Wondering when to scale a business to new markets? Most entrepreneurs confuse working systems with scalable systems—and pay the price with stretched teams and diluted focus. In this episode, I help Maya (a business owner facing pressure to expand) decide whether to chase new markets or extract more value from her current one. You’ll learn the critical difference between systems that work in one place versus systems proven in multiple markets.
Maya asks: “The market I work in is doing well, but my peers are making more sales in other areas. I want to grow fast, but I worry I’ll stretch my team too thin and screw up what’s already working. My peers talk about scaling like it’s the goal. But is there real value in going deeper where you’re already winning? How do you know when expansion is smart versus just a distraction?”
In this episode, Scott reveals the critical difference between a working system (functions in one place) and a scalable system (proven in multiple markets), shares his own expansion failure story (opening a second location that required a completely custom playbook), and gives Maya permission to ignore peer pressure and go deep instead of wide. You’ll learn how to test if your playbook is truly scalable, when to use separate teams for new markets, and why building for your desired lifestyle beats chasing peers’ growth metrics.
The bottom line: Go deep before you go wide. Extract every bit of gold from your current market before chasing the next one. And if scaling isn’t in your heart, don’t let peer pressure force you into it.
Got a business question? Ask Scott here: https://scotttodd.net/ask
Full Transcript
Scott Todd (00:00)
Welcome to Fix My Business, the show that helps you get unstuck so that you can keep growing your business. I’m Scott Todd and we do that by answering your questions.
The Scaling Dilemma: Should You Go Wider or Deeper?
And today’s question comes from Maya and she writes, the market I work in is doing well, but my peers are making more sales than me in other areas. I want to grow as fast as I can, but I also worry
I’ll stretch my team too thin and screw up what’s already working. I’m in the middle of a group text with my peers and they talk about scaling like it’s the goal. But is there real value in just going deeper where you’re already winning? How do you know when expansion is smart versus just a distraction?
Why Business Owners Chase New Markets (Shiny Object Syndrome)
For my real estate investing friends, you could replace the word market with county because I see this all of the time. This is the business owners dilemma. We see other people having success and what we want to do is we want to go over and we want our fair share of the success too. It’s no different than fishermen who are not catching fish or not catching enough fish and then they see another boat come along and next thing you know they’re catching more fish and we want to go over there. That’s the way that it is. Some people might call that shiny object syndrome.
But it’s a very smart question because you’re right. I think that everybody does want to scale their business. And in a way, scaling is going wider, not necessarily deeper. Okay. And what I’ve always found is that in my business, even though I might not be producing as many sales as somebody else somewhere else, to pick up what I’m doing and go over there and start to work in that market means
exactly what you’re concerned about, that it’s going to be too thin, that you’re going to stretch your team. Because every new market comes with a new level of understanding. It’s like starting all over again. It really is. So what I wanted to do in my own business is I wanted to go deeper. I kind of had to tune out all the other noise to say, look at them. They’re doing better than I am. No, I’m not going to worry about that. I’m going to extract
every bit of gold I can from this particular market that I’m working in. And it requires going deep and it requires stick-to-itiveness. It requires grit. It requires you to ignore everybody else, all of the other noise. But I think in the end, you will be way better off staying to your own market until the end than to pick up and move somewhere else. Okay? Now,
Working Systems vs. Scalable Systems: What’s the Difference?
There is a time I think in which you can go ahead and start to scale that business. And what I find is that most business owners, they want to scale. They think they’re ready to scale, but they’re not ready to scale because they have not created scalable systems. And there’s a difference between just a general system and a scalable system. See, a general system says something just works. Hopefully it works without you being involved with it, or at least
where you are involved with it, you’re playing your key role and that’s it. Everybody else is doing their own unique dance. But what happens with a system is it works when you try to create a scalable system. That means that you have tested it in multiple markets. You have tested it not just with what you’re dealing with today, but you’ve dealt with it in other situations. So let me give you an example.
My Failed Expansion Story: Opening a Second Location
And I’m going to tap into my own experience here because there was a time in which I ⁓ had a service business. It was a business that provided some services ⁓ to homeowners. And basically what I had was I had these systems to where the business was just running. I had one location and the business was just running and it was a manager and that manager made sure that the contractors got to where they needed to be on the given day that they did the job that they collected the payment that
payment came in to us, we got the money into the bank, and then we paid everybody and that’s just the way that it worked and the system worked. Okay, we had customer generation, we had marketing system that worked, it was a great thing. And then I decided, hey, it’s now time to scale the business. At least that’s what I said to myself is I want to scale the business. So what I did was I took my exact same playbook, and I went and I opened up another location. And what I found
is that that second location did not operate anywhere like the first one. The marketing was different, the people were different, the customers were different. What I did in one location did not work in another. It was not a repeatable playbook. So we had to create a custom playbook for that other location. And that took time, it took money, it took energy, and that I even left the first office team in place. I didn’t even try to pull them into the other location. It was a whole new team.
When Your Business Is Actually Ready to Scale
So as you think about your situation, real estate investors, you think about moving to another county or another area of the county or another expertise, what I would say is try your playbook. If it works and it’s repeatable, cool, but I would not use the same people.
I would build another team whose focus is on that particular area. Now there will be some team overlap because teams aren’t always busy. I mean, some work is just the same. For example, ⁓ due diligence in real estate investing due diligence might be the same in all these other counties, little nuances. But at the end of the day, this is what winning looks like. We know what that is. What may be different though is marketing, sales,
Some of the other stuff, some of the back office work that could be inter team. It doesn’t really matter. So you don’t have to build an entire another company for another market, but you need to make sure that your playbook works in another market first before we start chasing all of these other markets. And you’re right. Then it becomes a distraction and not a smart version or a smart way to scale. I will say this. ⁓ If scaling is not in your heart, don’t do it.
Should You Ignore Peer Pressure to Scale?
Don’t try to keep up with the Joneses and all of your peers out there trying to, you know, I don’t know, create billion dollar businesses. If that’s not what’s in your heart, do what’s in your heart. Build the business that supports the lifestyle that you want it to support because otherwise you’re going to be miserable. And when you’re miserable, you’re not going to stay at it. All right. So if you have a question, I want to help you. I want to get that question out into the world and get you unstuck.
You can head over to scottodd.net/ask. I will answer your questions. I look forward to seeing you in our next episode.