Work On Your Business Not In Your Business

This is a big topic today, how to work on your business not in your business. Now, you may have heard of that before. You may think that you understand what that means but it actually requires a paradigm shift and so hopefully through what John shares in this video, you’ll be able to see this. So just, just pay attention. Stop whatever you’re doing. This is going to be awesome. So one of the things that I see successful people do is they work on their business not in their business. And there’s a really critical distinction here and I’m going to spend a little bit of time defining this. So what’s the difference between working on your business versus working in your business? My, my definition is if you’re touching anything in your business you’re working in your business. So I’ll some examples. You’re building your website. If you’re, if you’re touching WordPress you’re working in your business. If you’re touching plug-ins you’re working in your business. If you’re writing content you’re working in your business. If you are editing videos you’re working in your business. Making phone calls, what if you’re talking to customers you’re working in your business. Anything that you’re actually interacting with the business is working in the business. And the problem is, if you’re working in the business you have a hard time seeing the big picture because working in the business requires little details and it requires your brain, I’m trying to show you my body language that what this does is it requires do to like get into it and and pretty soon you’re here and you’re working in it. Where what requires for success is to be like here and looking at things and saying, that process is broken and and then working to fix the process with someone else doing the process. So this is a big deal. There’s there’s two things I think to switching away from working in to working on. One of them is automation and systematizing. One of them was getting other people to do the work. So the automation systematizing for me involves creating training or documentation which is so painful usually. So that someone else can do the process for you. So many people don’t want to do that because it takes so much time to take so much brain work to create that documentation of training. And it’s just faster and easier to do it yourself. So as long as you’re doing it yourself you are working in your business and and real success requires stepping away. The second side of that is getting someone else to do the work for you so which as soon as you realize you can get someone else to do the work like a full-time person in the Philippines, it makes creating the training a lot easier. And one of the real magic things about the Philippines is because the people are so loyal, so Michael Gerber talks about that in the, in the e-myth revisited, he talks about how you have to create this system. And I agree with it into a point. What I disagree with is because Filipino workers are so loyal you don’t have to create the system all at once. Which is his whole thing, you’ve got to create it all at once but you have to have it perfectly defined. With Filipino workers, with them being so loyal, you can create a piece of it and give it to them and have them start and then create feedback and have to have it the system change and then create more feedback on the system change again. And what you’ll find is if you treat these people well the people in the Philippines well, you can create the system over time which makes it so much easier to systematize and automate. And then if they don’t leave, they don’t quit, they don’t leave when they get a job offer making more money so now your process is is engrained in someone and they’re sticking with you. Then the things you can do is then say, hey I want you to document what you’re doing. Create a training for it and we’ll stick it in our training system. So I’ve done that quite a few times well I’ll have I’ll teach them the process and have them work the process and then I keep the training I created and then have them also documented again so that that process is pretty well documented now. So for me, how to work on your business not in your business about two things. It’s about having the Filipino workers there which creates a mindset changing you to be able to system up systematize and automate things. A couple things to realize that you do this, number one this will not happen overnight. This is not a quick fix. It takes time, it takes time and effort hard work to change from working in to working on your business. One of the biggest things that it requires is you to think and to think through hard decisions and hard processes to do the things you don’t like to do and to get them done in order to have someone else now automate things. So there’s a couple that first realizes it’s not a quick fix and second it’s hard. It’s going to take work on your part it’s not going to be an easy thing. So my first step for you in doing this is to find one thing that you’re currently doing. One thing that you’re in the details of and hire someone to take care of that thing. Hire someone to take care of even if it, Even if it means it’s going to take you three hours this week to do it and it’s going to take two weeks to train someone else to do it, take the time to train someone else because you’ll never have to train them again. You know not never but my experience is once I do it once I never have to do it again. And if you can teach someone to do that one thing you gain a couple hours of time and and now you’re able to step back and work on something else and then once you understand this one, You can you can get this one going and you have someone else to do this one now you step over here and you work on this one and you have three, you have three things that you were in the business and now you’re looking to other people take care of these things. So it’s a one step at a time process of getting someone else to do things for you. The last thing in how to work on your business is is how you make decisions. and I’ve talked about this in other videos but you’ve got to make decisions of I’m not going to be the one to do this work, I mean they’re going to give it to someone who already works for me or I’m going to hire someone else to do it but if it’s a process that requires me to do the work then it’s not something we can do. It’s not sustainable it’s not something we can do long-term you’ve gotta find processes that other people can do so that you can manage the processes and people and not the actual work. So in the beginning of this I talk about the things that you can do that are working in your business you’re touching things, you’re tweaking things, you’re you’re messing with things. Here are the things that you’ll do as you’re working on your business and this is this is kind of indicators that that you have stepped away from being in your business. You’re giving training to someone else on how to fill a process is working on your business you are thinking through, let me give you an example of this. So recently I wanted to add invoicing to to one of my websites. We’re going to add invoices so that people can invoice their employers. So in order to do that I could have said hey I want you guys to go at invoicing and I would have been a disaster product on my hands. Instead, what I did was I thought through invoicing. What does invoicing look like on other websites? what do other people do for invoicing? And I looked at it. I came up with this picture of my mind and then I went through our website and said, you know I think invoicing fits in here. And this is how I imagined it and this is what I what I want kind of for the invoicing. So I sent it to one of the guys and said, hey this is what I imagined, this is what I thought through, I want you to look at these different sites and come up with an invoice how it looks like. However invoicing looks like. And I said go Create that. Send it back to me. So he does, he goes and creates the invoicing thing that he creates the front end thing the interactions the customer in the and the actual invoicing and how it works with the back ends and the emails being sent and so he did all the work and he sends me and I went and looked at him said okay I like what you’ve done and then I had to think and think like what isn’t right here? what does a user think when they see this? what does a user, how do they interact with this? And then I had to make some hard decisions like, yeah what you did it was a good idea but it doesn’t work for a user. So that to me, when I’m willing to think through this hard process and then get one else to do the work is working on the business. And they’re working in the business. So thinking to me is always working on the business. And another thing that I think is working on the businesses is designing processes. That if you’re designing a process that someone else is going to do you’re working on your business. So for example I will talk about all my work cause that’s what I do. But what if you were what if you’re a dentist? How do you work in your business? you drill people’s teeth. That’s working in your business. If you’re cleaning people’s teeth you’re working in your business. How do you work on? you get other people to do as much as legally allowed and as you come in at the last second and do a little bit of work. Or even better, you hire another dentist to come in to do the work and now you manage the process or even better if you hire someone else to manage those dentists and you manage the offices that are, that you have multiple offices. Or what if you’re a realtor? How do you work in the business? You go out and knock doors and say hey you have a notice of default how can I help you list your house? That’s working in your business. How you work on? You hire someone else to go through the notice of default list and to contact them all and say, hey here’s the average person who lists their house so first up my owner and ends up listening with the realtor or whatever, or hey we’ll sell your house quicker or get you out of your money whatever. You get someone else to do that process for you and then the very last work comes back to you. The process of okay we’re going to put on MLS. Well I’m not going to actually put on MLS. Someone else gonna put on MLS for me and then I’m going to verify and make sure that’s correct. Or you’re a youtuber or a podcaster you’re working in your business if you are filming video if you’re editing video if you’re uploading to YouTube if you’re writing descriptions you are you’re working in your business. You’re working on your business as soon as you get someone else to film, edit, upload, write descriptions, publicize it, and what your job should be is to direct each those things like, hey our editing should be different than this hey our filming should be different than this, hey when we when we upload we should write the content different than this. This is how it should be written hey we should be promoting it like this and like this and like this too here’s how you do this thing. And then someone else does the work. Podcasting? the same thing. If you’re doing transcription yourself it’s terrible. That’s working in your business. I get that you should be most podcasters want to be doing interviewing, okay fine. You’re working in your businesses a little bit of it but then after that you should have someone on scheduling someone else prepping, you should sit down and record and then walk away and someone else should take that recording and create the transcription and do the editing and create the audio file and do the uploading at the various places and do the promotions and get the apps you can be teaching someone else to get the advertising. You’ve got to be directing the business and not doing the work that the direction point it to. Okay now you know the difference between working on your business and working in. You think they’re going to do it? I don’t know it takes a decision. You got, you’re going to start with one thing. So just figure out what is it going to take for you to work on your business and do it because this video you’ve had your eyes open, now you’ve got to do it. So remember live on purpose, make a difference, be the hero!