Working on the business

vs. working in the business

At a dinner with friends a couple of weeks ago, someone asked me about my job. So I started telling them about SharpestMinds, “We’re a marketplace for mentorships…” until I was interrupted, “I know what your company does. But what do you do at the company?”

This stumped me for a minute. What do I do?

Well, my title is CEO. A quick Google search tells me that a CEO, “manages the overall resources and operations of a company, makes major corporate decisions, and acts as the main point of contact between the board of directors, employees, and the public.”

While these are technically my responsibilities, my day to day work often says otherwise. Titles don’t mean a whole lot at a company with three employees.

So what do I do every day? Everything. At least, that’s what it feels like. Accounting, marketing, product management, engineering, analytics, design, customer support, HR, and a long-tail of other jobs—many of which could turn into full-time roles as we scale.

This never-ending list of roles to fill presents a couple of challenges. One is time management. I talked about my time management strategy—time block planning on a weekly scope—in a previous Index. But the other challenge is more existential. If I want SharpestMinds to grow into a lasting, visionary company, I need to make time to work on the business and not just in the business.

I find that I need this reminder regularly. It’s easy to get addicted to the grind—to churn through a never-ending to-do list and feel a sense of accomplishment from having done so much each day.

Working on the business (e.g. making strategic decisions, shaping product, doing a deep dive into our metrics or market research) usually requires a good deal of focussed, creative time. The kind of time where progress is not easily measured. Where the dopamine hits of completed tasks are further apart. This kind of creative work can feel wasteful, especially with the weight of a growing task list in the background.

But that creative, working-on-the-business work is important. Existential, even. So here I am reminding myself (again) that the most important thing I can do every day is to work on the business. To-do list be damned! Every day should have a block of time dedicated to long-term company-building.

Ok, back to building.

-Russell