platforms | print | display ads
- Write new content: Case studies | blogs | social posts | editorial | presentations
- Work out your seven ‘Key Numbers’
- Profit and loss forecasting
- Vision boarding and goal planning
- Business or life coaching activities.
Note, I didn’t specify what time of day to work on your business. Everyone has a more productive time of day, and a wind-down period, so choose the time that best suits you. Dedicate yourself to making a habit of it and working on your business will soon be something you look forward to, rather than shy away from.
The Entrepreneurs Circle’s guide to how to spend your time
This is a downloadable chart that helps you determine what tasks are most valuable, and therefore how much time to dedicate to them. You can use it verbatim or use it as inspiration for valuing your own tasks, but please download the guide to how to spend your time and spend some of your 90 minutes thinking about it.
It works by having four columns on a scale from left to right. In the left hand column are jobs that earn you £10 an hour, such as running errands. Then each following column is titled £100, £1,000 and £10,000 which contains jobs such as creating new and better offers.
To make a step change in your business, you should be spending some of your time every week on the right hand side of the chart, doing the things that earn you £1,000 per hour or more.
I’m happy to help you put some ideas together for your first 90 minutes. I offer a 45 minute free business mentoring session, or consultation, so get in touch to see how I can help you with working on your business. If you’re looking for an accountability partner to support you longer term, we can talk about that too.