Stop Working in Your Business and Start Working on It

As a founder of a third-party warehousing and fulfillment company, I get a lot of exposure to other founders and business leaders. A common theme that seems to plague all business leaders is getting out of the business so you can work on the business.

If this is a concept you are unfamiliar with, working in the business is the day-to-day operations that are absolutely required to keep the business running. Working on the business involves the non-essential items for daily operations—tasks that are easily procrastinated but essential for growth and scaling. 

Learning to differentiate between the two is the first step in moving out of the business so you can work on it.

Let go of the day to day

All business leaders struggle with this. The day to day is clear, and knowing the next fire to put out is obvious. It is a comfortable place where we achieve immediate, actionable results—a daily dose of dopamine. Founders especially struggle with this because our organization is our baby. Giving up control over the day-to-day can be terrifying—not only for our sense of self-worth and accomplishment but also due to the fear that others may fall short of our standards.

Regardless of these fears and excuses, it is a necessary and worthwhile adventure to make the transition from being in your business to working on it. It is how you go from having a job to owning a company. It takes your organization from a startup to a true enterprise.

Create a written framework around company values

I operated my company, NovEx Supply Chain, for five years before I made a true effort to step out of the business and work on it. At that time, I was wearing so many hats that recovering 50 percent of my time seemed like a monumental feat.

My first attempt at this was hiring a consultant to come in and help me with processes. That lasted about three weeks and cost me entirely too much money. At the time, I was simultaneously recruiting for a chief operating officer, a position that was new to our organizational chart. It was more than double the salary of any role I had previously had on my staff and even more than my own payroll. Despite the cost, I knew I was going to have to invest in my company if I wanted to create the capacity to grow it.

While this hire was not a magic button that removed me from the business, it did get us started in the right direction. The COO I hired helped me create a written framework around the values I was already practicing within NovEx. Being explicit with our values gave us more power to guide our growth and staffing. We were able to build a team that I could trust with more of the day to day. Over time we implemented the correct roles to push accountability down the line and free up more of my time to work on the business.

Set a deadline for transformation

There were a lot of hiccups along the way. Nearly two years into the process I was feeling frustrated with our progress. My husband had joined the company to assist me with business development, but we still were not growing as I knew we could. He felt like I had the wrong person in the role. We had a theoretical academic when what I needed a tactical operator to build out the standard operating procedures required to complete my transformation from owner and doer to president and scaler.

By December 2024, I had been on this journey to transition out of the day to day since March 2023. I am a procrastinator by nature. I need firm deadlines to force my hand. So, we planned a 17-day trip to Europe for late June 2025, a trip that would require the business to operate without me. A true deadline for the transformation.

Overcome the myth of indispensability

All the tasks I had been holding onto out of fear became critical to transition. The myth of indispensability, the idea that no one could do it like I could do it, had to be overcome. By March it was clear to me that I had the wrong structure in place, and we made a change. The transition felt like a setback, but we were more resilient as an organization than we had been two years earlier. We had not achieved the goals I had set but the progress was real and measurable.  Having a COO helped me to realize that what we really needed was a strong operations manager and an HR director. Together they would be able to finish building out the team and processes so I could focus on growing and scaling the company. 

I took that trip in June and it went beautifully. My family made amazing memories, and I was able to leave work behind. I answered a few questions and took a few phone calls to show support, but overall, I was disconnected and on vacation. It was the first time in eight years of business that I had taken a true vacation where I didn’t work. I was able to focus on my family with confidence that my clients and employees would be just fine when I returned.

Your business can’t be dependent on one person

We still have more progress to make. I am still trying to figure out exactly what leadership structure works for us. I am also still getting comfortable with allowing people to do things at a slightly lower caliber than I would. I take comfort in knowing that I am creating an organization that can exist without me, a true company that isn’t dependent on any one person or role, one that can grow and scale to whatever heights I can imagine for it. That gives me the courage and the power to keep moving forward and working toward my goals.

Letting go of the day to day didn’t make me less important to my company; it made me more valuable. And it gave me the freedom to build both the business and the life I envisioned.