With experience usually comes wisdom, but sometimes other elements accompany time spent perfecting a career. As all professionals (doctors, lawyers, bankers, teachers, etc.) hone their skills and accumulate expertise, their pitfalls and traps become more sophisticated, too. It works the same way in the escort industry: more knowledge and confidence come in package with new levels of potential ruin.

The first step to avoiding and overcoming these downfalls is to recognize what some common issues are for experienced escorts. Consider these obstacles to determine if you're letting your experience hinder you in ways you might least expect:

1. It is common for experienced escorts to become overconfident in their abilities, knowledge or gut instincts. When you've been working a job for a long time, it's reasonable to expect that you will become an expert at it eventually. Your experience provides you with information that new professionals to the industry can't know, which helps to build your confidence and abilities. Escorts use what they've learned about people, intimacy and the industry to become more efficient at their jobs, providing better service and satisfaction to clients. At the same time, they attempt to use their knowledge to benefit their own business practices and ways of attracting clients. However, at some point, escorts may put more stock in their own expertise than they should. They may judge a client without getting to know him, assuming that he has (or doesn't have) certain qualities based on previous experiences. They may predict what a client wants, without attempting to find out from him during an encounter. They may expect unrealistic things from clients, based on what they see, instead of what the client tells them. In short, they are so sure of themselves, they sometimes forget to treat clients as people, instead of just business.
2. Escorts become too dependent on their regular clients. Of course, every escort who has consistent encounters will become somewhat reliant on the regular income they generate. However, experienced escorts may exclusively have regular clients that make up her weekly schedule, without ever penciling in anyone different. While this quite comfortable, she leaves herself open to real trouble if one or two of her regulars quit calling. For instance, if a client or two experiences financial issues and can't commit to consistent sessions or when clients must avoid encounters due to their relationships, an escort could easily find herself in a budget fix, without enough funds to pay the bills. And, because she hasn't been scheduling in any other clients, she doesn't have anyone to help fill in the gaps.
3. Becoming too complacent with her current client list is another risk that many escorts face. Once you have marketed yourself well and obtained a sufficient number of clients (which is different for everyone), you may have decided that you didn't need to promote yourself anymore. Escorts who are overly comfortable with their current client lists often downplay the importance of keeping their marketing current. Because they are busy enough as it is, they choose to remove all advertising or profiles from directories. However, if something happens and they face a drought of clients, they are forced to start from scratch to put together promotional efforts, usually in a hurried period time. Even if you don't want to continue to add clients to your current schedule, it's always a prudent concept to continue your basic marketing efforts. Keeping your profile out there and communicating with clients keeps you sharp and in touch. Also, escorts who don't desire to add to their client lists may miss out on terrific clients. You can always become more exclusive and selective about whom you choose to book encounters with. It would be a shame to miss out on a great prospect simply because you choose not to market yourself anymore.
4. Many escorts are too reliant on their old ways of doing things. The escorts and call girls of the late 1990s had a huge adjustment on their hands when the Internet began to come into play with the industry. While escort listings weren't prevalent online quite yet, escorts who were observant should have been able to predict the direction of marketing for the industry. Those who were unwilling to adapt faced limitations in the future compared to the escorts who were excited about new prospects. The industry is constantly changing, and escorts have to be able to roll with the punches and develop updated methods of conducting business. From slang terms and acts of intimacy to fashions and communication methods, flexibility is a necessity for escorts. Women who are too set in their ways to change will find themselves left behind and considered old-fashioned.
5. It's common that escorts have a difficult time accepting their age. Women who started escorting in their 20s may find it challenging to transition their image and client demographic as they get older. Many continue to promote themselves using the same profile language and types of photos they used when they were younger, because they were effective. However, what they don't realize is that the information may have been accurate then, but it becomes slightly deceptive to continue using it as an older escort. A 30-something escort should market herself in different ways and to other types of clients than she did when she was in her early 20s. This is not to say that an escort can't be successful as she ages; it is a fact, though, that to be successful with age, you must acknowledge it and work it to your advantage. Expecting the same clients to respond to your profile that is 10 years old is just a way of fooling yourself. Many escorts fail to realize that they are 10 or 20 years older. They don't adjust how they dress, their hairstyles or other aspects about their services. When they disregard their age, they are hindering themselves greatly.
6. Escorts who have had generally positive careers tend to let their guards down too easily. It's easy to not screen clients who fit the basic demographic of your normal ones and "seem" safe, especially if your gut tells you that they are. Because you may have not incurred any problems or safety risks during encounters, it's understandable that you might throw caution to the wind, thinking that all of the warnings about dangerous clients are exaggerations, freak events or the result of an escort's bad judgment. Once you let your defenses down, though, you open yourself up to all sorts of threats, including rape, assault, robbery or murder. Even though you think you know all of the signs of threatening or risky clients, it's never a good idea to pass over screening one simply because you have a good feeling about him. Not being careful is the best way to end up getting hurt or worse.
7. Seasoned escorts have a way of demeaning novice escorts. Unfortunately, this is true for many experienced pros, because they look at new escorts as being green, naive and too innocent for the industry. They forget that they, too, were once new to the profession. But, many of them look down their noses at the new escorts with contempt or judgment, predicting failure for many new upstarts. It is true that not all new escorts survive in the industry, or even want to. But, it is important that you attempt to give them respect and room to succeed in their own ways. Most likely, they won't be going after your clients, because their demographic will be vastly different from yours, as an experienced escort. Feeling threatened by younger escorts shouldn't be an issue, because your experience outweighs what they can offer by far to the types of clients you are looking for, anyways. Give new escorts room to succeed and even offer some helpful advice along the way. Otherwise, you might be cutting off networking opportunities that could help you someday down the line. It's always good to have friends in the business.
8. Becoming bitter or jaded is too common of a problem for escorts. When you work with clients who are untruthful, disrespectful or otherwise unsavory, it can definitely taint your view of relationships or men, in general. When society looks down on you for your profession, it can make you resent the entire judgmental community. However, allowing yourself to become so negative about the people around you or relationships will only limit your own personal existence. You may find yourself withdrawing from others or barking negativity all of the time, which will cause others to pull back from you. The world may seem like a cruel and harsh place as an escort, but you have to realize that other facets of your life exist, too, and they are much more positive.
9. Trust issues may be a problem for seasoned escorts. They learn from the beginning that many of their clients can't be trusted, due to what they say an do. Clients lie to their spouses and family members non-stop in order to meet up with an escort. As a result, it makes an escort wonder if a client is trust worthy in any respect. At the same time, if she thinks about her own life, she realizes that she is keeping secrets from her loved ones, too. Trust is a difficult thing to manage when you're an escort. It's essential that you avoid feeling like you can't trust anyone, because that isolates you in unhealthy ways. Many escorts have been hurt by trusting others too much, which obviously causes them to back away from situations where trust and loyalty are involved. The best way to overcome these issues (or avoid them) is to work little by little to employ trust with loved ones, first with unimportant things and later with more genuine emotions.
10. Lying comes too easily for experienced escorts. They find that they have to lie continuously to their loved ones about their careers, incomes, schedules and other aspects of their lives that can't be easily explained. They may lie to clients about bookings; and they always tell falsehoods or avoid the truth when clients ask them personal questions. As a result, it becomes second nature to lie when you're an escort. You may find that you let white lies slip out about unimportant issues and that you create embellishments to stories that don't them. You may invent situations that didn't happen to entertain others or to explain something you don't want to talk about. In fact, lying is a hazard of the trade. However, you can attempt to reduce it by forcing yourself to tell the truth at all times despite when talking about your career.
11. Escorts come to think the worst of others. They know they have skeletons in their own closets. Escorts have seen, firsthand, clients who have their own secrets that should never be revealed. They have cross-dressing, bisexual, fetishist and bondage clients who depend on them to exercise full discretion about their activities together. Because of this, it's common for an escort to assume that everyone has something in their past that they don't want revealed. Escorts may assume that it is something dark or embarrassing. They always think that people are hiding their true colors. And, while most people do have some secrets, they aren't always sinister or ultra-deceptive. Attempting to view the good in people is better than predicting what their skeletons consist of. Escorts can overcome this downfall by focusing on the positive, instead of the negative.
12. Intimacy is commonly a problem for long-time escorts. Because they see relationships fail, loyalties broken and physical intimacy taken for granted, escorts usually develop a fear of intimacy. They sabotage their own chances at romance when things start to get serious. They don't know how to handle a real relationship that doesn't include no-strings-attached relations. Escorts are accustomed to keeping their emotions at bay with clients, so it's difficult to allow them to surface with other partners. Overall, escorts experience true challenges when real intimacy becomes an opportunity, often pushing away in fear of getting hurt or not knowing how to handle it. Despite being relationship experts in their professions, escorts end up cutting themselves short in their personal lives. Overcoming this pitfall may be the most difficult challenge for escorts, because they have to separate how they compartmentalize everything professionally from allowing it all to hang out personally.