Evenings and weekends

[Frank Cahill]

A440A@AOL.COM wrote:
> 
> Greetings all,
>     Hmm,  we are a varied lot.  It is interesting to see how many different
> work approaches are represented, so I will contribute this oddball career I
> seem to have been going through.
>      In earlier years, I tuned as many as 15 recording studios a week, plus
> the school and privates.   The studios required the pianos tuned before
> working hours, so that meant getting up early enough to have three tunings
> done before 8:30 a.m., which means that my day began at 4:00 a.m.  Because of
> this, it has never been easy to tune late in the day, so I early on developed
> a private clientele that would leave the key, have someone meet me or let me
> arrive before they went to work, locking up afterward.
>     The performance work happens on weekends, so, like Bob B. ,  I have never
> been shy about taking a weekday or two off. (a touch of arthritis and
> tendonitis make this a necessity)  As far as charging extra, I don't.
> Instead, for the last 22 years, I have been charging the highest prices on the
> market here, and to do that requires careful testing of the waters, so to
> speak.  This is how I did it.
>     With my tuning work split into three groups,(private customers, recording
> studios, and the Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt),  I raise my prices for
> one of these every three years.  This allows me some cushion for customer
> loss.  If I overdo it, and see a more than substantial drop in one area, the
> other two make up for it.  All three of these groups have different prices.
> Presently it is $88 for the studios, $70 for the school, and $94 for homes.
> This is based on the volume, as a studio that has me tune 150 times per year
> often requires a lot less work than the homeower that sees me every six
> months. And the school gets the discount rate because it is the source of a
> major part of my private customers, a lot of restoration and technical work,
> as well as keeping me in the public eye around here.
>     The self-employed tech that sees an opportunity to raise their price by
> 20% and only lose 15%  of their customers should do it.  You will have more
> time and money, more respect from the customers you retain, and  less stress
> and wear on the body, etc.
>     A self-employed person needs to keep the pressure on, there is no one else
> to look out for you.  The longer a tech works, the more valuable their time
> should be.  Of course,  there is a lot of difference between having 20 years
> experience and having one years experience 20 times.
> Oops,  it is 4:15 a.m., coffee just got finished and I gotta get out of here
> before I trip over all this soap that fell out of the box......(:)}}
> Regards,
> Ed Foote


Ed, where do you live?  Seems like there are a lot of recording studios
there.
-- 

Frank Cahill
Associate Member
Northern Va