So there are 3 things I’ve always felt you should have in your business – take a look and see if your business ticks each one

1. Repeatable – so a business that has repeat customers every month can track what their future income is going to be, and plan for growth accordingly.

Take a subscription razor blade business for example – they know that every month 23,104 people are going to make a payment each month.

And they can use that revenue to grow their business, plan budgets and fulfill orders etc.

If it’s not repeatable, every single month you need to go out and find more new customers all the time.

The repeatable model also drops your marketing costs, because as we know, it costs much less to service an existing customer, than it does to have to find new ones all the time.

2. Scaleable – You should be able to scale that business up without you having to work more hours.

The problem for most business owners, say a plumber, is that the more they sell, the more work they have to actually do in delivering the service.

If you’re an artist, you can only make so many pieces of art each month. But if you sell Star Wars tshirts, you can print as many of those as you like.

In my own Digital Marketing Agency business, we have certain limits on scaleability, which are overcome by higher prices which allows us to bring on resourcing to fulfil the deliverables.

Not only that, but our basic running costs (other than the talent we employ) are very low – many agencies have expensive offices to pay for, and that means they often price themselves out of the market somewhat.

But also, in order to be scaleable, it means that a certain culture has to be in place, as well as training as and when it’s needed.

3. Predictable – almost the same as repeatable, but a little bit different. We want to know on what day of the month we’re getting paid so that we can allocate resourcing, plus it allows us to bring on more resources to add yet more value to our existing clients and to our new clients.

So what aspects need to be Repeatable, Scaleable and predicatble ?

– Revenue – if you know how much you’ve got coming in each month more or less, then that makes a HUGE difference.

– Marketing & Sales – If you know that for every £1,000 in ad spend, you bring on a £5,000 client, then you can spend as many of those £1,000 as you like

– Deliverables – if you know you can scale upwards, you can both sell more, PLUS, if you manufacture, you can place bigger orders with suppliers to get better discounts

Building a business like this isn’t easy, don’t let anyone tell you that it is (especially those who haven’t built one yet)

But what business isn’t difficult ?

They all have some degree of difficulty in them, but if you can start off with a scaleable, repeatable and predictable business, then you’re half way there at least.

Hope that helps