Recession-proof?

[Ron Nossaman]

>In the US, with the advent of all the posibilities, it would be my opinion
>that 'new' piano sales are bound to take a hit. I feel used pianos between 2
>parties and used from dealerships should maintain.
>
>but service...
>
>I'm the admitted rook in the business, and seeing company after company
>laying off thoussands of people, I still feel pretty safe being in a
>service-based business.
>
>Is this a false sense of security? The activity of my phone tells me no, but
>I would like to hear the comments from those who have been through what I
>believe we are headed towards.
>
>roo(k)

It's just like when someone asks you "how's it going?". We never know until
it's too late. At the beginning of "Uncle Great Communicator's" second
term, the general outlook rendered (trickled?) down from fatalistic
pessimism to deep despair and fair to middling panic. At that time, a year
and a half of rebuild backlog disappeared over the phone one otherwise
sunny afternoon. Since I had just raised my tuning prices and was 0.04152%
higher than the next guy on the phone prospecting list, that little avenue
of income potential got a tad dicey too. Meanwhile, the guys who were
charging 2/3 my rebuild prices for less than half the work were doing just
fine, as were the folks that were in the lower half of the tuning price
spectrum. Somehow, I never quite grasped the supposed benefits of the
economic management method. But then I'm kind of slow sometimes, and not
always a team player.

I guess the bottom line (sorry) is that if you, through no fault of
anticipatory planning, find yourself relatively unaffected, or even
prospering, go in thankful peace and forever offer your future life and
livelihood up to the whim of the fates, for God has you on His list for
special consideration and exemplary perks. Yours is a no-fault existence,
and you ought to be able to milk it for everything it has to offer. If, on
the other hand, you find that, through no fault of anticipatory planning,
you have become professionally invisible, and have been relegated to the
priority of a third Brittany Speers tattoo, it might not hurt to have a
freezer full of unlicensed neighborhood pets and transient wildlife to feed
you through the crisis. 

Perspective is a wonderful thing, but a full belly trumps it every time.

Luck us all.


Ron N