Hi Kelley,
Having graduated from the US Army Rotary Wing Aviator Course,
arguably the most physically and mentally challenging course of
instruction the Army offers, you already know that almost all
limitations are self-imposed, and that there is virtually nothing
that can’t be done once a motivated and self-disciplined person makes
up their mind to do it. So I won’t tell you that what you want to do
can’t be done. What I will say is that I tried it, and my Dad tried
it, and we found that at least for us, the cost-benefit ratio is
heavily skewed towards the cost side. I was also an Army Aviator and
paid my dues to Mother Rucker (the pet name for Fort Rucker, the
home of US Army Aviation) as well as the 1st Cavalry and the 501st
Aviation Battalion in Germany. I’ve been where you’ve been and also
where you are wanting to go so I’m speaking to you from our common
experiences.
When I started on the journey you are contemplating, I found that no
one else was doing it. I figured that either A) no one had thought
of it before, B) there was no money in it, or C) if it had been
tried, it probably hadn’t ever been approached with the split-second
decisiveness, cold-as-ice intestinal fortitude, cool-headed
professionalism, microscopic attention-to-detail and the tough as
nails tenacity that a steely eyed, "damn the bullets I’m goin’ in"
AH-1S Cobra Pilot could bring to bear. It turns out that B is the
correct answer, Flight School induced “Above The Best” attitude and
forbearance notwithstanding. It also turns out that retail jewelry
customers don’t know about the quality of training at Mother Rucker
and the extraordinarily high standards you must meet to earn your
wings and squashed bug. They are generally not terribly impressed.
They also don’t consider it a good enough reason to pay retail.
When my Dad retired (the first time), he let the lease on the jewelry
store go and set up a nice shop in his garage. He let everyone on the
mailing list know what he was doing, and figured he would probably
lose some work, but most people knew him well, and would continue to
do business with him. No one called. No one brought him anything to
work on or asked him to make anything, or even asked him to help them
find anything. They only sought him out when there was a warrantee
type issue, they wanted something for free (like an appraisal) or
they wanted to sell something he made (for what they paid, of
course). He asked a good friend that had bought a piece from someone
else why. His friend told him that people kind of felt that he was
just playing around now, and wasn’t serious about it. “I mean it’s
just a hobby now, right?” were his exact words. So much for
retirement.
Think about it like this. You have a nice, expensive and rare car,
say a 1969 Jaguar E-Type and it needs to have the valves adjusted
(again). Someone you don’t know tells you they are really good at
working on Jags, knows them inside and out and he’ll even work on it
in your own driveway. It turns out he has to because he doesn’t have
a shop, he works from home and the back of a pickup truck. You
already know a shop that specializes in collector Jags, restores and
sells them in fact. Who are you going to trust with your pride and
joy? The guy might be fine for fixing a flat or detailing a 1995
Probe, but would you really let him do serious engine work on your
fine V-12 Jag?
As others have already pointed out, you will spend the vast majority
of your time picking up, delivering, returning calls and just plain
hand-holding. I found that it usually consumed about two hours of my
time to turn around a 15 minute job, once all of the non-bench tasks
were completed. It’s not dissimilar from doing all the flight
planning, getting a weather briefing, filing, pre-flighting, untying,
logging, refueling, tying down, post-flighting, debriefing and
completing all the other requirements of unit SOP, the dash 10 and
AR-95 just to log a ten minute flight. And you have to do it
individually for almost every single job. How many hours a year
would you have to spend performing pre- and postflight duties to get
your minimum 124 hours flight time if you do it all in 0.2hr
increments? Customer service can be a real time burner when the
customer comes to you, but it’s a lot more so when you have to go to
them. You will be surprised how much hand-holding and salesmanship
can be required just to size a $50 10K ring when you set the
precedent of picking up and delivering to their home or workplace.
Again, I speak from experience.
Another aspect is that the vast majority of the clients you do get
will overlook the perceived lack of professionalism only if you price
your work really cheap. I have also found that the people motivated
mainly by low price are also the ones most likely to give you trouble
about other things. Their jewelry is almost always cheap too, and you
know how much more work (and fun!) it can be to repair cheap jewelry.
People will expect you to be cheap, less than half of a jewelry
store’s prices, because they will perceive that you have no overhead,
and you are doing it because it’s fun. Just because it’s not the
whole truth doesn’t mean people won’t expect it.
My experience is that picking up some trade work and working that
side of the business is much more profitable, much easier to market
and much more time-management friendly, not to mention much less
risky. Low end trade work is always pretty easy to find (pawn shops
can be a surprisingly lucrative place to start), and more often than
not will lead to better and better (read that more profitable) work
from your clients in the trade if you do it right. Mixing retail and
trade work is also a possibility, but I think you will find yourself
dumping one or the other pretty quickly once the work starts coming
in and you see which is more profitable. You might have a hard time
convincing trade accounts that you are a professional and have a
secure operation when working out of your home, I did, but not
nearly as hard a time as convincing retail clients. I never really
could pull that off.
Oh, and all of the talk on this thread about security? Pay attention
to that as well. It is not a small or insignificant threat. There are
people out there with absolutely no other reason for being than to
take jewelry people down. Marketing without telling anyone where you
are? How exactly can that work? Never figured that one out either.
All that being said, the best time of my life was when I was doing
high-end custom trade work out of my house. The only two problems
were that my income was limited because it was almost entirely labor
(sales is where the real money’s at, no matter how good you get at
the bench) and you can’t go home from work when you work at home - a
lot bigger problem than I ever would have thought. The commute was
pretty easy though, I got to where I could do it in my sleep -
literally!
The very best of luck to you, Kelley, whatever course you plot.
Sorry for such a long rant. Keep your tail rotor out of the trees (or
your saddlebags off the pavement, whichever applies) and Drive On
Sir, Drive On!
Knight 2-5 BAMBI for bingo and bullets on tac-2 out.
(Translated for non-aviators: This is Dave, Bring All My Birds Back
In for fuel and ammunition [or more likely I’m heading to the club
for a beer], changing frequency on the VHF radio, talk to you later)