Page 179 - The UnCaptive Agent

152 THE UNCAPTIVE AGENT

working on the business means working on you (your
capabilities, strengths, and knowledge) as well. How
much time? It depends on how rapidly you’re growing
and where you are in the development process. It may
only be a few minutes a day. Ultimately, it may become
most of your day.
What do I mean by working on your business? I refer
here to those tasks of planning for your agency’s growth,
planning for the acquisition of people and other assets,
planning for insurance companies to contract with,
working on budgets and forecasts, and dreaming about
your future. All of this is important. You need to con-
stantly be thinking about the future and providing the
things that the future will require. This takes time. It’s
one of the highest-value tasks you will do as a business
owner, and it demands your attention every business
week for the rest of your career.
There are many ways to go about organizing the
time and work of working on your business. I wouldn’t
presume to tell another entrepreneur how she should do
it. But I do have strategies that I’ve used successfully in
growing my businesses and will share some of them here.
I remember a painful conversation I had with a highly
valued employee early in my career. He was leaving for
a job to make more money than I could pay him. As
we tearfully talked about his leaving, I vowed to work
as hard as I could to never be in that position again.
Of course, I have been. Many times. But I adopted the
attitude that I needed to grow faster than my employees.
This has led me to seek constant personal and business
improvement through reading as many books, taking as
many classes, and seeking out as many mastermind and
coaching opportunities as I could afford and fit into my
schedule. Much of what I learned resulted in progress,
growth, and breakthroughs that I hope have made it