Peter Vander WallFounder driving creative community growth

Being Local isn't Enough Anymore

Name: Being Local isn't Enough Anymore
Uploaded: 2025-10-09T17:02:16+00:00
Duration: 26 s
Channel: Peter Vander Wall
Description: Short spoken commentary from a YouTube video arguing that geographic proximity (being local) is no longer a meaningful competitive advantage when…

9 Oct 2025 · 0 min

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0:26

Short spoken commentary from a YouTube video arguing that geographic proximity (being local) is no longer a meaningful competitive advantage when selecting professional-service providers. The speaker (from Indiana) explains that industry specialization — e.g., an accountant who focuses on marketing agencies — is a stronger selection criterion than location, and that clients will choose specialized firms over broad, generalist firms.

There is no competitive advantage to targeting local clients anymore. I live in Indiana. There's no reason. My accountant also needs to be in Indiana. And so if I'm comparing two firms and one of them is here in Indiana and one of them is in New York, like, that doesn't make a difference to me. I don't care. But if one of them specializes in marketing agencies like me, and one of them is, you know, goes broad, and they work with architects and engineers and marketing agencies and lawyers, and, like, they're all over the place, which one am I going to pick? I'm going to pick the one that specializes in me.