When Is It Time to Open a New Market?

“When you experience what a team can do for you, you feel like you can conquer the whole world.”

Episode 156

with Brandee Gaar and Ashley Ebert

Key highlights from the show:

• Ashley’s impromptu teaching at The Wedding CEO summit
• Five reasons creating a branch is the right answer
• Five steps to opening up a new market
• Ashley’s live teaching about creating teams

Every manager dreams of leading cohesive teams that seamlessly work together to achieve company goals, but if you are a business owner or leader, you will know things don’t always go to plan.

Even high-performing organizations sometimes face challenges in team building, and problems often arise caused by personality clashes, lack of trust, or role confusion, among others, and the task for managers is to recognize these road bumps and get the team back on track.

With strong, decisive leadership, your team will be back to working together efficiently and harmoniously.

In today’s episode, we are joined by Ashley Ebert, the co-founder of The Abundance Group, as she teaches us about all things team, when is the right time to create new branches, and the five important steps for creating new markets.

Ashley has a live teaching soon in which she’ll be talking about teams and how you can have a team be involved in that vision. For registration, a link will be provided below so you can register. Come hang out with her, take in chunks of wisdom, and please stay tuned.

“Scaling of the business when you build a branch is very different; it’s not more of the same; it’s a completely potentially different strategy.” 

-Ashley Ebert; Co-Founder of The Abundance Group

Five reasons creating a branch is the right answer

1. When you have hit market saturation in your current location. In most markets, you will hit a plateau, no matter how much additional advertising you’re spending or if you’re staffing up your team. So this idea of, yes, you are doing everything else right, but this is not getting you more leads in the door; this would be a perfect chance to move to a different location and create a new market.

2. When your core talent is relocating. It is believed that human beings who give their talents and time to an organization are some of the most sacred people we let in our world. If such employees are relocating, we support them in that relocation and do not have to train somebody else again from the ground up, so it’s great for them and great for us, too. That’s another time when creating a new branch might be the answer.

3. Ask yourself, will the area soon be booming? You want to look at the location and see what’s happening from an economic perspective. It’s more like forecasting. An emerging market is another reason to create a branch because if you can get in at the right time, and you’re building up your reputation in the market, and then that boom really hits, you’re going to have an amplified momentum.

4. You have created community connections in that new location. When you create a community outside of your home market, that’s something to think about. You can go ahead and expand your business by creating new branches. Or alternatively, sometimes, if you’ve relocated and your hometown is in a different area of the country, or you have those roots of those connections, that’s something to take into consideration. You’re going to have maybe already known hotels in that market or venues or other people, so it’s not going to be as difficult as starting from scratch.

5. Craving a new challenge. You should really be able to challenge yourself and be a risk-taker.  Scaling of the business when you build a branch is very different; it’s not more of the same; it’s a completely potentially different strategy. It’s a completely different messaging to the local clients, so it’s not just doing more of the same on a scale; it is a completely different business.

Opening up a new market

“Your organization’s strengths and weaknesses are internal, while opportunities and threats are external.”

There are also five different components or five steps that layer on one another when you want to open up a new market.

Step I: Take inventory of your current business in the location that it’s in.

Look at your current business metrics and a few key pieces in your business to understand whether you’re actually profitable or not. If you go into a new market that is not profitable, you may bring those challenges with you, so first again, at a high level, look at the goals and if they can be met in opening a new location.

Step II: Create a SWOT analysis.

SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Your organization’s strengths and weaknesses are internal, while opportunities and threats are external. This analysis is a framework used to evaluate a company’s competitive position and to develop strategic planning. SWOT analysis assesses internal and external factors and current and future potential.

Step III: Do market research.

This is the process of determining the viability of a new service or product through research conducted directly with potential customers. Market research allows a company to discover the target market and get opinions and other consumer feedback about their interest in the product or service.

Step IV: Find out the legal requirements.

When starting a new business venture, entrepreneurs should ensure they comply with all the legal obligations of running a small business. There are various legal requirements for new businesses and startups, including financial regulations, tax obligations, and employment laws. Make sure your new company complies with all its legal responsibilities so you can get back to focusing on growing your business. This is something where again, like numbers, legal creatives don’t love that space, typically. So save yourself the headache and find an attorney or lawyer you trust.

Pro-tip! Check out our friend at the Legal Paige for wedding industry contracts, amendments and clauses! Get your business “legally legit!”

Step V: Find more talent.

If you’re relocating, you’ll probably have to rewrite a job description because your workforce will probably have different responsibilities. So even if you’re bringing talent that you currently have and know your business inside and out, you’ll probably still have to have new expectation conversations. If it’s internal, awesome. If it’s external and you need to find someone to hire that’s local, and you don’t have one of your team members relocating, find humans that love your business as much as you do. You should geek out on hiring, and many people you hire or interview should be based on competency.

Register for training for Ashley’s upcoming live teaching click here!!

Want more of this?

If you do not even know where to begin, find a business coach that can ask the questions you need answers to. DM me, Brandee Gaar, on Instagram or find out more about my business coaching CLICK HERE.

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