Why Most People Who Think They Own Businesses Actually Just Own Jobs
In my last post, I talked about the 5% of business owners who break through while 95% stay stuck forever. Today, I want to show you exactly what separates them.
It comes down to one thing: Becoming what I call a “True Business Owner.”
Let me explain what that means, and why it might be the most important thing you learn about business.
The Simple Definition That Changes Everything
A True Business Owner is someone who owns a business and gets all the benefits from that business, but doesn’t need to be there every day for it to work.
Now, if you love working in your business, that’s great. Keep doing it. But here’s the key: Set it up so your business can run without you.
This isn’t just about having more free time (though that’s nice). This is about three big things:
1. You can actually work ON your business instead of just IN it
2. You have the freedom to do other things with your life
3. Your business becomes much more valuable (because it can run without you)
Think about it: If someone wanted to buy your business tomorrow, would they be buying a business or would they be buying a full-time job that requires them to do everything you do? Or worse yet, would they be needing you in order to secure they can uphold the results that you had after the ownership of the businesss is now in their hands?
Why Most Business Owners Are Stuck
Most of my clients have some systems in place. But they’re still way too important to the daily operations. They can’t walk away.
This leads to two big problems:
They’re overworked and stressed out. And they don’t have the mental energy to see what really needs to be fixed to make their business better.
It’s like being so busy bailing water out of a leaking boat that you never have time to actually fix the holes.
How This Usually Happens
Here’s the pattern I see over and over:
Someone gets really good at their trade. Maybe they get tired of having a boss. They want freedom. So they start their own business.
At first, it’s great. They do good work. Word spreads. The business grows.
But then the business gets bigger, and suddenly everyone needs them for everything. They’re putting out fires all day. They’re busier than ever and working harder than ever, but they’re not making the money they should be making.
So what do most business owners think the answer is?
Grow more. Get more customers. Work harder.
But that’s like trying to fix a broken engine by pressing the gas pedal harder.
The real answer is to fix what’s broken inside the business first. Then grow.
How I Learned This the Hard Way
I got lucky in a weird way.
My dad was an entrepreneur who understood the importance of good teams. He had multiple businesses running at the same time in different industries. You can’t be in five places at once, so he had to build teams that could run things without him.
But I really learned this lesson when I became CEO of Denmark’s fourth-largest car rental company. A couple years in, I wanted to have my own business too. Have my own baby so to speak.
The board said I could buy my own company, but with one rule: Any time I spent on my business had to be on my own time. Evenings and weekends only.
This forced me to set up my new business so it could run without me being there during the day.
What Happened Next Surprised Everyone
When I bought this business, I took over the existing team. But it quickly became clear they weren’t going to work for what I wanted to do. So I let them all go and started over.
Now I had a brand new team. None of us knew the industry. None of us knew the clients, and the clients didn’t know us. None of us really knew how to run this type of business.
Oh, and I’d bought the business with 100% borrowed money. So it had to work.
I was nervous as hell. But also excited.
Here’s what happened: In the first year, we almost quadrupled the sales. Our profit (measuring here on EBITDA) grew 32 times bigger.
And I was barely ever physically in the building.
I owned that business for 14 years. If I add up all the times I actually went to the office, it was maybe 60 working days total. In 14 years.
The Real Secret
How did this work?
It wasn’t magic. It was systems.
We built the business so that:
- People knew what to do without asking me
- Decisions could be made without me approving everything
- Problems got solved by the team, not by me
- The business ran smoothly whether I was there or not
I still guided the strategy. I still made sure we were going in the right direction. But the day-to-day stuff? The team handled all of that.
What This Means for You
Most business owners have never seen a business like this. They’ve never had a boss who showed them how it works. They’ve never had a mentor who taught them.
So they think the only way to run a business is to be involved in everything.
But that’s not true ownership. That’s just self-employment with extra stress.
The Connection to Everything We’ve Talked About
Remember when we talked about the invisible plateau? About working harder but making less? About chaos not being a badge of honor?
This is where it all leads.
The business owners who break through – the 5% – they all figure out how to become True Business Owners.
They stop being the person who does everything and start being the person who builds something that works without them.
This Is What I Do Every Day
The story I just shared about my business isn’t just history. It’s the foundation of everything I do with clients today.
For over three decades, I’ve been helping business owners make this exact transition, from being trapped in their business to becoming True Business Owners.
But here’s what makes it even better: When you build your business the right way, you don’t just get your freedom back. You make significantly more money. Without working harder.
My clients regularly see profit increases of 30%, 50%, 100% or more. When I tallied up my last client’s results, he had his best year ever during his first year working with me. His net profits increased by over 500% over his best year till date before working with me, and almost 32 fold over his past 5 year average results. We grew his Sales by some 33% in the process. His results improvements came about, not by working longer hours, but by fixing what’s broken inside their business first.
When you stop being the bottleneck and start being the architect, everything changes. Revenue grows more predictably. Profit margins improve dramatically. And you finally get to enjoy the business you built instead of being enslaved by it.
That’s the transformation I help business owners achieve.
