I have a client who recently expanded to a second location—in many ways, doubling the size of the business. It was a great, logical move. Expansion was certainly not something the client had to do, but after looking at the business strategically, where it’s been and where it needs to go, expansion made the most sense.

I’m using the word expansion to describe a significant jump in growth. Most businesses plan (or hope?) for linear growth—maybe 5 percent on the low end to 20 percent on the high end. Almost every business can imagine what it would take to grow 10 percent to 20 percent—maybe it’s adding a few employees, but essentially, the business just looks like a bigger version of what it was last year.

Expansion, on the other hand, is a clear “jump” where the business will be significantly different next year from what it is this year. That might mean adding a new location, a new product line, a new sales channel or maybe even a new kind of customer. Whatever the driver is, it’s much more of an impact than just growth.

Obviously, different industries and different business owners will have different kinds of challenges when it comes to expansion. But there are three chief concerns that almost everyone has to deal with as they go into an expansion.

Money

This one might seem obvious, but often the emotional reality of spending all that extra money overshadows what you put down on paper. It’s always going to hurt to write out big checks that you haven’t had to write before. If you’re expanding to a new location, you’re going to have to pay for the space, the build-out, signage, stuff to put into the space, etc. You can be careful with your money, but it’s still going to be a shock to the system.

Best advice:   Spend a lot of time up front (before you commit) on conservatively estimating the costs. Have a third party look them over, and make sure you’re not missing anything. Then map out where that money is going to come from. Having a clear plan will increase your confidence.

People and Culture

If you’re ready for expansion, it’s because you’ve built a business that’s doing well. You have the right people in the right seats, and you have a culture and a brand that are actively helping your business. Expansion will require you to spread your existing resources out and backfill with new, unproven people. Or you could keep your existing team intact and hire a whole new group with the hope that you can repeat your success all over again. Either way, you run a real risk that the expansion could cause you to lose the essence of what’s made you successful so far.

Best advice:   Identify your best people, the ones who really show what your business is all about, and build around them. You’ll need to cherry-pick at least a few of those best people and move them to the expansion area—but go above and beyond to keep everyone connected and working together (a bigger team rather than multiple teams) and it should stabilize over time.

Your Time

This is really a variation on the other two challenges. Unless you were running your business in a completely hands-off fashion (which is very unlikely), then the expansion is going to challenge you to figure out where to spend your time. If you focus all your efforts on the new area, it’s likely that your existing business is going to struggle. Conversely, the expansion will never happen without a lot of hands-on guidance.

Best advice:  You must have a true leadership team in place before you can consider this kind of expansion. That means having people who fully “get” you and what you’ve built. They must be capable (and allowed) to make big operational decisions without you around. Your leadership and management approach with the expansion will have to be much more hands off than it might have been before. Are you willing and able to let go enough to let someone else own the problems and the solutions?

There are lots of ways to grow your business, and certainly, slow and steady annual growth is needed. But if you want to get substantially bigger, then it’s likely at some point that you’ll need to expand in a different way. You’ll need to be prepared to handle the challenges listed above—and more. Are you ready?