So it is common knowledge now a days, thanks to Michael Gerber, that entrepreneurs and business owners should be working on their business instead of in it.
Now to give a little background of what that means for those of you that are not familiar with Michael Gerber or the terms of working on your business instead of in it. I will give a little background...
Back in 1986, an American Entrepreneur, Michael Gerber, wrote a book called "The E-Myth", and about 9 years later wrote his more popular (my mark of sales) book called the "The E-Myth Revisited". Both of these books, as well as his other "E-Myth" books he released in later years, centered around the experiences and the typical hardships of entrepreneurs & business owners. Throughout these books, Michael would go through stories of different entrepreneurs he came across that were having a real hard time in their business. These business owners may or may not have be struggling financially, but where they were always struggling, was in their happiness with their business.
The reason these business owners were struggling usually came down to:
Not having time to do anything they wanted to do, because they were stuck running their business.
or
Not growing their business past a certain threshold because (like A.) they were stuck running their business, and couldn't find time to work on anything to grow their business.
During each story, Michael would go through a series of steps and exercises with each business owner and show them multiple ways for them to bring back their clarity of mind as well as set them up to grow their business. The E-Myth being realized by the end of each book, is that being an entrepreneur is not about working your tail off everyday on doing the ins and outs of your business, but about building processes and systems for your business to run like a well-oiled machine.
First of all, I would like to say that this post was not written to give you an analysis of Michael Gerber's books, but I highly recommend them!
The purpose of this post is actually to explain how I did not even realize what Michael Gerber was saying in his book, even though all of these years, it seemed so obvious to me. I had always thought "Yep, I will go out and grow my business until its big enough that I can sit back and write SOP's (Standard Operating Procedures) for every part of it, and put it in motion".
Let me tell you now.... That is not the right idea.
Granted, I didn't think it was going to be that easy, nor was I planning on waiting until forever in the future to write up SOP's for the business. In fact, as a team, we have written SOP's for a majority of our company, and they do in fact, work like a well oiled machine. What we hadn't done for the majority of our existence, was create procedures for our sales and marketing (marketing for ourselves, not our customers).
The reason being, is because we always thought of sales and marketing as a combat sport.
Meaning, our sales/marketing teams were supposed to go out and try their hardest to muscle up some new business and then hustle hard to get the job done. The problem with that was, since we had no specific procedure, it had myself as the business owner pounding pavement (literally), trying to keep new business flowing in.
Now most entrepreneurs and business owners would say "That's what your supposed to do!", you are supposed to bust your tail and work as hard as possible to grow your business.
You know what I mean!
"80 hour work weeks to live your dream"
Well, I do have to admit, personally, I am a workaholic, ask anyone on my team (or in my family). I do love working and 80 hour work weeks are the normal in my life.
That being said, 80 hours working in my business instead of on my business, is not pleasant. Even for the hardest workers out there, if you are working nonstop to keep your business growing, you are probably not doing the majority of that work with a smile on your face. 😃 😓
See, regardless on whether you want to spend all of your time working or all of your time with family and friends, the key to your business is that you enjoy it. The only way to enjoy it is to know that it will not only run on its own, but it will grow on its own as well.
Like the great Notre Dame football coach, Lou Holtz, said "If your not growing, you are dying". ....that goes for your business too....
So here's the lesson learned:
"You should never need to be in your business, physically or mentally, for your business to continue to thrive (grow)."
Whether you are a practitioner running a clinic or you are an amazing sales leader running a heavily sales oriented company, every part of your business should run without you, INCLUDING SALES AND MARKETING.
This may be obvious to some, but me being in a literal sales and marketing business, I figured some things were not possible to delegate. That is never true. Though you may want to always be involved in the decision making of your business, you should not be any more then just a bonus for any part of the working side of your business. Otherwise you are just a glorified co-worker of your employees.
Here at Spotlight Revenue, no one works for anyone, we all work for ourselves, but if I was to just be a part of the machine like everyone else, I would not be much of a benefit (or leader) to anyone else.
What I have realized, is that as a business owner, I should always be coming up with new ideas and helping to implement new ideas EVERY SINGLE DAY. Therefore, my mind is spent on creativity and not spent on tasks that will eventually burn me out. The result of this, is constant growth (as a person and as a company) and finally (like the first months of opening for business) happiness in chasing my dreams.