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# Kelford Labs Daily: Grow your business, not your operation
- URL: https://kelfordinc.com/kelford-labs-daily-grow-your-business-not-your-operation/
- Published: 2024-04-17T10:25:25.000Z
- Updated: 2026-01-27T15:23:57.000Z
- Description: How expansion backfires.
- Author: Joel Kelly
- Tags: Daily Labs, focus, strategy, tradeoff, books, position, constraint

> “Companies often end up trying to create many products for many customers—and lose focus on the job that brought them success in the first place.  
>  
> Worse, trying to do many jobs for many customers can confuse customers so they hire the wrong products for the wrong jobs and end up firing them in frustration instead.  
>  
> This makes companies vulnerable to disrupters who focus on a single job—and do it well.”  
>  
> — Christensen, Hall, Dillon, Duncan in Competing Against Luck

Expanding into other markets and customer segments feels like the obvious choice when we want to grow.

**But it’s more likely to backfire than propel us further.**

Because it stretches our resources and our capabilities too far, beyond our ability to be the credible *best* in any particular category.

Then, we end up lowering our prices or offering massive discounts to try to capture any market at all, which reduces our quality, creating a vicious cycle of greater expansion, lowered prices, and diminished quality.

**And then what do we have left but frustration?**

If we want to grow, we need to focus even further, becoming more and more credible in our chosen field, capturing a greater and greater share of the market’s profit—because we have superior cost structure, capability, and reputation.

Otherwise, we’ll end up growing the size of our *operation*, but not the size of our *business*.

📫

Feedback? Email labs@kelfordinc.com