Last week, I had the opportunity to meet with a group of entrepreneurs building sports-related technology. They’ve created impressive tools for the high end of the market and have seen strong success over the past few years. Now they’re facing the big question: how do they expand the business? What direction should they pursue, which strategies should they prioritize, and how should they allocate resources?

After hearing their story and seeing the technology firsthand, I immediately thought about lessons we learned at Intown Golf Club. We spent the next 30 minutes discussing what has worked and what hasn’t on the technology side at Intown, especially how to make tech genuinely valuable for serious golfers while also keeping it fun and simple for beginners and kids who just want to enjoy the game.

That conversation was a useful deep dive into an adjacent industry and a reminder of how important it is to evaluate both hardware and software through the lens of the front-end experience. Some products manage to be powerful for advanced users while still feeling intuitive and enjoyable for casual users.

It also reinforced something I’ve come to appreciate: innovation from a different but loosely related market, especially one that’s a few years ahead, can be an excellent source of insight and inspiration. As entrepreneurs, we’re often at our best when we go deep and solve the most valuable customer problems. That usually requires intense focus and a willingness to ignore distractions while you deliver real value.

But if things go well, if the product works, customers are happy, and momentum builds, you eventually come up for air and start asking, “What’s next?” That’s the perfect time to look at nearby markets that may be further along, learn from their best practices, and bring those insights back to your own customers, either to improve what you offer today or to expand the market you can serve tomorrow.

The pattern is simple: go deep, solve the hard problems, and then make time to look around for lessons you can import from markets just ahead of you.