Wayne Vanwyck
The concept of working on your business not in your business probably isn’t new to you. We’ve heard various versions of this message from Michael Gerber, Caroline Rowan and many others. If you haven’t followed their advice yet, it’s time to get at it. You’re running out of time!
What does it mean to work on the business not in the business? Of course it depends upon the size of your company; your list will be different if you have five hundred rather than five employees. But here is a sample comparison:
| Working On the Business - Leadership | Working In the Business - Doing |
| Strategic Planning either on your own or with a team of senior managers. | Setting up the strategic planning meeting. Getting the facilitator, the location, logistics… |
| Attending seminars, workshops, or courses on growing/managing/selling your business. | Attending seminars, workshops, or courses on software, marketing, sales, supervision, or product specifications. |
| Taking time to think, visualize, plan, set goals and action steps. | Doing all the action steps yourself. |
| Recognizing that you need a Policies and Procedures Manual and delegating the task with clear expectations. | Writing the Manual. |
| Meeting advisors who can help grow/sell your business. | Meeting product/service suppliers. |
| Working with managers to establish quality controls. | Being the person who has to give the quality a pass or fail. |
Here’s another way to look at this:
Early in your business, you probably did everything (100 percent). You opened in the morning and locked up at night. You sold, produced, and delivered the product and handled customer complaints. You invoiced, did bookkeeping, washed dishes and cleaned washrooms! No wonder you didn’t have time for that leadership stuff!
As time went on, you hired employees, but you still assumed total responsibility, and did everything that made the business successful (80 percent doing, 20 percent leading). Some entrepreneurs never get past this point and their business has little or no value unless the new owners can have the founder as part of the deal.
The problem is the entrepreneur mindset. Most entrepreneurs don’t start the business to become senior executives in a big firm but because they want to do what they love without interference.
So a frustrated mechanic opens his own auto shop. A talented graphic designer starts her own agency. They aren’t thinking that one day they will have 50 or 500 people working for them and they will be working on the business not in the business. They like to work in the business.
Chances are, you were one of these people. Maybe you still are. If so, you have probably provided well for your family while doing what you liked to do. Not a bad deal. But it’s harder to sell your company because it has little value once you are not attached to it. If your company cannot run without you, you are an employee not a business owner.
So the question is, do you have the time, the ability, and the will to transform your self-employed practice into a true business? Is it worth it to you to invest the time and effort in the next few years to prepare your business so that it will attract a buyer willing to compensate you for what you have built?
It makes economic sense. Winding down your company and closing it may end up costing you money instead of providing you with a payoff for your years of hard work. A half-hearted attempt to sell your company might not be much better. The better way is to decide what you want and go after it. Much like you have done all of your life.
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