I once had a client who came to me desperately seeking advice on how he could improve his business, as he was having acute staffing problems and was working incredibly long hours to keep the business afloat.

What I told him in our first session shocked him; it was basically this:

“You don’t have a business, you have a job.”

This is the trap that so many business owners fall into – they mistakenly believe that because they are the “owner,” somehow they truly own the business. WRONG!

Merely owning and running a business does not you mean that you’re a business owner in the truest sense; it simply means you are employed by a business entity that you own.

A true business is a system that runs entirely on its own without you physically being there on a day-to-day basis.

A true test of whether or not you own a business is to ask yourself, “If I took 6 months off, would it still be around?”

If the answer is no, then you don’t have a business; you are simply self-employed!

This is a very important principle to understand before you start any business, as it will make the difference between small profits or large ones.

In essence, to create business is to build a system that operates automatically without your day-to-day input.

Instead it operates by you leveraging the resources available to you: your systems, employees, suppliers and…ultimately your customers.

Your relationship to your business should be the same as the one a conductor has to his orchestra – you should be the co-ordinator, the director, NOT the musician; and if you truly wish to be a wealth creator you should maintain this perspective throughout your business life.