I’m always looking for ways to improve my business. I mean that literally. It can be a problem. I’m always looking for little tweaks I can make. Last week an opportunity to dive into a new project came up, and I resented it. I didn’t want to do any web development because I was too busy worrying about how I could improve my web development business.

In some of the books I’ve read and conversations I’ve had with smart people, the idea has come up repeatedly of working on my business instead of in my business. I take that concept very seriously. I’ve heard horror stories of business owners across many industries who are locked into 80 hour work weeks just to keep their business from going into the red. In most cases, these owners are great at what they do. They just spend all their time concentrating on what they are building or providing, and there’s no time left to think about how they build or provide it.

I think sometimes I take that sentiment too far, though. If I had a team of developers working for me, it probably would be appropriate for me to devote all of my energy to the systems and legal and marketing and all the other “business” stuff. But I’m not there yet. Spending at least some of my time on creating websites is actually the best possible thing I can be doing to grow my business.

Once I considered that, I felt eager again to take on all kinds of new projects.

filed under: Running a Business