How Do I Work on My Business as a Leader?

If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a thousand times: If you want to scale your business, you have work on it, not just in it. That advice sounds great in theory. Pulling it off? Not so easy.

So if you’ve actually fought your way to a little breathing room, congratulations. You’ve done what a lot of business owners never manage to do.

But with that new margin comes a new challenge: figuring out what working on your business even looks like. How do I work on my business when I’m no longer buried in day-to-day tasks?

That’s actually normal. You’re not behind and you’re definitely not alone if you’re staring at your cleared calendar wondering what should I do now? In fact, this is exactly what you should be asking, because working on your business requires different muscles than working in it. The skills that helped you build momentum as a doer won’t be enough to carry you forward as a leader.

So, what do leaders do when they work on the business?

First, they decide they’re ready to lead with bigger vision. Then they stop filling their time with tasks and start focusing on direction, alignment and developing the people who will help carry the business forward.

Let’s unpack what that looks like, why strategy time often gets wasted, what leadership work really is, and how to turn your margin into meaningful progress.

Why Strategy Time Gets Wasted

When you're just starting out in business, you can't get around serving as the chief everything officer. You develop the product, sell the service, solve the problems, handle the money, burn the midnight oil—and probably take out the trash when it starts to smell. None of it makes a resumé, but all of it gets the business off the ground.

But over time, the same habits that fueled growth begin to hold it back.

When you’re consumed by keeping the plates spinning, you can’t create space for the business to grow beyond you. And deep down, you know your business can’t grow unless you do.

That realization is usually what pushes leaders to finally clear space in their calendars. But making room without knowing what to focus on almost always causes busywork. The issue isn’t motivation. It’s clarity. No one ever taught you what leadership work actually looks like.

So your instincts pull you back to what’s familiar:

• Knocking out tasks you’re good at
• Fixing problems quickly
• Staying busy and useful

All of that feels productive and responsible . . . like what strong leaders do. But more often than not, it’s just productive procrastination.

We’ve seen this pattern play out again and again with EntreLeadership^® clients.

Troy Brown, owner and president of Troy’s Wrecker Service and Little Ray’s Auto Parts & Used Cars in Louisville, Kentucky, didn’t stall because he stopped working hard. He stalled because the business outgrew the way he was leading it.

The next level required a different kind of work, starting with Troy’s own growth as a leader. He stepped out of the day-to-day weeds, clarified direction for his team, and invested in developing leaders who could carry responsibility without him. Growth didn’t come from doing more. It came from leading differently.

Here’s a simple gut check that helps separate activity from leadership:

Does what I’m focused on keep the business running, or does it move the business forward?

If it only keeps things running, it may still be important, but it’s not where your best leadership time should be spent.

What Do Leaders Do?

When you think about working on the business, you may imagine big strategy days or long planning sessions. Those have their place, but leadership work is less about occasional intensity and more about running the business like an owner, not an emergency responder. In other words, steady, preventative work keeps the business headed in the right direction.

Once you’ve cleared space and committed to the personal work of growing as a leader, most of the work you’ll do on the business falls into a few core categories.

At a high level, you’ll focus your time on purpose, people and a plan. These are three of the core Drivers of a healthy business. In EntreLeadership, the 6 Drivers of Business are personal, purpose, people, plan, product and profit—the key areas leaders must strengthen to grow through each stage of business. As those come into focus, it becomes much easier to deliver a better product or service and steward your profit well.

Get these drivers right, and you’ll create real momentum, no matter which stage of business you’re working through.

Purpose: Where Are We Going?

Without a clear purpose and direction, even great teams drift. This is where leaders step back from the noise and answer the big questions:

• Why do we exist?
• Where are we headed?
• What actually matters most right now?

Your leadership work here includes:

• Defining and clearly communicating your mission, vision and values
• Naming your main challenge as a business
• Clarifying what winning looks like over the next 12 months (what we call your desired future)

This work is foundational. When your purpose and direction are clear, decisions get easier, priorities sharpen, and your team knows what they’re aiming for.

People: Who Is Carrying the Mission?

Your business will only grow to the level of your team members’ buy-in to your mission, vision and values. That’s why a huge portion of working on the business involves developing people, not just managing tasks. As a leader, you have to stop asking, “How do I get this done?” and start asking, “Who needs to own this?”

Your leadership work here includes:

• Hiring thoroughbreds—team members who are motivated to give their best and do work that matters
• Letting go of team members who don’t share your values or pull their weight, what we call donkeys
• Creating role clarity through Key Results Areas (KRAs)
• Delegating ownership, not just tasks
• Developing leaders through ongoing coaching and one-on-ones

Aaron Baeder experienced this shift firsthand as owner, CEO and president of Michigan-based Ophoff Companies. When he stopped being the solution to every problem and started building leaders, the business became stronger—and far less dependent on him.

But let’s be clear: Delegation isn’t about dumping work on others. It’s about developing people with the character and competency to carry responsibility with confidence.

Plan: Are We Pulling in the Same Direction?

Clarity doesn’t matter if it lives only in your head. This category is about turning direction into coordinated action across your leadership team.

Your leadership work here includes:

• Building a unified leadership team
• Creating clear meeting rhythms
• Committing to effective, open communication, even when it’s uncomfortable
• Translating your desired future into weekly, quarterly and annual priorities through planning sessions and regular reviews

This is where those longer strategy sessions find their place as a part of an ongoing rhythm that helps your team stay aligned and adjust as needed.

As EntreLeadership teaches, meetings aren’t just about updates. They’re tools for alignment, decision-making and accountability. When you get this right, problems surface faster, decisions stick, and momentum builds. Alignment turns good plans into real progress.

Bonus Rhythms as You Grow

These rhythms are always part of your equation for success, but as your leadership bench strengthens, you’ll work toward developing others who help carry these responsibilities:

• Reviewing your product: Delivering excellence and regularly stepping back to assess what’s working, what’s not and what needs to change
• Stewarding finances and profit: Knowing your numbers, protecting margin, and using financial data to guide decisions

These additional categories reinforce purpose, people or plan. When direction is clear, people are developed, and alignment is strong, stewarding the money and reviewing product becomes far more effective.

How to Choose What to Work on Right Now

Once you understand what leadership work looks like, it’s tempting to try to work on everything at once. But spreading your attention too thin creates frustration, not progress. The simplest way to choose your focus is to look honestly at where you feel the most strain in your business.

Ask yourself these three questions:

1. What breaks if I step away?
2. Where am I still the bottleneck?
3. Where are we stuck or slowing down?

Your answers point you back to those core leadership drivers: purpose, people and a plan.

Michelle Marcum, a Cinnabon and Auntie Anne’s franchise owner in Colorado, used this kind of honest assessment to shift her focus from daily problem-solving to building systems and leaders that didn’t depend on her being everywhere at once. By addressing the area under the most strain first, she created space for sustainable growth.

Turn Big Leadership Work Into Weekly Progress

Once you’ve chosen the right focus, the temptation is to overhaul everything. But leadership progress comes through consistency, not intensity.

Most work you’ll do on the business shows up as:

• Conversations
• Decisions
• Repeatable rhythms

When you treat leadership work this way, progress stops feeling overwhelming and starts becoming visible.

One meaningful leadership action each week compounds over time. That might look like:

• Defining your mission and vision in a few intentional sessions
• Clarifying expectations with one leader
• Documenting or refining one role
• Improving one meeting rhythm
• Making one clear decision you’ve been avoiding

None of these actions feel dramatic in isolation. But together, week after week, they create clarity, trust and momentum.

Andy Baker, CEO of Urban Forge in Mountain View, Arkansas, didn’t transform his leadership with one bold move. His growth came from committing to small, consistent leadership actions that strengthened alignment and developed leaders around him.

That’s how businesses grow without burning out the people leading them.