Concept
Work on the business, not in it
Working on the business rather than in it is Gerber's central instruction: spend time looking at how the work is done and what would let someone else do it, instead of doing the work. A practical form is one protected hour a week, starting from a picture of the finished business.
The technician starts from today's list; the entrepreneur starts from the end, a picture of the business as it will look when it is finished, and works back to what must be true this week. Gerber calls this the entrepreneurial perspective, and the on-the-business hour is the smallest dose of it a founder can take. The hour's products are modest: a recipe written down, an intake form, a fixed process for quoting, each moving a piece of the business from the founder's hands into the business itself. The test at the end of every hour is whether one more thing could now happen without you; if the answer has been no for a month, the hour was spent in the business after all. Rework adds a caution in a chapter called 'Don't scar on the first cut': do not write a new rule every time something goes wrong once. Keep each system as light as the business needs.
A real-life example
The owner of a six-room guesthouse in Ayvalık spends every Sunday afternoon on the business rather than in it. The first month produces a check-in sheet, a cleaning list for each room and a rule that bookings close at six. In September she goes to her daughter's wedding for four days, and her cousin runs the guesthouse from the pages.
How to use it
- 1Book one hour a week on the business and protect it like a customer appointment.
- 2Start the hour from the picture of the finished business, not today's list.
- 3End each hour by moving one thing from your head into the business.