Working on your business vs in it – and how to protect the time
You’re busy with a full diary, back-to-back clients, and a to-do list that grows overnight. And yet somehow, the business isn’t quite where you want it to be.
The thing is that most small business owners are brilliant at doing the work. It’s the business planning – the marketing, the strategy, the systems – that keeps getting bumped to next week. Let’s look at why working on your business matters, and how to prioritise it.
1. Working on your business vs in it – what’s the difference?
Working IN your business is doing the work – serving clients, completing jobs, and answering enquiries. It pays the bills, and it’s non-negotiable.
Working ON your business is everything that determines where the business is heading: your business planning, your marketing, your pricing, your systems, and your strategy. Nobody else is waiting for this to get done, so it’s always the first thing that gets dropped.
Working IN keeps the lights on. Working ON decides whether you’re still here in five years, and whether you want to be.
A functioning business needs both, whether you’re a startup finding your feet or an established business looking to scale. The problem is delivery work is visible and urgent. Business planning is invisible and easy to defer. So, it gets deferred. Indefinitely.
2. What business planning does for you
Most people know they should have a plan. Fewer understand what it gives them beyond ‘direction’. Here’s what changes when you start working on your business properly.
Planning reduces overwhelm and gives you back control
When there’s too much on, stopping to plan feels like a luxury. It’s the opposite. A written plan breaks a pile of anxiety into a list with an order. You might still be busy, but you’re busy on purpose.
A mapped process shows you where to automate, delegate or cut
When you map out a process (really map it out), you can see what to batch, what to hand off and what to cut entirely. The best advice I ever received: “if you do it once, you have it forever.” That one hour documenting a process pays back every time you do that task again.
A small business plan prepares you for slow periods before they hit
Most business owners, whether they’re running a startup or an established small business, have one plan: get clients, make money. There’s no small business plan behind it, no scenario for when enquiries slow down, a key client leaves or costs spike. The businesses that hold up when things get hard aren’t lucky – they planned for more than one outcome.
Clarity and direction build client confidence fast
Nobody sees your planning. They only see the output – an organised, considered, clear-headed business owner who knows exactly what they’re doing and why. That’s still rare enough in business that people notice it immediately. Clarity reads as competence, and competence is what turns a one-off client into a long-term one.
3. The real cost of never working on your business
Most business owners who aren’t working on their business tend to be uncertain. Uncertain about what to focus on, what’s worth spending money on, and whether their marketing is working. So, they wait for things to calm down.
The result is the feast-or-famine cycle. Flat out for months, then suddenly quiet. Because when you’re in delivery mode, marketing stops. When marketing stops, the pipeline dries up. By the time you notice, you’re already behind.
And underneath that, slower but just as damaging: you stop improving. Same rates, same clients, same approach – not because it’s working, but because there’s never been a moment to question it.
The businesses I’ve seen thrive in hard times all had one thing in common: they stopped waiting for the right moment and took ownership of making their own. Planning isn’t a reward for when things are calm. It’s the antidote to the uncertainty keeping you stuck.
The gap between where your business is and where you want it to be is mostly about choice, including the choice to keep deferring this.
4. How to work on your business
Okay, so how do you start to work ON your business? Honestly, structure is the only thing that makes this happen. Good intentions don’t.
Here’s how to make working on your business a priority.
Schedule your planning time and treat it as fixed
I dedicate Mondays at 9–10 am to my own marketing, admin and planning. It’s in the calendar, and it never changes. Everything else works around it.
Pick whatever time suits your energy – morning, afternoon, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that it’s recurring and non-negotiable.
Keep delivery tasks and business development tasks on separate lists
One list is client work. The other is marketing, planning, admin, and strategy. When they compete for the same list, urgency always beats important. Every single time.
A 15-minute weekly review beats a quarterly planning day you never do
At the end of each week, ask yourself: what got done, what didn’t, and what’s coming. Once a month, zoom out – is revenue tracking? Are you consistently marketing? What’s the one priority for next month? Writing a business plan doesn’t have to mean a 40-page document. A one-page marketing plan you follow is worth more than business plan examples you downloaded and never opened.
Consistent marketing beats reactive marketing every time
The most common mistake I see is that business owners go quiet for months, then post frantically when things slow down. It doesn’t work. One email a month, one post a week, one blog a quarter, done consistently, builds more trust than any burst of panic-driven activity.
In your marketing hour, you could set up a booking link and an email template or write and schedule social media posts.
It’s also a good idea to start thinking about what you could outsource entirely. Ghost blogging, website edits, SEO, admin – every task you outsource is time redirected to work only you can do. Even if you only outsource one thing this week, and one next month. Over six months, that’s real time back.
5. Small business planning checklist – what to do in your next planning session
Print this. Put it in your planning session. Tick off what’s overdue:
Planning and strategy
☐ Review your business goals for the quarter
☐ Map out your marketing for the next 30–90 days
☐ Check your revenue against target
☐ Identify the one thing that would make the biggest difference this month
Marketing and visibility
☐ Send an email to your list – even one a month keeps you front of mind
☐ Post on social media consistently this week – your business page, local groups, LinkedIn
☐ Review your website – is it accurate, current and converting?
☐ Update your Google Business Profile
☐ Follow up on any outstanding leads
☐ Could you package two services together, offer a prepayment discount or create a simple membership? Recurring revenue starts here.
Systems and efficiency
☐ Find one task you could automate or batch
☐ Cut any tools or subscriptions you’re not using
☐ Ask yourself: where am I the bottleneck in my own business?
Start working on your business this week
Nobody is going to protect this time for you. If you wait for a quiet moment, it won’t come.
The businesses that grow are run by people who decided that working on the business was non-negotiable and treated it that way. Not for hours every day. Just consistently.
Want help putting together a real business and marketing strategy?
