The 5 Signs of a Truly Great Business

Let's face it, most businesses aren't great. They're complicated. The margins are razor thin, and the moment the founder stops working, it just totally collapses. Today, I want to help you spot the five big signs. If a business is truly amazing, whether you're thinking about starting one, buying a business, or growing one, you already have. And I'll add a few bonus traits that might surprise you. Let's get into it. I just wanted to take a quick second to say thank you for being here. You're a learner, you're a doer. You're my kind of person. And if you want to join people just like you in our growing community of entrepreneurs, hit subscribe right under this video. You grow, we grow, we all win. Thanks. Sign number one. It solves a painful, urgent problem. I can't tell you how many businesses don't do this. There's so many people that are starting businesses that are just meh. Right? They. The greater the problem you solve, the more painful the problem that you solve, the easier your business is. That's just the bottom line. A great business, really, it starts with that real problem, one that people really feel deeply about. They want this problem solved. Like right now. This isn't nice to have. This isn't, hey, this is a cool feature. It's about real pain. Think about what you would be willing to pay for life saving surgery. You'd pay as much as you can. Why? Because it's an urgent problem, right? And it's worth it for you. So think about it for a moment. I mean, this is an extreme example, but we can apply this to our own businesses, to businesses that we're looking at. For example, a coach could be helping you fix a failing relationship. If you're having a tough time with your relationship with your spouse or with a family member or a parent, fixing that relationship will solve a lot of pain for you. Okay? Another example, a tool that helps you stop wasting money on ad spend, right? You are spending so much money on ad spend, and if you could save some money, that's money made, all right? And it's kind of urgent because you are running ads constantly and you want to save some money before you run your next ad. Another example, a system that finally gets you paid on time. If you're a freelancer. If you're a freelancer, you know the pain of chasing invoices. So you want to solve that as soon as possible. Just remember that the more painful and urgent the problem, the more willing they are to pay for the solution, and the faster they are to make a decision, think about it. They're not going to and ah, about something they know they need. They are in pain. They see a solution and they're going to just want it now. They're not going to just say let me think about it. They're going to be like hey, where do I sign up? So this is why, this is number one with a bullet. Because if you could solve a painful, urgent problem, your life is going to be so much easier as a business owner. Sign number two, high profit margins. I talk about margins constantly in our content because it's so important. Great businesses make great money. Bottom line, period, end of story. Okay? There's no way around this, okay? They don't run on razor thin margins. Great businesses don't just settle for 5, 10, 20% margins. They allow lots of room to reinvest into the business. Also they understand that not all the time in the lifespan of the business everything's gonna be great. There are gonna be some storms ahead. They gotta be able to weather those storms. They need to be able to grow despite the storms. So you wanna look for 80 to 90% margins for digital products or software. This is why I absolutely love online business and digital products. Cause the margins are amazing. What if you're in coaching or services? Well, I recommend 50 to 70% margins. If you could pull it off the and even physical products you should shoot for at least 40% margins, which is not easy. And this is why I believe if you're in the physical product world, you should go up market and not try to compete on price on low price products. Let me just boil it down to its essence. The reason why margins matter is because it gives you leverage. It allows you to advertise, allows you to hire great talent, it allows you to reinvest, allows you to even discount strategically if you need to. Because. Because there is room for that. And here's a bonus tip. Many founders underprice in the beginning. Start higher, then adjust. Higher margin businesses give you that flexibility. Because if you could charge more in the beginning, you can afford to start growing and hire and do all the things you need to do in your business to have a thriving business. And you make it worth your while. Cause you gotta remember in the beginning you don't have a lot of customers. So the higher margins, the more profit you make, the more money goes into your pocket. This is why I always say don't underprice at the start. Start at a higher price point. Sign number three. The value is obvious. If I don't get your value. Why I should buy your product or service quickly, like within seconds. Then you're really making it harder for yourself to get customers and get sales. If you need a 10 minute explainer video for people to understand what your product does, it's just not clear enough. Great businesses have simple crisp messaging. They have clear outcomes, they have immediate perceived value immediately. They're like, oh, I could see why I would want this. I'm going to give you some quick examples of some products or services that show immediate value immediately, like with the headline of the actual website. Get booked for podcast in 10 minutes a day. Very easy to understand what I'm getting here. I'm going to get booked on a podcast as a guest so I can grow my brand in 10 minutes a day. So in 10 minutes I can quickly get that. Another example, instant advice on your sales page with AI ready in two minutes. So quickly I know what I'm getting. I'm going to get advice, I'm going to get critique, I'm going to get some improvements, areas of improvements on my sales page in two minutes. Very clear. Stop forgetting important tasks with my new mobile app, clearly I know what I'm getting. I'm getting a reminder tasks. Something is going to make sure that I don't forget things that are important on my mobile phone. Let me give you an example for my own history as an entrepreneur. We had a software company called Webinar Ninja. Our value prop was very clear. Create a webinar from A to Z in 10 seconds flat and that's exactly what it was. You just fill in a form that takes 10 seconds to fill out. And we created every aspect of the webinar, the signup page, the actual webinar page, the replay page, all the email notifications. Everything was done with our wizard. What I found early on is that the best businesses feel like magic. The best products feel like this shouldn't be possible, right? This is great. One of my favorite features on Apple products is that you can copy something from your phone and paste it onto your laptop. And that's just part of being an Apple consumer. Feels like magic, right? Ask yourself, could a 10 year old understand what you sell? If not, keep simplifying. Remember, clarity sells. One of the most foundational things we teach inside of our program, the $100 MBA, is that a confused mind never buys sign number four. It's scalable from day one. A great business doesn't require you to be there for every transaction. Scalability means you can deliver things and deliver the product and service you're promising without you getting involved. That means digital delivery, like a course or an app or a membership like automation, checkout, fulfillment, onboarding, all that stuff is important so that you don't need to do all that legwork. You have systems that grow with you without you needing to add more hours. They're all documented. The moment of visit depends on you in order for it to earn money. It's no longer a business really. It's self employment, right? This is why I recommend when you're building a business or buying a business or whatever it might be, make sure that you can basically just manage it, own it, be an investor in it. I'll give you a good example. This is why I say, if you're building a business or you're buying a business or you're in a business, start thinking about how you can remove yourself completely from the business. Is there a way for you to deliver the value that you promise without you getting involved, where you're just sort of an investor, see it that way. I always do this thought experiment where it's like, if I was allergic to work, I wasn't able to work, even just from a physical point of view. What would I have to do to make my business run just as effectively without me? Can I hire somebody else to do something? Can I get other people to do all the actions I normally do to make money? If so, do it. Start building that out so that you can then be freed up to work on the brand of the business, invest in the business, manage recruitment, all other stuff. And that way your time, which is the most valuable thing you have, is yours. Now don't get me wrong, you can start with a service or with coaching, but build with scale in mind. Think about how you can turn calls into group coaching programs, how you can turn projects into products, how can your IP be turned into assets like courses or templates or software. A good litmus test that you can try is could a hundred customers buy tomorrow without needing you to personally intervene? If not, you've got work to do and it's okay. If you got work to do. It just means right now your business is not scaling or built for scale. You need to start doing that so that you can not only grow faster, but do it without leveraging your own time. Remember, you can always make more money. You can't make more time, right? You only have 24 hours in the day. Let's give you back that time so you can do things you enjoy and love in life. Sign number five. It's a sellable business. One of the biggest signs of a great business is that can you sell this business tomorrow? If you never plan to, it's okay. But a valuable business is a business that is an asset in its own. My buddy Rob Walling says this all the time. We all sell the and we can't take it to our grave. Somebody's going to take it, somebody from our family or, or we're going to sell it to somebody and cash out. But the point here is that if you build a business that's sellable, it's a business that's healthy, that means that it runs without you. It means that it has reoccurring revenue. It means it has systems and SOPs. It means it's not a mess. It means it has happy customers with real lifetime value. The founder is not the brand. At least not completely. Okay. It's okay to leverage your own brand to grow your business, but. But the business can continue without you. Even small businesses are getting sold now. Newsletters being sold for millions of dollars. Niche sasses, micro sasses, micro brands, creator products. These are all businesses that get sold day in and day out. There's dedicated marketplaces, websites that people could post their businesses and buy them and a lot of people close these deals within a month. So this is definitely doable even on a smaller scale. Even if it's for six or low seven figures. It's really life changing money for a lot of people and you could take that money and invest it in something else so you're not totally just leveraging your whole life off your business. Think of it this way. If someone offered to buy your business tomorrow, how easy would it be for them to take over? Build it as if you are going to sell it. One of the things I learned when building a software company is that you got to be ready for sale at all times. That means you should always try your best to document everything. Have all your Systems and your SOPs in order to so that you're ready for sale. Why? Because you want to make sure that you are ready when the great offer hits your table so that you're not scrambling and taking six months to get ready for sale. If you're ready all the time, when the great offer is there, you could close the deal as fast as possible. So you could build these systems and these documentation as you are building, as you are growing. And guess what? When you build a business that is prepared for sale, you actually make better decisions for the business because you have the right mindset in mind. You're not just kind of burying things under the rug and you're doing things on the up and up. All right, those were the five signs we're going to recap real quick, but we have some bonus signs for you. So hang on. We have sign number one, which is make sure you're solving a painful problem. Number two, high profit margins. Okay. Number three, you have obvious value. The value is super obvious to everybody. They understand quickly what you offer and why they should want it. Okay, okay. Sign number four, it's scalable from day one. And sign number five, it's a sellable business, a business that is easy to sell. Bonus sign. Okay, here's one. Customers keep buying. Retention is a superpower in business. It's easier and cheaper to sell to existing customers than to keep finding new ones. That's just the math. They're actually more willing to spend more money, by the way, four times more money than a new customer. So retention is incredibly important. Great businesses have reoccurring products like membership, subscriptions, retainers. They have upsells, have add ons, they have higher tiers, increasing the lifetime value of the customer and fans who want the next thing. When you have a business that people just can't wait for the next thing to come out, like Apple, for example, can't wait for the new iPhone or the new AirPods or the new Apple Watch or whatever it might be. If your customers only buy once, you're working harder than you need to, meaning that you're working super hard just for one purchase, for one transaction. Why not work once and have multiple transactions per customer? You want to create a value ladder that they can climb and keep receiving value each step of the way and buying more and more products from you. Next, bonus sign. You'd want to run it for 10 years. This is a personal one. The best businesses are the ones you don't want to exit because they fit your life, your values, your rhythm. And ask yourself, would I still enjoy doing this business in 10 years? Does it drain me? Does it energize me? Would I be proud to put my name on it? Right? Businesses don't just make money. They fit you. They fulfill you. That's a sign most people overlook because business is challenging and if you don't enjoy it, you're not going to make it through the grind. So let me put this all wrapped up in a bow for you great businesses, they're designed, they're, they're designed with intention. And if you're building something new, ask yourself, is this solving a Real pain? Can I charge healthy prices and have great margins so I could sleep at night? Would a stranger understand what I'm offering? Can I grow it without me and can I sell it one day? Will customers stick around? This is really what we want to make sure of. And most importantly, does this feel right for me? Does it feel great to run? Because if it does, everything else gets easier. You know, one of the reasons why I loved my software business, webinar ninjas because I love accomplishing things. I love building things and seeing it out in the world. And with software you get to see that all the time. Because new features come out all the time. You're building new features, you're improving it. And it was like these little, little products within the product that kind of fulfilled me and got me excited to get up in the morning. If this episode has been helpful in any way, you're going to absolutely love our three Things newsletter. Every week we, we send you three short, punchy insights to help grow you and your business so you can be faster, you can be smarter without any of the fluff. It only takes 5 minutes to consume. It's absolutely free and over 800 people have signed up for it just this last week. Just go to 100mba.net newsletter and sign up and join them. I'll see you there. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. What I love about business is what Derek Sivers calls you could build your own utopia. I love business. Cause the fact that I get to create my own world, I can build the products I want, hire the people I want, work the way I want, all that kind of stuff. But if I want to be happy, if I want to make sure that this is not like an impossible task and I don't hate myself every day, then I want to make sure that I'm building a business that is significant, that's important. That's great. And these signs I shared with you today are really the backbone of a business that is not only great and fun and profitable, but but sustainable so that I can continue to grow and work on the thing I love. I hope that helps and I hope to see you in our next episode. I'll see you then. Take care. Of.