There is a big difference between being a business owner and owning a business.

The difference is one of leverage. A business owner leverages people to create both long term value and near term passive income for himself. You'll know you have a passive income when you can not show up for a month and you still get paid and things still operate just as well without you.

On the other hand, owners of a business have a job. An hours work for an hours pay. The guy who owns 3 local pizza shops is a business owner. Your dentist, owns a business.

For a business to  operate successfully or be sold for a meaningful amount, there are 3 "able's"  it must have. They are:

#1: Repeatable.  Can your business be easily and dependibly repeated? The more specialized knowledge or skill that is needed the harder it will be for you to sell your business for an optimal amount. Why? Because the new owner will have difficulty expanding beyond the current operation. Le Bec Fin is an unbelievable, break the mold, one of a kind French restaurant in Philadelphia. It's uniqueness is its problem. Le Bec Fin can't be easily replicated. It may make money for it's owners, but what has worked on Walnut St. in downtown Philadelphia for years cannot dependebly repeated anywhere else in the world. Wendy's can. 7-Eleven can. Le Bec Fin cannot.

#2: Profitable. Ok, this one may be like getting hit over the head with the "obvious stick", but it wasn't that long ago when dot coms had the mentality that the objective was to "get big fast."  Today a plan of  "losing money on each transaction and explaining that you'll make it up on volume" doesn't fly. So, does your business make money? And if it does, is it high margin? Why would anyone in their right mind want to buy an airline? It requires a huge amount of capital, has many competitors, government regulartion and for the most part is viewed by customers as a utilitarian commodity (I just want to get from point A to point B.) The risk v. reward equation on airline investment is way out of whack. The more profit you can generate with the least amount of capital required the better.

#3: Scaleable. Your business must be able to grow and expand, and preferably be able to do so without limitations. The local dentist, with his name on the shingle, has the value of the business tied up with him. If he doesn't show up, he doesn't get paid.  If he's successful, he can't easily sell the business because the business is all him. My publishing company used to publish a lot of high-end technology white papers for big name, Fortune 50 companies. We made a lot of money with them, but we had a problem. Selling and producing them required very special editorial knowledge and skills that was hard to come by and would take years of experience to train. In other words the businesses scale was restricted by our ability to attract specialized personel.

Conforming your business to these 3 "able's" isn't always easy and takes time. If you want to sell your business for an optimal amount someday, the time is now to get to work.