IN vs. ON Your Business and the E.D.O. Framework

Tiffany-Ann answers a listener question about the perfect balance between working IN your business and ON your business. Plus, the E.D.O. Framework that puts profit in your pocket.

Show Notes

Can we Automate this?  Can we Delegate this?  Can we optimize this?  The A.D.O. Framework puts profit in your pocket.  One of the most challenging aspects of being an entrepreneur is knowing when to work IN the business and when to work ON the business. Working IN the business means taking care of the day-to-day tasks and putting out fires as they come up. It's important to stay on top of these things, but if you're always working IN the business, you'll never have time to work ON the business. Working ON the business means taking a step back and looking at the big picture. It's about strategic planning and long-term vision. It can be difficult to find the time to work ON the business when you're constantly putting out fires, but it's essential if you want your business to grow.

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Host

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher

Entrepreneur | Founder, Bottcher Group | Host, Service Based Business Society Podcast | Author, Data Driven Method | Helping you scale your success!

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Each week, Tiffany-Ann shares valuable insights on productivity, business strategies, marketing trends, and tech secrets that you need to know in order to take your business to the next level. She firmly believes that a successful service-based business must prioritize an amazing client experience and sustainable, predictable, repeatable profit, and she'll teach you how to do just that.

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Season: 1
Episode: 23
Title: IN vs. ON Your Business and the E.D.O. Framework

Hello, and welcome to the service based business society podcast. I'm your host, Tiffany-Ann Bottcher. At our weekly episodes, we will dig into everything you need to know about scaling your service based business without losing sleep. With my experience in creating over seven figures per month, and a passion for marketing, finance and automation, this show will provide tangible tips and techniques for scaling your business. Let's get started.

Hey, guys, welcome back to another episode. This week, we will be answering one of our listeners' questions. The listener reached out with a question. This very question has gone through every business owner's mind even if it's not necessarily in these exact words, the thought process and the overarching question, it exists in everyone's mind, this particular person was asking what is the appropriate blend of working in business and on the business? So first, let's talk about these terms in the business, we're looking at potentially still being part of revenue generation, maybe you're on site performing the service, maybe you are, you know, still dealing ends on with clients, you are part of the service providing team or maybe it's just you providing that service, we're talking about working on the business, we're talking about the bigger picture of management strategy, visions objectives, really, you know, in a more typical traditional business setting, this is like you know, your your executive team, your managers, not necessarily part of a revenue generation, maybe they're not dealing directly with the clients, they are instead working on the best into creating this perfect blend of the two and and what is that perfect blend was our listeners question.

So I said, Hey, you know, this is a great question. And I am going to answer this question, but I'm going to do it on the podcast episode. So encourage you to do the same. If you have a question that you would like answered in a future episode, join us in the Facebook community. And you can send me a private message or post anonymously in the group with your question. And you too can have your question answered here on an episode just like this back to your question. And this you know, balance of in the birth business versus on the business and where our listener was truly struggling D enjoys working in the business but does not enjoy working on the business. So you have someone who as her team grows, she continues to spend less and less time working in the business and more and more time working on this. And what happens is she's not happy with the work being done on site she wants and enjoys that interaction with the clients and instead feels a little bit trapped in her office unable to really do the work that she loves, kind of concept of building a business that ultimately doesn't serve the satisfaction of the entrepreneur is so common. And so I wanted to answer today's episode because, you know, we ultimately must remember why we started and really keep that objective in mind or me once you've heard me twice if you've been listening for a while, you know, I often refer back to what is the actual objective.

If you have absolutely loved providing the service then doing less and less of that may not sound ideal. Often we are drawn to what we know it really comes down to a comfort zone piece not a preference you feel most comfortable working in the business because you've done it longer perhaps you don't like change and so you know you default or lean towards working in the business rather than this new you know, leading a team leading an organization as your business grows can become a little more stressful, you know, it's new challenges and so, II This may not be the comfort zone and so step one is to determine what is the true preference and what is really guided by the desire to be comfortable you know, growth does not occur in the comfort zone growth occurs on the edge of the comfort zone. If we want to think about taking the comfort zone and stretching it bigger. We must do things that push up against the edge of that comfort zone to stretch a finger and you know so step one as we're really diving into verses on the business Step one is to decide what are your true preference forget about comfort zone, what are your two preferences away? Can your war skills and attributes serve your business best because some people offer their best SNESs much better value by being in the business than they do on the business. Because not everyone has the ability to manage a business or a group of people. And that's okay. It's almost kind of this implied assumed piece of being an entrepreneur is, you know, you want to get out of the field, you want to stop providing the service, and you want to run the business. And well, for some people, that is the right step that isn't for everyone. And so, you know, if we look at step one is deciding what is truly a preference and not governed by what is to step one, we really need to just decide what is a true preference is the decision that is ultimately being influenced by the desire to be comfortable.

Step two, how does how our skills and attributes best serve the business and your lifestyle, we are working to live not living to work, and even as someone who truly loves what I do, when we look at the route, why we started, you know, if we, if we think back if you haven't read the Simon Sinek, but starts with why. And think back to why I remember going through this exercise many years ago, and ultimately, the second person to most things just says, But why? You know, so if you say, Well, I do it for my family, well, because I want my family to have a certain lifestyle, I want my family to, you know, be happy? Well, I want my family to know that they're cared about, and you know, that they never go without. And so I strive to provide and so you know, and the question, of course, then will . So you can keep going deeper and deeper, an interesting book, Simon Sinek starts with Y. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it.

You know, so we talked about, you know, step one being comfort zone versus preference. And step two, you know, what serves the business, the best, you know, where do your skills and attributes and desires fit into this piece of serving the business and the decisions that you're making, you know, the the disclaimer on on this is, the decisions you're making are not forever, and you're not married to any of any one decision, often, you know, we try to hire, whether that's for that in the business or on the business, you know, sometimes people hire someone to help manage. And other times, you know, we hire a team to execute the services. And no matter what that is, whether wherever we are, you know, obtaining additional resources from it all has to support that bigger picture, you know, that it all has to support the objectives and the direction. You know, we had step one, where we're looking at preferences versus comfort zones. And then step two, looking at how the different skills attributes and lifestyles really serve the business, the success so often we see the entrepreneur who is in their own way, and, and so you don't want to prevent, you know, being in your own way and preventing your success, you don't want to be the reason you don't want to be the reason you're not successful. And so sometimes it really takes that, you know, taking that step back, looking at it from 30,000 feet and saying, Hey, I am not the right person to be doing at in my business, if your business is growing very quickly, chances are there's a lot of learning for anyone who is a part of your business. And sometimes if you know a business or organization is growing faster than people in the organization, people could outgrow it's very unfortunate, you know, in a high growth business in a startup situation. Sometimes it's just you know, whatever's going on in the business doesn't align with people or, or anything that has supported the business to date. And so that is, you know, that next piece and then part three is deciding what are the non-negotiable your business.

You know, if you are a lawyer who has been to law school, chances are you are going to be working in the business generating billable hours, you are the lawyer and perhaps hiring someone to assist with the managers, the mean, and perhaps hiring someone to assist with the management, maybe an office manager, the best way to achieve your goals, you're not going to hire off, you know, you're not going to hire someone off the street to fill in that you know, to replace the lawyer role while you do the management that doesn't make sense for someone else who has, you know, created a business and and has created this, you know, whatever that service is, there's this okay, part three, we've gotten through our first two sections here and now we need to get to what are the non negotiables of our business if you have a special education credentials, something that means you are the person who needs to be performing the services, you might be spending a lot more time working in the business generating revenue. If that is the case, it makes more sense to hire someone to help work on the business to ultimately, you know, how that serves the business.

So before really answering any question in terms of what is the best blend, what works best, there's more questions to ultimately determine what are the business objectives? How does each person's role ultimately support? Then for question number three, then for question number three, what are the non negotiables so if you have special education credentials, that mean, you need to be really a part of the day to day services example, you know, maybe a lawyer or a massage therapist, you know, if you have, if you have gone to school have some form of credentials that are required, you know, the decision to let's use that massage therapist, as an example, the decision to stop or cut back on the massaging to manage the business? Well, that would be a decision to, you know, be hiring additional massage therapists and to continue to go that direction. In that situation, one must decide, does that make the most sense? Or would it make more sense to hire an experienced manager to manage and oversee the business side of things, and that massage therapist continue being a massage therapist, and so you know, there's a few different theories, there's, there's, there's 100 combinations of things that work. But these are the three pieces that must be kept in mind, when we're trying to decide what to balance if you truly love working in the business, if this is what fuels your soul, then don't build a business that never has you working in the business.

I was on a call recently, and and we were having a very similar discussion about they were they were trying to sell me on the fact that I was never going to have to work with clients directly that they were going to be it was basically kind of it almost outsourcing sales, really. And so you know, they were talking about not having to work with these clients at all. And so now that we understand that there is really no perfect blend, very industry dependent preference dependent comfort level, you know, how your skills and attributes best serve the business and the business achieving its objectives, there's, there's something we need to think about. And that is the A D. O framework.

So touched on a little bit at the beginning of the episode. And so this is my recommendation, and someone asks me, What is this perfect blend? There is no perfect blend, it ultimately is so dependent on you and your business. However, what does apply to these situations is the ADL framework. So when we look at these pieces, can we automate it and delegate it? Can we optimize it, if you're, you know, really feeling like you're doing too much of any one thing, and it's preventing you from doing something else that is important, you become the bottleneck. And so as these pieces are crossing your desk, or task list, your email, whatever, you know, however, you're keeping track, it's Can I automate it? Can I delegate it? And can I optimize it, and in that order, automation, Once setup is very consistent. If we can automate things, we have a fairly, you know, static costs, we can track our return on investment for setting up automations. And so you know, preference number one, let's automate that, whatever that process is.

Now, back to our massage therapist example. We can automate providing a massage, I mean, you can many have attempted with some fancy chairs and whatnot, but it's not the same. You cannot automate not and achieve the same results, then we go to, can we delegate it? Can someone else do that task? You know, this comes to, you know, creating content for social media, maybe you need to delegate some of that. And remember, it's not always all or nothing, perhaps it's you want to delegate the content creation, but only the graphics, maybe it's the hashtags, you know, it's taking these different pieces of your business and, and really deciding what you want to do in a way that serves you as the business owner and the business in terms of achieving success. Can we automate it? Can we delegate it and can we optimize it? So if we cannot automate something and we cannot delegate it away? That means it's stuck with us. Now we need to optimize the process.

We've touched on it in previous episodes, but optimizing your operations puts money directly into your pocket we often hear and And there's so the popularity right now surrounding cold outreach is astounding. As a business owner, you get tons of, you know, emails and messages and all sorts of things trying to sell you something, optimize it, and we optimize it. Optimizing a process directly adds profit to your pocket. That's where we want the profit in the pocket. When we do things to generate more sales, you know, sales equals stress, more sales, more stress, more sales, more risk. Anytime you put anything in your business, there is a risk that something can go wrong. It's that old expression, you know, across the road, there's risk in crossing the road. If you are, you know, out forming your service, there is risk associated.

So more sales equals more stress, optimizing a process takes that profit makes the you know, the difference at the savings in time and money and gives it directly back to you. The question here then is, you know, would you rather have a business that sells $5 million a year and makes $50,000 profit? Or would you rather have a business that sells $3 million a year 70,000 in profit, most people will choose the $3 million a year or the $70,000 in profit because there are fewer fewer less, there is less stress, there are fewer risks and your processes that much better? You want to scale bigger.

If you want more sales, you want to maintain the profit margin, which reflects the optimized processes and you want to scale that scaling an inefficient business is just a bigger inefficient business that doesn't help anyone you will never outsell poor optimization because you just have more of the same you know, as much as there is no answer to what is the perfect blend of working in the business versus on the business because this is so business and business owner specific. What is the same recommendation each time if the ATO framework can be automated, can we delegate it? Can we optimize it?

Well, we are all out of time for today. If you guys have not joined the service-based business society Facebook community, make sure you head on over to Facebook and we can continue the conversation. Be sure to also follow the show by going to any podcast app and searching surface based business society. Click subscribe, click the fifth star,and leave us a written review. Have a great week and we will see you soon