What does "work on the business, not in it" actually mean?

Working in the business is delivery and firefighting — doing the job, answering the queries, fixing today's problem. Working on it is the higher-value work that changes the business rather than running it: pricing, systems, hiring, reviewing the numbers, deciding what to stop doing. The distinction matters because in-work always feels more urgent and produces visible results today, while on-work produces results in six months. Left to instinct, urgency wins every week, which is why capable owners can work for years without the business getting materially easier.

How do I find time for it?

Protect it in the diary as a recurring appointment and treat it with the same seriousness as a client meeting — because the alternative, waiting for a quiet week, does not arrive. Two hours a fortnight, actually used, beats a full day every quarter that gets cancelled. Use the numbers to set the agenda so the time is spent on something specific rather than on general reflection: this month it is pricing, next month it is the process that keeps breaking. Vague thinking time gets cancelled first.

Why can I not seem to step back?

A mix of three things. The business genuinely depends on you, because nothing is documented and nobody else is allowed to decide. Habit, because being the person who fixes things is how you built it. And discomfort, because on-work involves decisions with no immediate payoff and a real chance of being wrong, whereas clearing the inbox feels productive within minutes. The first is fixable with process and delegation. The second and third are only fixable by deliberately doing it anyway, usually with someone outside holding you to it.

What should I actually work on first?

Whatever is costing you most, which is rarely the thing that annoys you most. In practice the highest-return items for most owner-managed businesses are pricing, the process that breaks most often, and the customer or product line that is quietly unprofitable. All three need numbers rather than instinct, which is why current management figures usually have to come first. Starting with a strategy day when you cannot see your own gross margin by product line is how owners end up with an ambitious plan and no way to test it.

How does coaching help with this?

It creates the time, structure and accountability to actually do it rather than intend to, with an outside perspective that is genuinely hard to generate from inside the day-to-day. The mechanism is unglamorous: a booked session you cannot postpone indefinitely, actions with dates attached, and somebody asking what happened to last month's. That is most of the value. If you can reliably do that for yourself, you may not need a coach — and an honest coach will tell you so rather than sell you a programme.

Is this just an excuse to avoid the real work?

It can be, and that is a fair challenge to put to anyone selling it. Strategy without delivery is procrastination with better vocabulary, and there are owners who spend considerably more time planning the business than running it. The distinction is whether the on-work produces decisions that actually get implemented and change something measurable within a quarter. If your last three planning sessions produced documents and no change in behaviour, more planning is not the answer. Do one thing from the previous list before adding anything to it, and judge the exercise on what changed rather than on how it felt.

Working on your business, not just in it

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.

What an hour of "on" work is actually worth

Illustrative figures, not a client. An owner takes £60,000 a year out of the business and works 50 hours a week, 46 weeks a year — 2,300 hours. That prices an hour of their delivery time at roughly £26. It is also the number most owners implicitly use when they decide to do a job themselves rather than pay someone £18 an hour to do it.

Now price an hour of the other kind of work. The same business turns over £480,000. The owner spends four hours going through the price list, finds that three of the eight services have not moved in two years, and puts 3% on all of them. If volumes hold, that is £14,400 of extra revenue — and because the cost of delivering the work has not changed, almost all of it lands on the bottom line. Four hours, £14,400. Call it £3,600 an hour, against £26.

The arithmetic is illustrative; the ranking is not. In most owner-managed businesses the highest-value hours available are pricing, the process that keeps breaking, and the customer who is quietly unprofitable — and those are exactly the hours that get given away first, because none of them has a deadline attached to it.

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.

A twelve-month agenda you can actually run

Two hours a fortnight, protected. The reason most owners abandon it is not discipline — it is turning up to the slot with no agenda and thinking generally about the business for ninety minutes. Give the year a rota instead:

Session one — the numbers. Gross margin by service or product line. If you can't produce that, this session is about getting the bookkeeping to the point where you can.
Session two — pricing. Every price, the date it last moved, and what it costs you to deliver.
Session three — the top five customers. Revenue, margin, hassle, payment days. One of them is usually costing you money.
Session four — the thing that breaks. Whatever interrupted you most last month. Write down how it should be done.
Session five — people. Who is ready for more responsibility, and what is stopping them having it.
Session six — cash. The next twelve months, month by month, tax included.

Then start again. Six topics a fortnight apart is a quarter's work; run the cycle twice and you have covered the year. Each session ends with one action, one name and one date — and the next session opens by checking whether it happened. Our value gap worksheet and the business planning work run on the same loop.

How to tell whether it's working

Judge it on evidence, not on how productive the sessions felt. Three tests at the end of each quarter: has anything measurable moved in the accounts; are you spending fewer hours on delivery than you were; and can you name the decision each session produced. If the honest answer to all three is no, you have been holding meetings with yourself — change the agenda, or get someone else in the room. Our five numbers every owner should know guide is a reasonable place to restart.

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.