When asked what business are you in most business owners will respond by telling you what their business provides, for example I am a dry cleaner or a shop owner.

However I want to challenge this perception.

I would argue that every business owner is in the business of marketing. If you own a dry cleaning business then your business is really to market dry cleaning services as without marketing there is no business. By making this distinction it forces business owners to reevaluate how they spend their time. In the example of the Dry Cleaners rather than working in the day to day operation of the business i.e doing the actual dry cleaning the owner should be focusing on growing and marketing the business. So for example they should be devising marketing programs, testing different forms of promotion etc

All to often business owners get so absorbed in what their business actually does that they forget the key point to actually growing and having a business that works without them is systems and marketing. Once you can get into that mindset then you start to see the difference between having what is effectively a job working in your own business to switching to the mentality of being the owner of a business.

Michae Gerber explains this much better in his book E-myth - why most small businesses don’t work and what to do about it. I recommend you get a copy and start to develop a business owners mindset.