If you can afford or accumulate enough, you can hire a bookkeeper, managers, and a person in charge to manage these affairs, basically you run a business where you have processes in place to take care of those things for you! Property investment can be run as a business!
You on the other hand are currently self-employed, where you have to physically do some work to generate your income? Can you tell me you don't need to turn up for work in your business or spend any hours at all to generate the income???? This comment is not to offend but rather to illustrate the difference between being self-employed and having a proper business.
I agree... You can choose to either be The General of your Army or A Soldier in the trenches..
To me, a successful business is when you are The General of your Army...PAYG and some one Self employed are the Soldiers in the Trenches, because they are selling their time as opposed to outsourcing and leveraging some one else's time.
If you dont work to replace yourself you keep on working...nothing wrong with that if that's what's you enjoy doing and prefer to do.
But as Mr Fab states "Achieving the goals you've set for the business, whatever they may be", The General of the Army is the business goal.
Everyone has their own Success definition.. The General is mine.