It's the oldest piece of business advice there is, and one of the hardest to actually follow: work on your business, not just in it. Most owners know they should. Very few manage it, because the work in front of them is urgent and the work on the business never is — until something forces it.

What "in" versus "on" really means

Working in the business is delivering the product or service, handling day-to-day operations, firefighting. It's necessary, and it feels productive because things visibly get done. Working on the business is the higher-value stuff that rarely shouts for attention: strategy, pricing, systems, hiring, reviewing the numbers, deciding where you're actually going. It's the work that changes the business rather than just running it.

Why owners get stuck

Partly it's habit — you built the business by doing the work, so doing the work feels like your job. Partly it's that the business depends on you, so stepping back feels irresponsible. And partly it's that "on" work is uncomfortable: it involves decisions, uncertainty and no immediate tick in the box. The result is a business that can't grow beyond what one very busy person can personally hold together.

Making the shift

  • Protect the time. Block out regular, non-negotiable time to work on the business — even a couple of hours a week, treated as seriously as a client meeting.
  • Use the numbers as your agenda. Good management accounts turn "work on the business" from a vague intention into a specific conversation: this margin is slipping, this customer is unprofitable, this is where to focus.
  • Reduce the dependency. Every system you build and every task you delegate buys back some of your time and makes the business less reliant on you being in it.
  • Get an outside perspective. It's genuinely hard to work on the business from inside it. A regular conversation with someone who isn't buried in the day-to-day is often what turns intention into action.

This is what coaching is for

This is the core of what business coaching does — it creates the time, the structure and the accountability to actually work on the business, not just talk about it. Combined with the clarity that comes from your numbers, it's how owners move from being the hardest-working person in the business to the one actually building it. If you recognise yourself in this, that's exactly the conversation worth having.