Most owners add a second location before they’re ready. Here’s the checklist I’d run first. One: market share. We’re under 10% in Indianapolis after 40 years, so “we’ve maxed out here” is usually wrong. Two: infrastructure. Who runs it, who they report to, centralized or not. Three: distance. Within an hour you can share install labor. Three hours, you can’t. Get honest on all three or the culture at location two pays the price.

You're thinking about adding a second location. Let me give you a few things to think about. First, is are you dominating your current market? What is your market share in your current market? I can tell you here at Peterman Brothers, we've been in Indianapolis for 40 years, and our market share is under 10%. What's that tell me? There is a ton of market share to be had here in our one location. So take a look at what your market share. Some of you may be in a smaller market to where you've really grown a company and dominate the market share game and moving to a second location makes sense. What I have seen is that most people add a second location way before they're ready. You also have to understand what kind of infrastructure it's going to take to run a second location. Is that second location gonna be totally independent? Are you gonna have centralized operations? Who's gonna manage that? Who do they report to? All of these things have to be taken into consideration or what will happen is that that second location, the culture will fall completely apart because they're not at home base every single day. The other piece to think about is how far away is this second location? Is it three hours away? Is it an hour away? Doesn't seem like a drastic difference but what I will tell you from my experience is it is. If it's only about an hour away, what you can typically do is you can leverage your install labor. You don't wanna leverage your service technicians because that's taking away from capacity in certain markets. But when it comes to installation projects, say electrical panel or a new HVAC system within an hour, you can leverage and move your production capacity to get more jobs done. Especially when you get started and that second location's gonna be a little bit smaller. So these are all things to think about when adding a second location. What I would tell you is you probably have a lot more growth at your current location that you can capture. It's a lot easier and a hell of a lot more profitable.