Welcome, coaches and course creators, I am so excited that you are here for this critical discussion that will completely transform the way you approach scaling your online coaching business. Today, were breaking down the delicate dance between working ON and IN your online business - a topic that befuddles most business owners in their first 5 years of scaling. In this blog post, we’ll explore the difference between working ON vs IN your business, discover how to find balance between the two, look at a sample schedule to get your working ON your business in just 30 minutes a week & shed some light on the secret to unlocking sustained growth and prosperity from doing so.

First let’s get clear on the difference between working on vs working IN your business.

Working IN your Business as a Coach or Course Creator

Understanding the Daily Grind:

I want you to imagine the star performer in a movie or maybe your favourite play if that’s your thing. They spend the majority of their time perfecting their craft. They’re rehearsing lines. They’re trying on costumes. They’re showing up on stage or the screen to perform. They’re not planning the movie. They’re not organizing the team. They’re not estimating what the movie or play will make in the box office - they simple show up, do their work & get paid for it.

When your working IN your business, you’re playing the lead actor role. Your focused on the task ahead of you for that day & nothing else. In most online coaching or course based business working IN your business looks like:

→ Running coaching sessions

→ Creating content

→ Interacting with clients and customers

→ Recording course videos

→ Creating checkouts

→ Sending emails

→ Following up on payment plans (if you have to do this manually get Kajabi)

It’s all the day-to-day tasks that need to get done to keep the business floating & in some people’s eyes its where your passion for what you do actually meets the real world, where your expertise directly touches and impacts your clients.

This work is important work. Without this work the business would not run & this work has the ability to help you generate a lot of cash and impact as an online business owner. When I was solely focused on working IN our business we were able to generate $128,000 with all organic marketing (via Instagram) in our first year.

But here’s the kicker…

Working IN your business is deadly trap.

While working IN your business is essential, it's VERY easy to get trapped here if you’re not careful & being trapped working IN the business is what leads so many only coaches & course creators to experience what we know as “burn out” - often forcing them to quit their entire business all together right before the good gets INCREDIBLE.

How?

Well, working IN the business becomes a habit that’s nearly impossible to break out of. From the moment most coaches and course creators sit down at their desk their doing, doing and doing all day long. They get into a rhythm with their daily tasks and since they are making money from those tasks it feels impossible to take a step back from them without the business completely breaking down or their revenue taking a serious hit.

As a result coaches and course creators often find themselves overwhelmed by the daily tasks, leaving little room for the strategic thinking and long-term planning which would free them from the chain of their daily activities. The long term strategic thinking and planning is the working ON the business that so many people avoid & it’s also the work that will allow you to break out of the daily grind cycle.

But there is a REASON why so many people get stuck here.

Can you imagine if the actor from our previous movie conversation was all of the sudden responsible for writing the script, hiring staff, managing budgets, reviewing the captured footage and editing the final film?

They would INSTANTLY be overwhelmed because that’s not their zone of genius & they would have to get to work on building new skills to help them do all of the things. What they likely don’t realize however is that understanding all the roles that go into making a movie will likely make them a WAY better actor by providing them with insights into how they can best show up for their actor role to support EVERYONE involved in the creation of the film. They’ll likely perform better when on film, require less takes and build better relationships with the film crew opening up opportunities for themselves.

Working ON your business is a key part of escaping the daily grind. So let’s talk about what it means to work ON your business & how to balance it all.

Working ON your Business as Coach or Course Creator

Elevate Your Perspective:

Working ON your business is the strategic, visionary work that propels your business forward. This is where you take a step back from all the work being done while you work IN your business, evaluate the results of that doing & use it to REFINE your business strategy so you can make more money & do so in less time.

💥 Working ON your business includes things like:

→ Planning & optimizing your marketing strategy to find new customers

→ Planning & optimizing your offer strategy to serve those customers

→ Planning & optimizing your sales processes & launches to help your clients purchase your offers with less friction

→ Planning & optimizing your business financials to increase profitability

→ Planning & building out systems so you can outsource or automate work

It’s in this work, that you’ll be able to see clearly what is currently working in your business & what is not working. With that information you can then PRIORITIZE tasks that drive the most revenue & impact and let go of the tasks that aren’t moving the needle forward. When this is done repeatedly and consistently you’ll end up with LESS day-to-day tasks to manage freeing up your time to enjoy your life & enjoy the fruits of your labour.

When I switched gears from solely working IN the business to working ON the business everything changed. Remember I told you I made $128,000 in my first year of business? Well, what I didn’t tell you is that I was working 60-80 hours a week to make that happen (yikes). I constantly felt overwhelmed, overworked and honestly underpaid.

Today, it’s a different story. Our business generated between $300,000 & $350,000 every single year - 3 x revenue year over year & I’m only working 15-25 hours a week on average.

I tripled my annual revenue & cut my work hours more than in half not by DOING more but by working ON my business more than I worked IN it.

Striking the Perfect Balance of Working IN vs ON your business

The Yin and Yang of Business:

So how do you find the time to work ON your business when you’re so busy working IN it?

You start slowly. In this community we believe that intentional, steady effort is the way to create lasting change & results.

This might look like setting aside 30 minutes each week at first to work ON your business. You could use those 30 minutes each week to optimize a different area of your business. A month of working on your business could look like this:

Week One: Analyze social media analytics for top performing posts, topics etc & adjusting your content plan for the following weeks to emphasize those topics.

Week Two: Review the number of sales of each of your offers. This data will allow you to focus more of your efforts on selling the products that people are already loving & can help you strategize what products to sell & when to sell them.

Week Three: Review your business expenses & look for any overlapping features. For example, you might be paying for zoom & kajabi but with Kajabi’s new video calling feature paying for Zoom becomes an unnecessary expense saving you money & increasing your profitability.

Week Four: Create an offer upsell & downsell strategy. If you have more than one offer that you’re selling it’s likely that you could be making more money with every sale by strategically offering related products to your customers as they checkout. This could be the difference of having an average order value of $197 or $497 & wouldn’t require you to create any additional products increasing your profitability & getting your courses in the hands of more people.

Once you see how much more money you can make & how much time you can save by working ON your business vs IN it you’ll want to spend even more time in the strategizing work.

A successful online course or coaching business requires you to find balance between both types of work. Too much time IN your business can lead to burnout and stagnation, while too much time ON your business without implementation can result in missed opportunities. Finding equilibrium is key.

Plan 4 Prosperity Workshop: 

To help you strike this balance effectively, we're excited to introduce our upcoming workshop, "Plan 4 Prosperity." Join us as we guide you through creating a 6-month marketing, offer, and sales plan tailored to your business. It's the bridge between working IN and ON your business, ensuring sustained growth and prosperity.

👉 Join Plan 4 Prosperity.

In the world of coaching and course creation, mastering the art of balancing work IN and ON your business is the secret to making more money, helping more people & doing it in less time. Join us at "Plan 4 Prosperity" where we’ll spend 3 hours NOW working ON your business so that when you sit down at your desk next you know exactly what to do, when to do it & how to prioritize your tasks for maximum growth. Get ready to revolutionize your business and create a customized plan for lasting success.

Are you ready to level up? Let's redefine the way you work and propel your business into a new era of prosperity. See you at the workshop!