Go to Work Each Day ON Your Business, Not IN Your Business

A small shift in your thinking will pay big benefits to your business and your sanity.

Ever have those days when you wonder why in the world you wanted to open a business?

By the time you can get out of your car, open your office and get to your desk, you have been "assaulted by questions and demands from students, parents, staff, and who knows what else. People "pull" on you constantly. And there are always deadlines that haven't been met and paperwork that should already have been submitted.

I'm suggesting to you that there is a way to look at all of this without "going crazy."

You see, most workers (lawyers, doctors, engineers, factory works) go to work in their job. They spend their days doing the tasks that the job calls for.

What makes you different is this:

Again, your job is to get work accomplished through other people.

That makes you an organizer, a motivator, a persuader, a decision maker...in short, a leader.

I know I don't have to tell you that you have an almost impossible job of coordinating the efforts of many people. As such, the only way you can survive is to organize those efforts into systems that will allow the work to be accomplished.

The better those systems become, the better job you will do.

Your main task is not to work with students, or to troubleshoot, or hire, or manage.  Your main task is to design, to develop, to decide the systems that will make your business do whatever it is supposed to do for your clients.

Any other task you perform means that you have stepped over the line and become an employee. You probably need to fulfill several employee positions within your business.  But despite the time pressure you face within your business, those employee tasks are secondary. The primary task is developing the business.

The majority of your time will probably be spent doing employee tasks.  Just don't ignore the bigger job of working on your business. That job ought to be scheduled on your calendar and made as important as any other appointment.  It's very easy to get fully consumed by your employee tasks. 

Remember those early days when you thought that what you would be doing is teaching? That seems so easy compared to the way the job really is. What you have is an organization, and you are the head, the leader, the CEO, the boss, the "big cheese." And you need to know that if you try to do everything yourself, you will be worn out really fast!

So you start organizing, delegating, finding help, building some automatic reminders into your life. And before long, it begins to have some form, some shape, and you notice there are a few things that you don't have to do personally.

But how many things are there that could be re-organized to work better for you? How many times do you solve the same problems before you notice the pattern? Establishing patters and "templates" beforehand makes many day-to-day hassles disappear.

Here is an example. I know a man that buys, fixes up, and sells houses. One day he realized that he agonized over colors for each and every house. Finally he made the decision to "standardize" the colors. Now when he buys a house, his painters already know what 2 colors the outside will be painted and what 2 colors the inside will be.

"How does this help ME?"

It is a slight shift in a way to look at your job (This is especially good for those times you feel overwhelmed and you might not want to go on - "Maybe I should find a school job!"):

This may seem minor to you right now, but it puts you WAY ahead of most business owners.

Most of all, on those days where you think you can't get it all done, it gives you hope. By going to work each and every day on your business, your daily tasks slowly get better and better. And you can look at any one day, no matter how overwhelming, and know that you can "see light at the end of the tunnel."

Going to work on your business means taking a step back, seeing the bigger picture, noticing patterns, and looking for global solutions.

It doesn't mean you make your life more complicated. Don't build a system for something that happens every 10 years. On the other hand, notice when you are solving the same problem day after day after day. How many things occupy your energy that could be put onto "auto pilot" and take care of themselves?

Here is a vital principle—

How many things are you forcing yourself to remember when a simple system would keep your energy focused on the most important tasks? Paperwork is the easiest place to see room for improvement. Have you ever gotten a piece of paper that you knew must be taken care of soon? Most people put it on their desk in plain view so they won't forget it. Soon it is buried with the other important papers. 

There are simple paperwork systems that will: allow you to keep track of those papers, get the tasks done on time, keep you from having to think about it, never letting anything "slip through the cracks," and keep your desk clean.

Albert Einstein took this principle to the extreme. The story goes that someone once asked him his phone number. He went to the phone book and looked it up! He said he never cluttered his mind with things he didn't have a need to remember.

One thing I highly recommend you do is keep a journal. It is best to keep it daily, but can be kept weekly. Simple make an appointment with yourself to sit down and write. In it you jot down what you HATE and have vowed NEVER to do again! You write what worked and what didn't. This is NOT formal writing. There is no way to do it wrong! This is jut for you to remember. Things like:

• Never try to force students to attend on a holiday
• Never let people continue if they are more than 30 days behind in payments
• Remember to order supplies early
• Remember to place reminders in the waiting room when you are changing your schedule
• Don't wait until all your students finish before starting to advertise.

These are things that can be maddening at the time, but sometimes get forgotten. Then you are prone to making the same mistakes or not making the better choice next time.

When you see a problem, jot it down and go to work ON it. Don't solve it just once, solve it forever. Make each thing you take care of be the last time you have to take care of it.

Check your systems and see what is working and what isn't. Sometimes we develop systems, and then our business outgrows those solutions. The solutions that worked when your business had 30 students in it may not work when there are 130. If that has happened, make the changes.

When you go to work ON your business instead of IN your business, you become the kind of leader people want to follow and work for.

Best of all, you make YOUR life better and can focus more of your energy on serving the largest number of students possible. THAT'S ALWAYS worth the effort!