By biggest, I refer to those with oft mentioned names: Chicago, Los Angeles, San Fran, DC, Atlanta, NYC.
Having traveled over 10 years and seen most of all the “big player” cities, sometimes I can’t understand why those are the ones always most popular with providers. To me, it often means more choices potential clients (aka competition) and paying more to be there.
Often times, when I do the math and add it all up: I can usually do the same amount or more in a less popular town. However, those areas may be more prone to “dry up” intermittently versus the steady traffic of the bigger markets. At the same time, with so many new ads popping up in the bigger areas…there’s not a whole lot of opportunity to stand out. And with standing out, there may be something I want to do that’s different than what the locals are used to. But if lots of clients can just easily reach lots of other providers, that’s a false sense of opportunity to me.
Nowadays, I only do big cities when I have family or friends also in that town. Otherwise it turns into a lot of waiting around for calls being bored. And the worst is the hotels. Unless you’re paying $200-250 a night, many of the “affordable” (which right now seems to be like $80-100) hotels in bigger cities tend to be either way out of the city or in a dingy area of town. And to me, few to non hotels are really so nice that I’m going to drop an entire appointment’s worth for a night…
Even in my home state of Florida, I’ve long avoided Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and now even Orlando to an extent since I moved, because everybody is there. Meanwhile, the smaller towns have gotten me some of the best clients. But accordingly, it requires a bit of commuting to reach them.
