Owner problems
What does working on the business, not in it, actually mean?
Last updated 5 July 2026 · Reviewed by Nick Thorpe
The short answer
Working in the business is doing the work itself: quoting jobs, serving customers, fixing problems. Working on the business is building the machine that does that work without you: hiring, writing processes, reviewing numbers, setting direction. If a task stops happening when you take a holiday, it was almost certainly an in-the-business task.
The phrase comes from Michael Gerber’s The E-Myth and it has been repeated ever since, usually without a definition attached. Most owners have heard it. Far fewer could say what it means on a Tuesday. This guide pins it down with concrete examples, explains why the phrase gets misused, and gives a realistic split for an owner running a £200k to £2m business.
What counts as working in the business?
Working in the business is doing the work your customers pay for. You are the production line, or part of it. Quoting a job is in. Delivering the job is in. Chasing the invoice, answering the technical question only you can answer, covering for someone who called in sick: all in.
None of it is beneath you and none of it is a failing. In the early years it is simply the job. The cost comes later: every hour spent in the business is an hour the machine did not get built, and the machine is the only thing that ever gives you your time back.
The quick test: if a task stops happening the moment you go away for a fortnight, it is almost certainly in-the-business work. There is a whole guide built on that test, the owner holiday test.
What counts as working on the business?
Working on the business is building the machine that does the work without you. Processes, people, prices, numbers, direction. The output of on-the-business work is never a delivered job. It is a change in how jobs get delivered from now on.
The difference is easiest to see side by side:
| Working in the business | Working on the business |
|---|---|
| Quoting a job | Fixing the quoting process so anyone competent can quote |
| Chasing an overdue invoice | Setting payment terms and a standard chasing sequence |
| Handling a customer complaint | Writing the complaints procedure and training someone to own it |
| Filling a gap on this week’s rota | Building a hiring and training pipeline before you need it |
| Checking the bank balance | Reviewing a short weekly scorecard of the numbers that run the business |
The first row is the whole idea in miniature. Quoting a job is in the business, however senior it feels while you do it. Writing the price list, building the quote template, training someone to use it and reviewing their first attempts: that is on the business. Same subject, different altitude.
Why does the phrase get misused?
Because “on the business” has been confused with thinking big thoughts. Owners book a strategy day, fill a flip chart, feel excellent, then return to the same diary on Monday. Nothing about how the business runs has changed, so nothing changes.
Real on-the-business work is closer to engineering than to dreaming: write the process, train the person, set the price, hold the weekly numbers meeting. It is mundane, repetitive and quietly decisive. A vision board has never once quoted a job.
The misuse also runs the other way. Some owners treat the phrase as permission to float above the operation and call it leadership. On-the-business work still touches the real business every week. If your diary is full of thinking time and the quoting process is still broken, you are not working on the business. You are avoiding it.
What is a realistic split for a £200k to £2m owner?
Roughly four days in, one day on, and the one day protected without mercy. That is a recommendation from coaching owners at this stage, not a law. At £200k to £2m turnover you are usually still the best salesperson or the best technician in the building, so stepping out of delivery overnight is fantasy. But if the on-the-business time rounds to zero, the business stays exactly the size and shape it is today.
The direction matters more than the ratio. The split should tilt further toward on-the-business work every quarter as the machine takes over delivery. If it has not tilted in a year, the diary is the first place to look.
How do you protect the on-the-business time?
Put it in the diary first and defend it like a client meeting, because that is what it is: the client is the business. Five habits make it stick.
- Book a recurring half day, the same slot every week, before the week fills up. What gets booked first survives.
- Take it off site, or at least off email. On-the-business work loses every fight it has with an inbox.
- Give every session one named output: a written process, a trained person, a pricing decision, a hire scoped. If a session produces nothing you can point at, it was a strategy day in disguise.
- Start each session with the same short set of numbers, so the work attacks whatever is weakest rather than whatever is most interesting.
- Put accountability around it. A diary protects nothing on its own. A coach, a peer group or a manager who asks whether you did it will. Closing that gap is most of what Momentum exists to do.
If you want to know where your own split really sits, the CoreOS Scorecard asks twelve questions and gives you an instant score across strategy, accountability, mindset and systems. It is free, and it is the fastest way to see which part of the machine to build first.
Nick Thorpe
16 years a British Army officer, then a decade building his own companies. Coaches business owners on the CoreOS framework. The story.