Thank you, Jon! I just love it when someone, who is thoughtful and writes well, can express my own sentiments so much better than I can. Diane Valuing ourselves Jon Page jonpage at comcast.net I have customers who have been with me for 20, 30 years. I have maintained their pianos and what they need now is periodic tuning. All of them are on SS and their retirement funds were hit hard as all have. One customer has had to cut back on tuning to every two years. Fortunately for them my tunings are rock solid ;-) and they can do this longer tuning interval with their limited playing. When it's a choice of food or medicine, funds have to be budgeted. Not to mention sky rocketing property taxes devouring their funds. Customer loyalty works both ways. They helped me when I was starting out, I keep them tuned at an affordable rate for them. So as a customer service I still tune their pianos at a lower rate. My income is not generated from tuning calls (I'd really rather not tune) but from sales of reconditioned pianos and contract restorations. Some can afford my new rate and pay that, which affords me the opportunity to offer discounts. The few new tuning calls I accept are grands which I hope will generate repairs. Valuing ourselves does not necessarily mean having to make a lot of money but giving ourselves a quality of life. If you have situated yourself in a position where you have to make $X/day, $Y/week and $Z/month then that is a stressful situation. I was of that mindset, to crack that nut everyday but after many years I realized that all I needed to do was engage myself in more profitable endeavors since it was not always easy to convince people their pianos would perform better with a little TLC. Having a daily tuning regiment is a rat race. Shop work is more enjoyable to me and once I situated myself with a home-based shop, overhead dropped. I don't pride myself on the funds generated but the quality of playing I can offer for someone's budget and still maintain my quality of stree-free life. An occasional outing for tuning is sometimes a welcome break in the day's routine, other times it's an intrusion. Well, time to get into the shop, tune a console as its final prep for sale, someone's coming to look at it later today. -- Regards, Jon Page Diane Hofstetter
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