The startup owner’s dilemma: Doing the work vs. driving growth

Identifying the best uses for your time, I find it helpful to create and define the two buckets that your productive time falls into: working in your business & working on your business.”

Doug Phares, managing director, Silverwind Enterprises

Lately, a lot of my time has gone toward a new training venture. In this process, I’m documenting skills that I’ve used throughout my career to help new business owners navigate the steep learning curve. I’m a “hands-on” manager and prone to jumping in, which is often the very wrong answer.

I recently completed the first draft of these training sessions, targeted to people who are starting up a franchise location. When it was ready for feedback, I showed it to a colleague who read through it and then got back to me with the million-dollar question: “This all sounds great, but how do I do this stuff?”

The information in the workbook was good, but I realized that my advice was mostly high-level strategy. It was missing executable tactics. The more my colleague and I worked on it, the more I refined the core ideas to tie in day-to-day implementation. The concept is that someone needs to have the “Big Ideas,” but having them is not enough. You have to make sure they get done, and it shouldn’t be you doing most of it.

As we worked, a new through-line began to take shape: helping a new entrepreneur quantify the value of their time. I’ve written before about the value of time for an executive, but your time becomes even more valuable in an entrepreneurial or start-up role, like a franchise. And missteps are more critical.

In a larger organization, those at the top have an obligation to create the big plans, and usually their time is allotted that way. You also have a lot more people and a lot more moving parts. Much of the “business” happens regardless of your input. In a small business, you are your organization’s most expensive resource, and without you providing the right inputs, it may stall on you.

Identifying the best uses for your time, I find it helpful to create and define the two buckets that your productive time falls into: working in your business & working on your business.

Working in your business is the hands-on work that you do to facilitate daily business operations. It may be paying bills, engaging with customers or stocking a shelf.

Working on your business involves creating a process, a sales plan or a new product set, and determining how to integrate a lead generation platform, etc. Your work grows your business in the long term, although it may not generate income immediately.

You may have heard the adage that an owner needs to work on their business, not in their business. Working in the business is very valuable for setting examples, teaching and providing customer feedback. You just need to keep it in small doses. There should be a clear limit to how much of this “doing” time you’re giving your business every week. If you are the only person in the business, you have a job by another name. To own an enterprise, you need to have others working.

Working on the business is what I used to get done in the office when I was an executive. I’d spend nine to 10 hours there a day working on the “Big Thoughts:” organizational trends and plans. I would have told you all of it was focused and valuable. I was wrong.

With the pandemic and the rise in work from home, I realized that a lot of that time in the office was spent engaging with office culture and the cycles of the building rather than actually making plans and setting them into action.

If I spent 10 hours a day in the office, four to six hours of that were spent on deliverable work. And now, even when I have a lot in the “working on the business” bucket, I find that a one-to-two-hour sprint best serves me. Not only are these sessions productive, but you’d be surprised how quickly your brain gets tired when you're focused exclusively on big ideas in front of you, as well as how much you can crank out when focused.

In my experience, one-to-two-hour sprints once or twice a day will get you much more value for your time than grinding out a 10-hour day. When entrepreneurs and new business owners don’t realize this, they start to wonder why they’re consistently working 18-hour days and only spinning their wheels. There is a failure to separate high-value concept work from the linear tasks you have to do to support the organization. Often, it is easy to get sucked into working in your business and then be too worn out to dedicate the time working on your business deserves.

The solution to this issue is to set aside dedicated time to working on your business so that working in your business doesn’t take over. Believe me, I know how easy it is for one quick question from an employee or customer to turn into hours on the floor.

But I also know that if I spend an hour working on marketing plans for the next month and send out instructions to the relevant parties to get plans in place in advance, we have more sales than if I go into the business, get an idea for a video on the fly, shoot it and cross my fingers that it gets traction.

I don’t deny that it can be challenging to do. But if you’re spending all day working in your business and not getting anywhere, try stepping back and permitting yourself to spend more time with higher-level thinking. You have to define and defend the “on your business” time and make sure you schedule it first during your most productive times. When you find the right balance, you’ll be able to work in your business and enjoy it without sacrificing the forward growth that only you can generate.

Doug Phares is the former CEO of the Sandusky News Group. He currently serves as managing director of Silverwind Enterprises, which owns and provides management services to small businesses. He can be reached at doug@silverwind.biz.