Re: How do you organize your time between clients for maximum value?
This is a great discussion to have, and it is a very important decision to make. It certainly needs to be part of your business plan.
Working a regularly scheduled gig is great, because you don't have to dedicate nearly as many resources in sales, planning, etc to pull the gig off. Unless you're extremely lucky, the regular weekly gig is going to gross less than the one off, but the bottom line profit should be nearly equal. The regularity of the gigs will likely mean more total profit as well, unless you were able to do sales enough to be booked that often.
The downside of a regularly scheduled gig is that it could end abruptly on you. If you're not structured to fill in that lost income quickly, it could create a world of hurt if you lost your major revenue stream. When you're booking one offs, if you have a week without a show, it can sting, but then the next week, you can have more jobs and all is back on track. Replacing a regular weekly gig isn't likely to happen on short order.
Creating a business that does both is possible, especially if you have staff available and gear to handle multiple jobs. If you're a single op with enough gear for one show, the regularly scheduled gig will likely conflict with taking on more shows. The growth of the company then becomes limited, as your inventory of available dates becomes quite small.
