Working In or On Your Business
A few months back we were talking with our friend Jake Jacks of Maxim Marketing, he said something that has really kept me thinking, “most business owners spend the majority of their time working in their business instead of on their business”. Wow, what a great a statement from Jake, this is so true. Jake’s comment got me thinking about our business and what we do. Since then we ourselves have spent a bit more time working on our business, refining processes and encouraging growth. It’s one of those things that you don’t really think about, its so easy to get caught up in the day-to-day operations of running your business you forget to work on the business as a whole and give it some direction.
Working on businesses is really what we do here at QC Total Tech, we don’t work in your business, we help you work on it. We help you achieve certain types of business goals VIA the web. This “neglect” most business owners experience with their businesses (and everybody does it) is why I think sometimes developing a web site can at times become a challenge for small biz owners. These folks we get the chance to work with spend so much time down in the trenches, which is why it’s so hard for them to answer questions we consider easy. They don’t get to pop their head up and look around and see how their business fares and what direction they want it to go. This is an area we excel, partly because we’re simply just a 3rd party, another set of eye-balls looking from afar. When we look at a business we see their business and their competitors, we saw how the industry works and some problem areas we can help them solve.
More often than not, we end up spurring clients to revitalize some of their own internal processes and maybe take a new direction. Don’t get me wrong, we’re not reinventing companies by building them a new web site, but we’re helping them reimagine themselves in ways by simply forcing them to step back and take a look at things as a whole. I think our knowledge of what to ask and where to probe is what gives us the edge. There are many web companies out there, and while SEO knowledge, good design skills, etc are all important so is understanding how the site will be used by both the site owner and their end customers. You can’t build a custom house for someone if you’ve never tried to understand the family and their needs. The same is true with a web site.
How much time do you spend working on your business? When is the last time you did some serious thinking and analyzing your company compared to your competitors? Do you know why your clients pick you? Do you know why you retain or lose clients? Do you know where you want your business to be in 3 years? Do you know what your goals were 3 years ago? You should have answers to all those questions. Take some time each week to stand from afar and gaze upon your baby and how well your baby plays with others.
Happy Webbing