Breaking into a new market?! How!?
Hello! So not to toot my own horn but, I have alot of really great experience working on restaurants in Southern California between the years of 2015-2023.. I have since moved back to my hometown in Upstate NY to start my family. I want to keep working for myself to continue to enjoy the freedom of being with my family on MY time. The issue I am having is how to break into this new, and very small market. I have gotten a few referrals out west for new work there, but the potential clients seem to get cold feet about working with a designer who is not local. So it seems I need to embrace this and focus on my local community. A little history on how it all started, In SoCal I was working for a firm full time, and got referred clients from my boss who didn't want to take on projects that were too small for the firm. So there wasn't a whole lot of effort on my part toget clients. (Very lucky I know!) But now I am starting all over again... Any suggestions? I have had an expense yelp add up for the last month and only gotten one lead asking about curtains. I was thinking of contacting a few custom furniture companies that specialize in custom work, and seeing if we could work together somehow to refer each other for new potential work. Any other ideas? Thanks!