Work ON Not IN Your Business

The whole point of starting a business is to build a machine that works FOR you and makes your life easier.

If your business depends on you doing an endless list of individual repetitive tasks - you have a job, but when you turn it into a machine that works for you - you have a business.

Start seeing your business as ONE thing - a machine.

When you start viewing your business this way, you can begin to work ON it, instead of IN it (you can be the CEO, not the intern).

It’s a subtle difference, but a powerful one.

The goal for any business is to make as much money as possible, with the least amount of work, in the least amount of time.

When you make this one mindset shift, you’ll start to see your business in a whole new light.

Design and build a life and business that you love.

The first step is to get clear on what you want your business to look like:

• How many hours a week do you want to spend on your business?

• How much time do you want to set aside for family and friends?

• Do you want to take a vacation (or two) every year?

• Do you want your business income to replace your full-time income?

• Or is your business just a temporary side hustle?

• How much would you like to make every week (and year) in sales?

You 100% CAN make these decisions - YOU get to decide what your business looks like, how much money it makes, and how much time you want to spend on it.

There are two options when it comes to running a business;

• Get up every morning and react to everything that happens around you, and hope that you will ‘get’ or ‘make’ some sales.

• Get up every morning knowing exactly where your next sale is coming from because you have systems and processes in place that generate sales for you.

If you don’t have any systems or processes in place, a good place to start is by making a list of every single task that needs to be done daily, weekly and monthly.

Here are some ideas to get you started:

• How do you communicate with your audience? Do you just hope they see your social media posts, or are you intentionally communicating with them regularly?

• How are you building your audience? Are you just trying to get followers, or do you have a list-building strategy in place?

• How do you make your products? Do you replenish as needed, or do you set aside certain days every month for production?

• How do you order supplies? Do you re-order as needed or do you have a schedule?

• How do your customers pay you? Do they have to contact you to place an order, or do you provide checkout pages/links so they can buy anytime?

• How do you market your business? Are you just using social media, or do you have other outlets?

Now that you have a high-level overview of what you want your business to look like, you can begin to work on making your actions match up with that picture.

Here are some ideas for ways you can implement systems and processes to make your business more efficient, and more profitable:

• Start emailing your list every week. Map out 90 days of offers and then write/schedule your emails on the first of every month.

• Mirror your email topics to social media. As you write each email, create a short version for social so that your messaging is cohesive.

• Create a plan for building your email list. Create an offer that is ONLY for people who join your list - then make sure they know that to get your weekly offers they need to be subscribed.

• If your products are refillable or consumable, start taking orders on the same day every month and get your audience into a routine.

• Research your payment platform of choice and learn how to create checkout pages/links so that your customers can shop around the clock.

• Hire a virtual assistant for $50/week to do some basic admin tasks, like scheduling your posts and emails.

• Hire someone to clean your house once a month so that you can stop spending time AND energy on it.

• If you’re planning a vacation, plan and stack your offers in advance so that you have posts/emails going out and sales coming in while you’re gone. (There is no better feeling than being on vacation and seeing those sales notifications coming in while you’re sitting on the beach with your family!)

This is what it means to work ON your business and turn it into a machine. It’s not difficult, and it’s the most valuable time investment you can make - just choose one thing at a time and create a process around it or automate it, then move on to the next.

It’s a good tradeoff to spend a couple of hours a week getting a system in place if it’s going to save you time and energy going forward. Many of these things only need to be set up ONCE, then they will start to function on their own!

Just for fun, check out the Roadmap to Maker CEO below and identify where you are on the journey!