Should I Expand to a New Area or Squeeze More Out of My Current One?

My actual market table

Three months of completed cleans, gross margin after cleaner payout, markets with 40 or more cleans:

Below that cutoff sit a tail of small markets, and the tail is where the lesson lives. One of them ran 36% gross margin on a handful of cleans, and after refunds its net margin was 22%. At that rate every clean I sell there earns roughly half what the same clean earns at home. Without per-market numbers, that market just looks like more revenue on the top line. With them, it's obviously a subsidy, paid out of my best market's profit.

The decision framework

• Squeeze first when home margin is strong and the calendar has room. More density in a proven market means shorter drives, fuller routes, and zero new acquisition infrastructure.
• Expansion needs a margin thesis, not a revenue thesis. Know why the new market's margin will match home: cleaner pay rates, competitive pricing, and lead costs all move by geography.
• Set a probation window. Give a new market a fixed number of cleans to reach target margin. Mine taught me that a market can stay "almost working" indefinitely if nobody defines what working means.
• Count refunds against the market, not against bad luck. Remote markets are harder to quality-control, and the refund line is where that shows up first.

Why owners get this backwards

Expansion is visible and exciting. Density is invisible and profitable. The booking platform reports revenue by month, not margin by market, so the subsidy stays hidden in the average, exactly like the cleaner spread in the benchmark report. The per-market join is the same recipe: revenue and payouts by job, grouped by geography instead of by cleaner.