Greetings,
Susan writes: "As more work appears with the passage of time, while our physical tolerance for doing it decreases, at some point the two lines will intersect. We'll be offered more work than we can or should do. At that point, how do we triage? I take the best stuff, especially the concert work, because I see no one to take my place (yet) and because I like it the best. And I take good pianos and old customers. And once in awhile, I take an old wreck for someone who just desperately needs some real help that they can afford. I consider this my "pro bono" work. I charge a normal tuning fee, but do a lot more. "
Yes, our careers change, and I think it is healthiest to plan how they might be kept in sync with the physical changes we can expect to happen to us. This stuff is physical labor, no matter how we refine it. Most tuners seem to meet their end slumped over a piano,( I hope mine is a big one), and we don't retire so much as run out of steam. As we age, perhaps we can substitute experience for sinew and still make as much income with less time and effort?
While wemight appraise the local territory to determine how to carve ourniche, the chore of assigning prices to our time goes right tothe heart of self-esteem. Early on, I thought I would prove a point with my prices and damn near starved to death. Learned to compromise and compete with the market and things got better. Then began to push the limit of overworking myself and had to do something,
As more work than I could do appeared, Iraised my prices. That usually reduced the amount to a sustainable level with the same income and a greater amount of time to use it. Occasionally, ( I remember 1996as one), I went too far up and the reduced work of the next year let meknow it. It wasn't a bust year, but one that let me know I was hovering around the maximum load my reputation, such as it was, could carry. I think it is better to experience a year like that occasionally than to spend a lifetime never knowing how close to our potential we may have been. I wanted to know what would MY market bear, and there was only way to find out.
I see some willing to trade a higher income for the security ofknowing they have a price that can't be beat and an inexhaustiblesupply of bargain hunters to support them. Others pursue the mantra of "Quality creates its ownmarket", spending hours working the details on a restoration, or polishing a tuning, in the faiththat sooner or later, compensation will be equal to the care put into our work(beware, this is where the starving artist syndrome arises). Either approach can be the right one for an individual, and the point is that the quality of the journey is a far better measure of a life well lived than any destination we may have had in mind.
Regards, and happy 4th
Ed Foote RPT
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