Most companies spend years getting better at what they already do.
That’s not a problem. That’s how you build a strong core.
But there’s a cost. The sharper your focus on the core, the easier it becomes to stop seeing what’s right next to it.
Adjacent markets aren’t far away. They’re close. Often uncomfortably close. And that proximity is exactly why most companies miss them.
WHAT “ADJACENT” ACTUALLY MEANS
An adjacent market isn’t a pivot. It’s not a moonshot. It’s not a new business.
It’s a category that uses something you already have — a customer relationship, a distribution channel, a proprietary dataset, a licensed capability — and applies it somewhere you’re not yet being paid.
Three things characterize a true adjacency:
- You have a credible right to win (existing trust, access, or expertise)
- The customer overlap is meaningful (same buyer or close to it)
- The competitive landscape is fragmented or immature
When all three are true, you’re not entering a new market from scratch. You’re extending into a space you’re already halfway inside.
WHY PROXIMITY CREATES BLIND SPOTS
Here’s the counterintuitive problem: the better you are at your core business, the harder adjacent opportunities become to see.
Your team is trained to solve your current problem. Your sales process is optimized for your current customer. Your mental model of the market is built around what you already do.
This is what the Wurzer Meta-Adjacency Framework calls proximity bias — the tendency to normalize strategic assumptions based on how close you are to them.
You stop seeing the adjacent space not because it’s invisible. But because you’ve stopped looking in that direction.
WHERE THE REVENUE ACTUALLY SITS
Let’s get concrete. Adjacent opportunities typically cluster around four asset types:
Customer Relationships
You already have trust with a buyer. What else do they need that you’re not currently offering? The answer is almost always something adjacent — and often something they’re currently getting from a weaker competitor.
Distribution Access
You already have a channel. A sales force. A delivery network. A digital platform. That infrastructure has capacity. Adjacent products that ride existing distribution can scale with dramatically lower customer acquisition cost.
Proprietary Data
Operational data, customer behavior data, industry benchmarks — these are assets that took years to accumulate. Other companies would pay for visibility into that data. Many adjacent businesses are built on exactly that insight.
Domain Authority
Your brand means something specific in your category. That credibility transfers. Not everywhere — but in adjacent categories, a known name has a real head start over an unknown one.
THE FRAMEWORK IN PRACTICE
Instead of asking “where should we expand?”, ask:
- “What do our best customers trust us to handle beyond our current scope?”
- “What problem do they always solve somewhere else — right after working with us?”
- “Which of our assets are currently underutilized?”
- “Where is the market fragmented with no obvious category leader?”
These questions point toward the same place: the gap between what you currently own and what you could own with a deliberate move.
THE PATTERN THAT KEEPS REPEATING
Salesforce didn’t replace the sales team. They built the system of record around it.
Toast didn’t replace restaurant staff. They owned the point-of-sale and data layer.
Mindbody didn’t replace fitness studios. They became the operating system fitness businesses depended on.
In every case, the move wasn’t lateral. It was one layer adjacent — close enough to leverage existing credibility, far enough to own new territory.
Mid-market companies have the same opportunity. They just rarely have a structured way to see it.
CLOSING INSIGHT + CTA
The adjacent opportunity in your business probably won’t announce itself. It won’t appear in a competitor press release. It won’t show up in your industry’s trade publication.
It’s visible only when you look at your current assets through a different lens — one that asks what they make possible, not just what they currently do.
That’s the lens worth developing. Because the companies that develop it consistently find $1M to $5M in revenue that was always there — just never claimed.
Run AMOS free at limitlesssolutionsconsulting.com/amos/ to find out where your adjacent opportunity actually sits — calibrated to your sector, your assets, and your competitive position.
Warren Wurzer, CEO, Limitless Solutions Consulting
@warrenwurzer | limitlesssolutionsconsulting.com
