Tag: Create Time
What Does It Mean to Work ON Your Business, Not IN It, and Why Does It Matter?
As an entrepreneur, it’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day operations of your business. After all, there are endless tasks that need to be done, from managing employees to coordinating with vendors to ensuring that customer orders are fulfilled on time. However, if you want your business to truly thrive and grow, it’s important to shift your focus from working IN your business to working ON your business.
What does it mean to work ON your business? Essentially, it means focusing your time and attention on the strategic initiatives and developments that will drive growth and success in the long run. This includes things like identifying new market opportunities, developing new products and services, and creating scalable systems and processes that can support growth.
On the other hand, working IN your business involves focusing on the day-to-day operations and activities that keep things running smoothly. This might include managing employees, handling customer inquiries, and ensuring that products are delivered on time and on budget.
Of course, both types of work are essential for a successful business. However, if you’re spending too much time working IN your business, you may find that you’re not able to devote enough time and energy to working ON your business. This can ultimately limit your ability to grow and scale your business over time.
So how do you make the shift from working IN your business to working ON your business? One approach is to conduct an ON vs IN audit, which involves creating a spreadsheet to track your time and attention across different business functions and activities.
For example, you might create columns for input functions, activities you perform, minimum time required per activity, frequency per month, and time allocation per month. This can help you to identify areas where you’re spending too much time on day-to-day operations and not enough time on strategic initiatives and growth-oriented activities.

Ideally, you should aim to spend at least 70% of your time working ON your business and at most 30% of your time working IN your business. This balance can help ensure that you’re dedicating enough time and energy to growth-oriented activities, while still ensuring that your day-to-day operations are running smoothly.
To make the shift from working IN to working ON your business, you may also need to focus on simplifying, systematizing, and delegating your business operations. This might involve streamlining your processes, automating routine tasks, and delegating responsibilities to trusted team members.
Ultimately, the key to working ON your business is to build a scalable platform for growth, then focus on driving growth through strategic initiatives and developments. By taking the time to step back from day-to-day operations and focus on the big picture, you can position your business for long-term success and create a lasting legacy for yourself and your team.
Spend more time on your business and less time in it with improved business systems
We have seen a common theme emerging in our recent meetings with various entrepreneurs. As a business owner, you might be wondering how best to position yourself for the future amid South Africa’s junk status and unpredictable economy. You might be thinking about how to make the best of your business in this context, but also how you put yourself in the best position. You need your business to be a success without having to tire yourself out and being involved in the day-to-day operations. To be profitable, you must increase sales without spending more or allocating more resources. But isn’t there an easier or more efficient way of doing this than killing yourself by trying to be on top of every aspect of your business?
You are probably wearing yourself out thinking about how you can remain competitive and grow your business without having to spend so much time in the business to ensure things get done the right way at the right time…There must be a better way, there must be a system or example of someone else who has got this right.
The right stuff
To build a great business, you need to have a certain mindset and strategy that pertains to every aspect of your business, including business systems. Perhaps most importantly, have a plan in place that will bring your dream and vision to life. Make sure your plan is a bold vision for the future. You will have to spend a lot of time working on the ground, and having a vision will remind you of the end goal you are working towards. It’s important to keep an eye on the prize and be ready for the long haul. Learning from past failures equips business owners with the knowledge that is important for future decision-making and the experience will equip you with knowledge of the industry and deepen your relationships. And building on small successes will give you the confidence and momentum for the long haul.
We have the right tools
If you build your business on solid systems, you will be able to make use of the right technologies to automate your business systems. This will reduce your cost of delivery, increase your responsiveness and bring predictability to your service delivery. Technology (software and hardware) is cheaper now than ever and affordable for any business. The trick is to first build those systems manually and automate it in stages after this. The implementation of good business systems will result in business owners achieving scalable and sustainable growth across all areas of the company.
Don’t wear yourself out trying to do everything yourself, you might think you are busy driving the business but the business is driving you. Aurik has the tools for exhausted business owners to ensure scalable and sustainable business growth. If your business is systemised, you will drive it instead of it driving you.
Create more time to focus on growth
Time is our most precious resource, but it seems like we never have enough of it. The second entrepreneur Aurik ever gave guidance to, was a bakery business owned by a 54-year old man, who had initiated the company at 27. It was highly successful, but he’d not been able to focus on its strategic growth because all his time was tied up in operations. Fourteen years after we rebuilt the business with him, it now creates more than a Billion Rands’ worth of business.
As the owner of a developing business, you can, and should create time to grow the business, and work on it, instead of in it. We’ll examine seven strategies that help you create more time, and spend it wisely.
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Positioning Your Business
It can feel all too tempting to try and be everything to everyone. For a growing business, there is extreme value in specialisation, where you provide a specific kind of service to a defined type of customer. By specialising and positioning your business, you’re able to focus, learn your industry, and exploit your business’ unique aptitudes.
Build the Right Systems
The systems you build become the delivery vehicle for your customer service. By building simple, effective systems that positively serve your customers, you will create time to focus on your company’s growth.
Take the Right Action
A growing business must go through its developmental stages to be successful – there is no such thing as a true overnight success. Identify which stage your business is in, and take the right action for your company. The stages of your business’ lifecycle are:
• Start – where you’re focused on selling your product/service & attracting customers
• Build – where you’ve had enough success to start building effective systems, to ensure you can keep up your level of delivery
• Grow – where you’re able to hire the right people to cater for increased customer demand
• Accelerate – where your business functions so well operationally, that you’re able to innovate and move towards becoming an industry leader
Outsourcing
Outsourcing is a great way to carve out the right kind of focused time. Here’s how to choose which tasks you can outsource:
• Which tasks are part of your core business and strategically important? Do not outsource these. This is your work.
• Which tasks are part of your core business but not strategically important? For this, you can collaborate with a service provider.
• Which tasks are not part of your core business, and not strategically important? These tasks can be outsourced.
Use Technology Smartly
Using integrated technological systems will help you create more time for your team, and thereby create more value for your company. For example, your accounting software should directly integrate with your banking facilities, otherwise you’re adding unnecessary steps to administrative processes.
Touch Things Once Only
Research has shown that, when we multitask, we experience a 38% drop in intellectual capacity. That’s why focusing on a single task at one time leads to better results. Set your priorities and work on one task at a time, without distraction.
Choose the right collaborators
In uncertain times, you may find yourself desperately seeking a collaborator, but choosing the right one is key for your company’s success. Select collaborators who are close to your business’ function, and who will help you to build it, not take time away from it.
When your time runs low, so do your inspiration levels. At Aurik, we help you build systems that curate, construct and craft your time, so that you can build your business into an asset of value. Get in touch with us and let’s start building, together.