Scale up suggestions

[0maha]

Sounds like a risky move from here.

Managing someone remotely is extremely tough. You're talking about trusting someone to handle your accounts, do quality work, manage complaints, and most important, represent your brand name all from a distance. Very hard to do unless you find the perfect employee.

Is your current business stable enough to survive without you day to day for 90 to 180 days? If so, then my thought is to travel to the proposed new city, set yourself up in a temporary apartment, and spend every waking moment knocking on doors to build a base of business while simultaneously working on recruiting someone to be your manager after the initial startup period. You should expect to have to feed this new location for at least those first six months (probably longer) until you get a critical mass of clients and the money starts flowing.

Even if you make that investment in time and money, you are still looking at an enormous increase in overall grief level to manage a remote location.

Unless you are certain that either (a) there is simply no growth to be found in your current location or (b) the proposed location is a pot of gold, I'd put my efforts into expanding in the current location.

[checkmate]

Before I do any hiring or serious investment in a city that far away, I would test the market first.

Run a small marketing campaign to see what kind of interest you can get. Call is something like a "Grand Opening Special". See how many quality leads you can generate first.

I am not sure how many accounts you would need or what your conversation rates are, but if you can build a permission-based lead list with enough contacts to get into profit within a reasonable time frame, then I say its worth looking into expansion there.

[Alex - Arvixe]

I wouldn't go around 'We promise to come back in a month or 2' as that doesn't really leave a good first impression. And what will happen if the first few are happy to proceed and have been promised work beginning in 1 - 2 months but not enough to cover your employee? Will you drop those promises?

I agree with @checkmate. Run some type of campaign just to see if there is any demand. Don't promise anything though as I assume you're not 100% sure about expanding or not - otherwise you wouldn't have made this thread .

[Brian61]

Limited to a niche market so I would be looking to expand what I do but in a different market.

[Brian61]

Exactly. First impressions are key. Maybe a little market research is in order before I proceed.Thanks