Defensive work is the worst, there is nothing that an any entrepreneur hates more than moving backwards. In the beginning of a business and from time to time there will be fires to put out. But if you’re consistently doing a ton of defensive work it means you need to build a better business system. Because business systems are key. The success of McDonald’s, Walmart and Amazon is 100% of a result of building incredibly efficient business systems, systems built on maintenance.
Maintenance work is the work that needs to be done every day to keep your enterprise profitable. Outside of making you money, the primary purpose of maintenance work is to keep you out of defense. Once you’ve built a good enough system and are making the necessary cash, you want to be able to outsource that maintenance work to qualified people, something I’m in the process of doing. The problem is finding the right people, the solution is to pay well and screening hard.
Offensive work is the only work you will actually enjoy in your business, f*ck enjoying the journey, thats not how it works. Entrepreneurship is about having a high pain tolerance so you can push your way back onto offense. Offense means EXPANSION and PROGRESS and progress equals happiness to the entrepreneur.
Also, from a financial perspective, it only makes sense to spend the bulk of your day doing whats most profitable. When you hire an assistant and a manager it leaves you time to close deals, plot revenue strategy, eliminate waste, build more efficient systems, expand your territory and express yourself creatively so that you can:
1) Get more customers
2) Get more money from your current customers
Expansion work is where you want to be if you want to “enjoy the journey” because no one enjoys the journey, we only enjoy doing what we love. Doing what you hate and powering through is the price to pay for eventually being able do what you love.
If you’re struggling to find your payoff and get back into expansion it means you need help on defense and you need a better system on maintenance – that’s it, but know it can be done. And if you can’t look forward to today, just look forward to being able to delegate what you hate and keep powering through until you can get back on offense.
