Work ON, not IN your Business

People start a small business. They work hard. What are they doing? Stupid question - they're doing the work of the business. If it's a web design company, they're doing web design. If it's an office cleaning company, they're cleaning offices. If they're good at what they do and if they work really hard for many years, they may eventually be able to afford a modest retirement - if nothing goes wrong. They're working IN their business.

If you want to be successful beyond this, to grow your business and to accumulate some capital, you will have to do things slightly differently - you'll have to work ON your business with the aim of eventually getting someone else to do the work.

If you're working IN your business and you're doing well, eventually you're going to have too much work. You hire someone. Your new employee is typically someone who can't easily work on their own - if they could, why aren't they out there doing it? In any case, he won't know how to do your work. Now you not only have to handle the overload; you also have to train your new employee. But you can't remember the details of how or why you do certain things. You just do them as they come up - you can't explain the work very well and your new employee doesn't understand. Your new employee doesn't work out and you're stuck in your one-man, small business.

If you're working ON your business, you still start out doing all the work but with the aim of turning it over to someone else. You document everything. You keep lists of customers, leads, suppliers, contacts etc. You keep track of what you're doing and how you're doing it. You write down detailed procedures for everything as you do the work.

Now, when you're successful and have too much work, you can hire someone, give them their instructions and go back to your work. You'll be able to say, for example, "Here is a list of thirty-two leads I haven't been able to follow up. Call each one and send a follow-up letter. Here are the names, phone numbers and addresses. Here are a couple of sample call logs showing how to begin your call, what information to present and what to ask. Here is the call log form where you record the call information and here are three sample letters with the product information which we send out.

Go To Page: 1 2

Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic