Following the work

     My next trip to Chicago is imminent again.  That is not all bad as I will get to see my two sons once more.  I really like the slower pace in Florida now but my large customer base in Chicago is demanding my attention again.  I can make myself very busy by setting up my schedule weeks in advance and packing it full for a couple of weeks.  I can also plan each day with appointments very close together so there is a minimum of travel time between jobs.
     I bought another tuners business in 2006 and when I became a large business managing my time and deciding which jobs I should do and which ones I should send out to the tuners that work for me became an important part of my job description.  I sort of knew that going in but I didn't know if I would like the duties of a manager.  As a business grows the owner at some point has to decide whether to keep the business at a size that one can do all the work alone or press ahead and grow the business further so that help is needed and then suddenly the owner becomes to some extent a manager.
     Decisions have to be made about giving work out and giving the work out generates other tasks like bookkeeping, payroll, more complicated record keeping, and often a more complicated business structure to be maintained.  There is also the increased liability when you send another worker into your customers living room. Every tuner has made some kind of mistake such as spilling something on a carpet or knocking something over and had to replace something or repair something for a customer but when your tuner is in your customers living room you become liable for his mistakes too.
     In spite of these problems I find I like these management tasks.  The tuners that work for me have been doing great work and the experience they get from their work for Renshaw Music not only helps them pay their bills but become better tuners.  I think most of them come to appreciate just doing the work without the responsibilities of maintaining and growing a customer base.  One of the management tasks is also to keep finding new tuners and new customers  as tuners and customers sometimes leave the company for a variety of reasons.
     Another reason to grow the business is so that I can concentrate on my strengths and begin to delegate tasks in which I am weak to others that can work in their strengths. In this way I think my larger company can better serve my customers. I said in a previous posting that it would be easier to work for someone else than to be a business owner.  In the same way it would be easier to maintain a smaller business that to expand to a business with 5000 customers.  I think I have again not chosen what is easy but taken a higher road.

Marketing off season in Florida

     I have lived in the Midwest most of my life but like many others in Florida as my parents got older I have gradually been spending more and more time in Florida to help with their care.  There are some here who could be termed snowbirds.  This is someone who lives here in the winter and migrates to a northern home for the summer.  I am calling myself a snowbird in reverse.  I still have a large customer base in Chicago so I have to go there several times a year to work.  The problem is the piano business is busy in the winter so that is when I am taking these trips north and slow in the summer so I am mostly in Florida in the summer when it is 200 degrees and in Chicago when there is three feet of snow on the ground.
     Marketing in Florida in the summer then presents the greatest challenge.  Here are a few ideas that I hope will generate some feedback from my readers.
     1) Buy a block of tickets to a jazz or classical concert featuring a pianist and offer them in pairs to anyone who buys a certain amount of piano service.
     2) Offer a free service such as a piano cleaning to any customer booking a tuning this summer.
     3)  Offer several tunings as a package with a discounted price for a customer who books the first tuning this summer.
     4)  Offer a product such as a piano lamp to a customer who books a tuning this summer.
     5)  Offer a $10  gift card to anyone booking a tuning this summer.
     6)  Offer a gift such as a metronome to the first customer to call to book a tuning each month of the summer.

     I have always tried to make the needs of my customers drive my business decisions and I sincerely hope readers in south Florida will help me do that this summer.

staying encouraged

     Being in business for ones self is something that I suspect many dream about.  I feel fortunate to own Renshaw Music and every time I write a check to one of the independent contractors that work for me it gives me a sense of satisfaction that I am having a part is someone else taking care of their families.  A big part of my motivation to grow the company is to support the American economy and to help individuals support their families and improve their standard of living.  I also have two sons and having this enterprise to leave to them gives me great satisfaction.
      It is not east to stay encouraged though when you are a one man show.  Working a job for someone else would be a much easier lifestyle.  With the business it is hard to clock yourself out.  when I was a teacher part of my time after school was spent grading papers, planning music selections for my band, etc. but this is much harder.  The secret I think is to keep focusing on the long term goals above.  Life is short and I think I am taking the higher road so I choose to press ahead.

Marketing in a narrow line of service or product

     Large companies hire advertising experts to design marketing campaigns even for a product or service that is universally needed.  These companies often have many competitors and have to capture a portion of a very large market. There is often a large budget for their marketing efforts
     If your product or service is needed by a very narrow market as the case with my piano service business marketing becomes even more basic to turning a profit.  New customers are like gold in difficult times and finding new customers with the desire and ability to pay for Piano service in this economy has been very difficult.
     I  have found help in looking at my Dad.  There are shelves full of books in every bookstore about marketing techniques and they are helpful, but the most important thing about marketing I think is an attitude.  My dad did not always succeed but he had a tenacity about any task before him that I hope I also have.  The thing about marketing that makes it most difficult is that the results are not immediate.  The temptation if the market is narrow and you do not see immediate results is to scale back or give up.  This can be deadly to a small business.
     My dad worked for the McDonald Douglas aircraft company in St. Louis and was laid off when the Phantom jet program stopped.  He did a variety of things after that including working once at a maintenance job for a company that had workers on strike and Dad had to cross a picket line which was not only difficult but dangerous.  For a while he was a stock broker which he enjoyed but was not a big money maker.  Dad came from a farm background and enjoyed gardening.  He taught me how to work.  Whatever he put his hand to he had a determination about doing it well and sticking with it until the job was done.
     Marketing is part of the work in running a small company and I find my attitude about doing this job well and giving all that is in me to the task is at least as important if not more important than the techniques.  I still try to learn and practice good marketing techniques but I also try to imitate my dad's attitude about work when I give my attention to the task of marketing.









   

Your Piano care

     My work has included many years as a teacher and I don't think I ever thought about how a piano works.  It was like my car in that I only cared that it did work.  Since becoming a piano tuner I have come to see the piano as a very complicated machine requiring much care to work well.  Sometimes a piano cannot be tuned because of parts that don't work at all or work so poorly that the player becomes too frustrated to play.  If the player is a child this is particularly important as the parent wants the child to enjoy playing and practice and a child will become frustrated often long before an adult will.
     An out of tune piano can also drive the player to quit but the other aspects to piano care that are important are repair, regulation and voicing.  I will deal with regulation today.  Regulation is making adjustments so that the parts that move work well.  A key can stick because of something that needs repairing but the same result can occur when a part of the mechanism is out of adjustment.  There are 9000 moving parts in a piano and an individual note can be regulated but there are 87 more notes that potentially can become problems.  Regulation is most beneficial is the same adjustment is done to all 88 notes if needed.  There are about 23 things to regulate on a given note and a complete regulation must involve regulation steps being done in a certain order to get the best result.
     New pianos can come needing much regulation so whatever the age of your piano it would be a wise thing to do to ask your tuner about regulation, probably the most overlooked aspect of piano care.