Baktari MD
Jonathan Baktari MD is the CEO of eNational Testing, e7 Health, & US Drug Test Centers. Jonathan Baktari MD brings over 20 years of clinical, administrative, and entrepreneurial experience. He has been a triple board-certified physician specializing in internal medicine, pulmonary, and critical care medicine.
Jonathan Baktari is a preeminent, national business thought leader interviewed in The Washington Post, USA Today, Forbes, Barron’s, and many other national publications. He is also an opinion writer for The Hill and the Toronto Star.
He is the host of a highly-rated podcast Baktari MD as well as a guest on over 70 podcasts. Jonathan Baktari MD was formerly the Medical Director of The Valley Health Systems, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield and Culinary Health Fund. He also served as clinical faculty for several medical schools, including the University of Nevada and Touro University.
Baktari MD
Working On Your Business VS In Your Business (2024)
Welcome to episode 39 of Season 2 of Baktari MD! In this episode, we talk about working IN your business versus ON your business! When it comes to a startup, it's inevitable that you will have to do 99% of the work within your business. But when do you make the transition out of that? All of the tips and trick you need are right here! Find out all of this and more in the full episode!
There is something to be said about always working on your business, because if you're just simply in the trenches trying to get the widget out every day, you’re just not going to have the bandwidth to be an effective CEO. Hi. Welcome to another episode of Baktari MD. This year we're going to be doing Crash CEO School, where we go over all the skill sets you need to lead your organization to the next level. So today I want to talk about a topic that I often hear people say when they're thinking about their business. And that is the adage of whether you should be working in your business or working on your business. You often hear people say that if you really want to get to the next level, you need to be working on your business, but not literally in their factory or line. You know, putting widgets together on the on the factory line. And I want to talk about that because I think the answer to this age old question of working in your business or on your business is not as clear cut as it seems. There is something to be said about always working on your business, because if you're just simply in the trenches trying to get the widget out every day, you’re just not going to have the bandwidth to be an effective CEO. Because as a CEO, your job is to be looking at the satellite perspective of the company and not be so deep in the weeds, right, that you can't see what's really happening. What the big picture is. And also a big part of what CEOs have to do is try to predict what's coming around the corner. Right. You've often seen, you know, when markets change and crises occur in the economy or in the world, that certain companies, for whatever reason, were like three steps ahead. And so when the change came, they were ready and other companies were not. You know, take COVID as an example. Right. So you saw a lot of department stores and what have you who weren't really thinking ahead in terms of online presence or really being an e-commerce site in addition to being brick and mortar. A lot of them suffered and one went out of business and the companies that were brick and mortar but saw you know, the potential downfall of not having a super e-commerce present got hurt. So that's just the classic example of whoever is in charge looking to see what's around the corner and what they can do today to address what is, you know, what's coming around the corner. Now, if obviously you have your head down and you're in the factory making widgets, it's hard for you to leave the factory and look around and see, you know, what kind of widgets should I be making, Should I be making more smaller widgets, bigger widgets, metaphorically. And the question is, are you making the company more money by staying in the factory and making the widgets metaphorically, or are you better off leaving the factory and driving through town and talking to people and saying, you know, as things are changing, what kind of widgets might be in need or in demand? Of course, this metaphors widgets can be applied to anything, but I think you get what I'm saying. So what is the argument then for working inside your business versus outside? Because if it was so simple, everyone would just work on the outside. I'm actually going to make the case that there is phases where one is better than others or one is preferred, and then other times, you know the other one's preferred. And the way I'd like to serve this up is like this when you're in the earliest stages of your business one, often you don't have the manpower, the financial reserves to have the luxury of working on your business. So that alone precludes you from being the big picture guy if you're the one. You know, you and your wife or one other partner are the whole are 90% of the payroll. So in those kind of cases, by definition, you're working in the business you have to be because it's it's a small operation. Even when you get five, ten, 15, 20 people because of your know how and your drive, you know, there aren't going to be too many other people that can do what you do potentially at the beginning. So initially, almost everybody, almost by definition, unless you know, they've got $100 million to start a company, if you're starting out or in the early stages of your company, you're going to be working in your business. Even though that's a given, though, I think it's important to understand why it is you're working in your business. What are the advantages of you working in your business and what are the long term plans to address that? Today we have a bullet proof system that helps us close up to 80% of those inbound calls. Our High Converting Call Class will teach you how to demonstrate your authority quickly without being pushy. We believe that many businesses out there can benefit from this, and we promise to help you achieve your revenue goals by converting more of your incoming calls into actual sales. For more information, please visit our website at HighConvertingCallClass.com. Stop waiting for the sales to come to you. Put your revenue into your hands. So there are some because there are some many good things about someone who works in their business. When you work in your business, you can perfect the product, you can you know, you can get the perfect recipe, you can come up with the best customer support. You know, there's something to be said about a small business. When you're talking to the owner, you call landscape company, you get the owner and they, you know, they immediately impart on you all their professionalism and their knowledge, and that does a lot of sales. So initially, I think working in your business, especially if you're bringing that kind of gravitas to your product or service, is a no brainer because you need to succeed before you can get to the level where you don't have to work on your business. And sometimes that requires you to work in your business, sometimes long hours, you know, six days a week, whatever, until you get traction. Then I think there comes a phase where you then find people that you've mentored, that you have held their hands and you come up with policies and procedures and processes to replicate what you delivered to the product or service when you were doing it. So that's going to be an evolution. But the whole idea would be then for you to actually sit there and create something that reproduces the product with the same quality intensity that would occur when you were in the trenches doing everything. Now, that's just not overnight. It's going to take months, years, whatever to create a team, to create processes, technologies that can replicate what you brought to the table. And then during that process, then you can start thinking about, okay, I'm going to go through this phase where I'm going to try to replicate what I delivered in terms of product knowledge and in product quality and product or service quality. And I'm going to set up systems where my staff and our technology can replicate that. But at a certain point, if I am very successful, then I can start pulling back and then having the satellite perspective and then start thinking about high level stuff like where is the company going? What services do we need to get rid of? What do we need to add? These are all things that you can't really focus on if you're in the factory making the widget. And as you pull back, then I think you can add an extra layer of dimension to working on your business. So if you really view it in this thing, I actually think working in your business and working on your business is an evolution because working in your business is something that potentially everyone has to do at the beginning. And then once you have perfected that system and then come up with the system to impart that through technology, through mentoring, through hiring the right people so you can replicate what you did. And one of the added benefits that people don't realize is if you were once in your business, and you understood about, you know, where you buy the widgets or the supplies for the widgets and what the problems with the vendors and the supply. And you know what happens with the machine when it breaks down. It's interesting because people who actually walk the walk and been in the trenches of their business, meaning, you know, you meet people on the web design company, right. But, you know, at a certain point, they were creating the websites themselves. Now they have a team that does that most most of the work. But for them to help or when their staff has questions about things, if they themselves never did the job, it becomes almost impossible for them to then comment in a meaningful way. You just have to assume. So if you if you never flew the plane and never landed the plane and one of your employees has a question about how to land the plane, you know, you may say, well, I'm the CEO, so I'm the best guy to give you advice on how to land this plane. But you at some point should have landed the plane, ideally because then when you give advice, it's not like, that's easy for you to say. You've never had to do it, which is, you know, I often hear employees say that about their boss. it's easy for him to say I do this and that. Well, you know, when was the last time he did it? So again, if you have a huge company, I don't expect the CEO to have worked everyone's job. But as you transition from a small to medium sized company, yes. If you were in the trenches, you did answer the phones. You actually sold website yourself. You actually coded the website at some point. That's not mandatory, but theoretically, it will give you an advantage in terms of how to address your staff, win their respect, win their confidence and actually have an insightful decisions because you have actually touched the stuff and know where it goes. So another benefit of going through a stage of working in your business and then transitioning out and working on your business. So you have many benefits if you've gone through that transition like we've talked about in this video. Okay. I hope this helps kind of address this thing about working in your business and working on your business. I think they both have a role and a time and if done properly, you can benefit from both. Okay. Well, thank you so much. If you like content like this, make sure you comment like and subscribe and see you in the next video. Thank you.