How to Balance Working IN Your Business and ON Your Business

By Indigo Colton

When you’re the CEO of your own online business, it can be incredibly easy to get stuck in the day-to-day work — scheduling social media, client management, answering emails, etc.

But it’s incredibly important that you take time to work ON your business, as well. Because you’re the employee, the manager, and the CEO.

That means you are the one deciding the vision for the company, leading the direction that you’re moving towards, and making the major decisions.

So how do you balance both working IN your business and working ON your business? Here are three things you can implement to make that happen:

SCHEDULE OUT TIME EVERY WEEK WHERE YOU ARE WORKING ON YOUR BUSINESS

Open up your Google Calendar and block out time every. single. week. where you are doing the big picture visioning for your business. Day-to-day tasks are not allowed!

This is time where you are intentionally stepping into the role of CEO in your business on a regular basis.

Use this time to look at the big picture vision for your company. Do you like the work you’re doing? Are you actively moving towards a way of doing business that aligns with your ideal life?

You can also work on marketing, streamlining and systemizing your business (so you don’t have to spend so much time doing the day-to-day work), and creating new offerings that feel in alignment with where you want your business to go.

Treat these time blocks the same as you would a meeting with a client or a doctor’s appointment — make them non-negotiable. Your business needs you to show up and do the big picture things!

SCHEDULE OUT TIME EVERY WEEK WHERE YOU ARE WORKING IN YOUR BUSINESS

Now that you have the time blocked off to work ON your business, it’s time to do the same for the time you’re going to be working IN your business.

This is when you do the day-to-day tasks: you’re doing client work, hanging out on social media, writing blog posts, etc.

By creating boundaries around when this work happens, you’ll force yourself to not let the day-to-day work take over your life and keep you from doing the bigger picture things.

Treat this time as non-negotiable as well — these blocks are here to help you, so don’t ignore them or schedule other appointments during them!

BLOCK THOSE TIMES OFF IN YOUR SCHEDULING TOOL

Now that you have those time blocks in your calendar, it’s time to make sure that they are blocked off in your scheduling tool as well!

If you use something like Acuity they should automatically be blocked off, but it’s important to do a manual double-check.

This makes sure that you won’t be scheduling any other calls or appointments during those times, and you can focus 100% on either working in or on your business.