In its early years, Repurpose tried to build a national presence with a limited budget. The founder now advises against this "peanut butter spreading" approach, recommending that new brands concentrate their marketing spend on specific, high-affinity geographic markets to achieve deeper penetration and better ROI.

Before aiming for national scale, businesses must first completely dominate their local market. Expanding too quickly without a fortified home base leads to collapse, just as an army's supply lines break when stretched too thin. Focus on conquering your city first.

To scale nationally, first 'crawl' by perfecting operations and unit economics in a single market. Then 'walk' by adapting the model to a few different market types (e.g., city vs. suburb). Only then can you 'run' by creating a playbook for rapid expansion.

The allure of expanding into a major market like New York City can be a trap. Fully exploit the potential of your existing, more manageable markets first. Chasing expansion for the sake of prestige before you've maximized local potential is a common business mistake.

Instead of opening franchises in distant locations, a new franchisor should first build 5-10 locations within a few hours' drive. This strategy, used by successful franchises like Orangetheory, allows for better oversight, support, and testing of the model before a national rollout.

Instead of a broad launch, Qualia focused exclusively on Massachusetts for about a year. This "geographic wedge" allowed them to build a dense local network, leverage customer introductions, and create competitive pressure that made them seem more established than they were nationally.

Repurpose learned that "peanut butter spreading" a minimal marketing budget across the entire country was ineffective. The founder advises focusing spend heavily on core geographic markets where consumer buy-in is strongest, even if e-commerce makes the product nationally available. Go deep before you go wide.

The founder of Maple Roo is getting international interest in his first year, but the advice is to resist the temptation to "go fast." Startups should first build a solid local base, learn from mistakes on a smaller scale, and wait until revenues are in the millions before tackling complex expansion.

Joe Tsai's advice for building a global company is counterintuitive: don't focus on global from day one. Instead, concentrate on winning your local market. The challenges and small wins from dominating a home turf are what train a team and develop the talent necessary for successful international expansion.