Working On the Business vs Working For the Business

If you ever feel like a hamster on the wheel of your own business, you know just how hard it can be to actually stop. The forward momentum continues to carry you faster and faster and faster…until you finally collapse.

Burnout from working too hard for the business is a very real risk for business owners. It can be easy to get so consumed with the day-to-day work of keeping up with your job that you forget to jump out of the wheel, step back really and see the big picture of where you want to take your company.

The entire crux of this issue can be boiled down to how well you’re balancing working on your business versus for your business.

What’s the Difference Between Working On versus For Your Business?

To get a startup off the ground, you must give blood, sweat and tears to every aspect of the business. This requires you to work both for or in the business.

Working for the business means you’re doing everything that is a job, including both the job itself and the management of that job. Anything related to the daily operations and execution of the work itself means you are working for your business. And this is important. You (or someone) must do the work in order to keep the lights on.

But there’s another equally important component to growing a business – and that’s taking the strategic approach of working on the business. This is about giving yourself time and space to mastermind where you want the organization to go.

Working on the business involves tackling strategic tasks like planning out your overall business strategy, developing short- and long-term goals, dedicating time or resources to product development and innovation, and creating the business and brand vision you want in order to take your business to the next level.

Any small business owner must strike a healthy balance between the two, but we know it’s not easy.

The first step is to simply recognize the tension between managing both job responsibilities. The second step is to prioritize time in your day for the harder of the two – working on your business.

If you don’t intentionally schedule meetings with yourself, other tasks will inevitably creep in and take precedence. Things will come up. They always do. Your challenge is to identify where and when to put limits so you can continue to strategically scale your business.