Show Notes
Introduction
- What I’ve noticed the past year or so is that I’m largely an employee in my own business. We’ve been so busy recently that I usually just work on whatever is on my plate, then close the laptop for the day
- Last weekend I randomly saw a TikTok that made the point that if you’re working during the week (M-F) then working in your business is fine, but if you’re working on the weekend you should be working on your business - I didn’t even watch the full TikTok, swiping away pretty quick, but the main point got me thinking about this all week
- In this episode we’ll be:
- Defining working in vs working on your business
- Discussing the importance of both
- Sharing some personal stories and insights from our years in business
Working In Your Business
- When you’re working in your business, you’re working as an employee, doing things like:
- Fulfilling client requests
- Answering emails
- Developing client projects
Working On Your Business
- When you’re working on your business you’re working more like an entrepreneur:
- Strategic planning, marketing, automation, process optimization.
- Thinking long-term: systems, branding, scalability.
- Delegating and documenting: making your business self-sustaining.
- Creating time to work on new offerings, partnerships, or content (like this podcast!).
- To be clear, like most things in life, being an entrepreneur needs a mix of both working in and on your business - especially if you’re running a small business where you need to wear multiple hats
In-On Balance | Professional Goals As An Entrepreneur
- My goal this spring/summer is to strike up a proper balance between working in and working on my business. If I reflect on our business over the years, it has become more successful and able to pump out work, but that’s largely due to the tooling and my skills improving
- I want to explore a lot of things this year including:
- Getting more leverage over accepting deals
- We already aren’t at the mercy of accepting all contracts that come our way due to our “success level” but we do get hit hard when a client stops working for us unexpectedly. I want to have income that comes from our own projects so that we can say no more often (be more choosy)
- Cutting down on repeat tasks
- I’ll be trying out some automation
- If possible, I’ll cut some tasks out completely from person-done or machine-done
- Increasing our throughput
- Easier said than done, but I’ll either need to increase my productivity or will need to get more team members involved
- We have worked with contractors long and short term in the past and this has helped us out when we’ve had too many large projects all on the go at once
- Learn new skills in blindspots
- This one will be tricky to balance as I can’t learn and do everything but off the top of my head I’d like to learn:
- Marketing
- First-hand website management (from a content perspective)
- Full-Stack Development (even just from a training perspective, to allow me to talk more shop and/or pivot to working on projects like these if need be
- I’m no expert in this area, so I got ChatGPT to list out some tips:
- Block off “strategy time” in your calendar weekly.
- Outsource or automate repetitive tasks.
- Audit your week: How many hours are spent in vs on the business?
- Track key performance metrics — not just client deadlines.
- Build standard operating procedures (SOPs) for repeatable tasks.
The Discussion: Working In Your Business VS Working On Your Business
- Working in your business comes with some of the traps of being an employee:
- Making yourself feel productive by being busy (being busy doesn’t mean that you’re being effective
- Burnout risk and stagnation when you’re stuck in the weeds
- Being at the mercy of your “employer”
- In this case it’s the client(s), you’re completely at their mercy… if they drop you tomorrow now, is your business prepared to move on to another client?
- Are you only working on your business when your clients drop you? Are you scrambling the entire time?
- All your thoughts are on the task(s) at hand, and are not thinking about the business at large
- How can we get more cashflow?
- Are there things you can automate to save time?
- What is the market doing? Do I need to pivot or adjust my strategy?
- How do you increase your throughput? (ie hire employees)
The E-Myth Trap (Based on the Book by Michael E. Gerber)
- There’s a concept from the book The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber that really aligns with this idea.
- The “E-Myth” stands for Entrepreneurial Myth — the false assumption that most people who start a business are entrepreneurs.
- In reality, most are technicians — people who are good at a skill (like coding or designing) — and they start a business to do more of that skill.
- But doing the work and building a business are two very different things.
- Gerber breaks it down into three roles:
- Technician – the doer (where most people stay)
- Manager – the organizer
- Entrepreneur – the visionary
- If you’re stuck just doing the work every day, you’ve effectively just created a job for yourself — and probably a more stressful one.
- I haven’t read the book myself (yet), but it’s been widely recommended and might be worth checking out if this sounds familiar to your situation.
Final Thoughts
- It’s not wrong to work in your business — it’s often necessary.
- The key is to make on the business work a regular, protected part of your schedule.
- Long-term success means making yourself less essential to the day-to-day.
How to support the show
Patreon
Prices subject to change and are listed in USD
- Support the show from as little as ~$1/month
- Get a shoutout at the end of the episode (while supplies last) for just ~$3/month
- Help support the HTML All The Things Podcast: Click Here
Scrimba Discount - Coding Courses!
Learn to code using Scrimba with their interactive follow-along code editor.
Join their exclusive discord communities and network to find your first job!
Use our affiliate link for a 20% discount!!
- Click the link to take you to the Scrimba site
- A pop-up should appear on your screen with the discount amount and instructions on how to claim it
- Discount is for new accounts only
We receive a monetary kickback if you use our affiliate link and make a purchase.
