I hire my first cousins daughter to come in two evenings a week but, not every single week, I don't need her that much. I do not use her to return calls that have come in during the day while I am out tuning, I do those myself. Instead, I hire her to book out the clients that are on a regular tuning schedule - churches, schools and such - that requested being called and booked by me. I'm with Ryan on this one. I DISPISE doing that job myself. Frankly, it wouldn't get done if I had to do it I hate doing it so much. The last time my gal came in, she worked for a total of 5 hours that week. She made $100. However, she scheduled 18 tuning appointments for me. It way more than paid for her time plus, I didn't have to do it! My favorite part of all J. Jer From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of William Monroe Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2011 8:21 AM To: pianotech at ptg.org Subject: Re: [pianotech] price-negotiating customers Hi Ryan, I think most of what you say is well-thought, and good information for most. One thing this model assumes, however, is that we are doing out office work during hours that could otherwise be filled with tunings. In my case, that is not so. I tend to do office work in the evenings after my kids have gone to bed, and my wife is often at work (she's a nurse and works 3pm-11:30pm). So in my case, hiring an office assistant (which my wife has made very clear she has NO interest in) would not free me up to do more tuning work or shop work. It WOULD ease my work load, and free up my evenings more, but at this point in my life, that's not a paycut I'm willing to take. I think this is probably similar for a lot of techs. We don't take time from our tuning hours to do office work, rather, we work longer hours and don't pay ourselves for office work. Not a great model, but in my case, hiring office help simply means more expense, not more money - at least until my kids are both in school which would free up probably another 8-10 hours a week. Mind you, I do continually look at my situation, and am always considering how to make an office assistant improve my business. And, I think it will at some point, but not now. If you have any ideas, however, I'm always listening............ ;-] William R. Monroe On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 5:22 AM, Ryan Sowers <tunerryan at gmail.com> wrote: Let's say you spend 5 hours a week doing office work: scheduling, billing, talking with clients on the phone, returning emails, etc. (I think most professional piano technicians spend more than that - my business substantially more) For arguments sake lets say you charge $100 for a basic service call that take's approximately 1.2 hours. With this scenario, you could service 4 more pianos a week if you didn't have to do the office work. Now with that extra $400 a week you could easily pay a $15/hr worker for 20 hours a week. Of course this is an over-simplification: there is time and expense involved in managing the employee and paying employee taxes, etc. But you get the idea. For me it's a no-brainer. I simply cannot afford to NOT have an office person. If I did the office work myself I would have to take a pay cut. My professional service time is worth $100/hr. Why should I do work that a $15-$20/hr person can do when I can be out at a client's house making $100 an hour? Not to mention: I don't LIKE doing that work. Now, I'm lucky because my spouse was willing to take a year-long leave of absence from her 20 hour a week library job almost 10 years ago in order to help manage the business. Up until that point we were both working part time and homeschooling our young children. We had no idea how it would work. But with her leave of absence she could go back to her old job after a year if it didn't work out. It ended up being a major turning point in my career. At this point, if she had a total change of heart and couldn't stand to do it anymore, I would most definitely have to hire someone. Saying you can't afford to have an office person is a little like saying you can't afford to attend conventions. I say you can't afford NOT to. Only through the relentless encouragement of my mentors and teachers have I had the inspiration and faith to push forward. "If you build it...They will come" On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 2:01 AM, David Nereson <da88ve at gmail.com> wrote: I barely support myself, and certainly can't afford to pay someone else to answer the phone and make customer calls. I imagine that's true for most tuners. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20110105/32f1c966/attachment-0001.htm>
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