I’ve previously talked about working on your business. It’s time to make it an article of its own. Working on your business, and not just in it, is a key to success. This is ESPECIALLY important for streamers since you’re so locked in to working in your business.
So, what’s the difference between working in and working on your business?
Working in your business
Working in your business entails doing the day to day stuff you need to do to keep the business running. For a streamer that’s doing pre-stream prep, actually going live and streaming, maintaining and growing your community, seeking out new opportunities, and networking. There are even more than that.
It’s a ton of stuff! You guys are putting in crazy hours to pursue a dream and I really admire that.
Working on your business
However, just doing the work isn’t enough in and of itself. You need to plan! That’s where working on the business comes in. After all, wouldn’t it suck to reach your desired level of success only to realize you’ve just created a new job for yourself while potentially killing a hobby?
First, you should outline all of the tasks that go in to keeping the business running. Make sure you’re actually separating them out; the goal here is to find tasks that don’t literally require you to be the one doing the job. For most streamers being on camera talent is pretty locked to them. However, finding new opportunities, doing tech support, creating emotes, community management, content curation (like YouTube for VODs), and business planning aren’t necessarily something only they can do.
Now that you’ve outlined all of the tasks that go in to working in the business it’s time to work on the business. That involves planning the business in such a way that it’s sustainable for you and actually achieves what you set out to achieve. That plan should involve how you get rid of all of the task you don’t want to hold on to. That doesn’t mean they go undone, that means finding a way to give it to someone else you trust. For my business I actually wrote out “when I have this much recurring revenue I can outsource task X” in a plan.
It may be that for now you’re on your own with working in the business. Sometimes you have capital restraints you can’t quite hurdle yet. That’s fine. The planning is still valuable because it shows you what you can effectively offload once you do have the funds for a job or find the right person for it.
Galen’s business as an example
I freaking love talking to clients. One of the biggest reasons I do what I do is because I leave most client meetings energized and looking to do more. People are my jam. Pretty much all people need financial help and it was something I already found fascinating. Hence, a financial planning firm was born.
However, running a firm involves a lot more than just client meetings. I need to do marketing, prospecting, back end numbers crunching work, investment management, IT decisions for the business, the company’s invoicing and accounting, administrative work including scheduling client meetings, payroll, compliance work, governmental paperwork, forward looking strategic and tactical planning, and several other things I’m likely forgetting. That’s a lot of tasks.
So how do I work on my business? First, I delineated all of those tasks. Right now, my name is next to almost all of them because I have a relatively new business that’s mostly bootstrap funded. Then I put together an outsourcing plan for the tasks that I don’t want to hold on to as my core job. Some go to other companies, some will eventually be employees, and some will be contractors. It’s a long-term plan to make sure I continue to love what I do.
Already I don’t have my name next to every task. I’ve outsourced a lot of my IT decisions and compliance work to the XYPlanning Network. Additionally, I’ve outsourced my asset management to a company called RobustWealth. I’m still talking about investing with my clients but now I don’t have to do all of the back-end trading work. It saves me a lot of time!
Working on my business, even at the start, has freed me to spend more time on the things that I either love or consider crucial.
Conclusion
If you’re trying to grow your stream to eventually be full-time you’re running a business. Running a business is a ton of work. You need to make sure that you’re actually working on the business and not only in the business so it doesn’t consume you. Streaming is fun, video games are fun, and you don’t want to create a situation where you hate the thing you used to love doing.
Planning out how you can grow the business in ways that don’t just involve working more is not only a great idea, it’s a necessary idea. Do you know any large streamers that still do their own management, emotes, accounting, moderation, and community mangement?. If you do, send them my way because holy crap do they need my help.
On that note, you don’t have to figure this out alone. This is what we do- help streamers make great money decisions. One of those great decisions is working on your business instead of just in it. If that’s something that sounds interesting to you reach out me or schedule some time for a free consult. You can check out what I do here.
