My wife and I were recently at a conference in northern Alabama. This one is different than any other I’ve been to… because it was in an RV campground.

It is called the RV Entrepreneur Summit.

In terms of material talked about, there is a lot of the same stuff you might expect. I didn’t expect to learn much, really. I just like the crowd and decided to attend for the community. So, we took our RV up to Lake Guntersville State Park to attend.

While I can’t say I learned a lot of new stuff, my wife and I had some potentially path-shifting business ideas.

I also was reminded of some things. One of them in particular really slammed home a reality that I had sorta lost sight of…

See, I have always thought of myself as an entrepreneur.

What is an entrepreneur? It is a person who works for himself or herself, right? A person who starts a business. And that is what I do. Right?

But one speaker sorta slammed home a reality. He and his wife run an ecomm site called TechnoRV. And he was talking all about the how he and his wife created processes and systems to expand into what is already a 7-figure business…. and growing rapidly.

Here is what an entrepreneur really means…

a person who organizes and operates a business or businesses, taking on greater than normal financial risks in order to do so.

Now, let me point out the part that stood out to me…

A person who ORGANIZES and OPERATES a business.

What is it that most small business owners do? They start up a thing where they are selling their own product or service. They may take on clients. And, over time, what ends up happening is that they have created their own JOB.

Every morning, that “entrepreneur” is busy putting out fires, handling communications, doing the mundane daily work of a business. They might have left a full-time job only to create an even FULLER time job for themselves.

The 9-to-5 job turns into a 9-9 job.

This is the business operating the owner, not the other way around. The owner and the business are one and the same, in this case.

But, according to the actual dictionary definition of an entrepreneur, he is a person who organizes and operates a business.

He DRIVES it. The business is a separate entity.

What is a business, really?

It is a system. It is a system which exists outside of the mind of it’s creator. And, when operated, it outputs the desired things.

That system consists of sub-systems and processes.

I can go deeper on this later, but this definition basically gave me a huge slap upside the head. Not because I didn’t already know this, but because I had lost sight of it in the day to day.

In some ways, I have been feeling as if Blog Marketing Academy is running me rather than the other way around.

By many people’s standards, BMA is a successful online business. But, truth is that it has been hampered in it’s growth. By me. By the fact that so much of what happens is still in my head. Done by me.

Look at the fact that I was traveling this last week and no Edge newsletters went out. It is too reliant on me. Well, more correctly said, if the Edge was better systematized, then the fact that I was traveling wouldn’t matter much.

My wife and I are planning to work together to really systematize BMA. Her role with my company is about to increase. She’s a very logical person and a chemical process engineer by training, so creating processes and systems is right up her alley.

We both realized that the ticket to the next level for Blog Marketing Academy lies in taking processes and systems seriously.

If we don’t do that, BMA will remain capped where it is.

More to share later!

… plus, a new idea we had to take Blog Marketing Academy on the road. 🙂