In Clockwork, Revised and Expanded: Design Your Business to Run Itself, small business author Mike Michalowicz provides a step-by-step method for getting more done by doing less – making it easier than ever to have your business run itself. Mike suggests that the four-week vacation is the ultimate acid test for a business that runs itself.

There are three stages in a business’s life that every successful entrepreneur experiences. Stage one is when you are scratching your head thinking about starting a business, stage two is surviving the startup stage, and stage three is the growth stage.