Great posts rirhett (my spell checker wants to correct your screen name to "right"
), Ken and John.
Goal oriented teaching AND working is the way for me. Even when I take in a repair, all repairs actually I'm known to say to clients that our work has to have a defined beginning, a defined ending, all we need at hand to accomplish both and one more - a defined and agreed upon definition of a complete success.
I taught sales and marketing for decades (but don't hold that against me....) while also taking the lead in the field as well as a deal maker representing one of the biggest companies in human history as their representative to Silicon Valley. It was the old brick and mortar economy working with the new 32 times earnings vaporware economy and I loved it. Seems these days that vaporware economy now has the number one and two slots in global company size....
One thing that I learned though and shared as often as possible is this - setting expectations correctly and honestly at all times is a win/win for all. So that's what we do, set expectations as correctly as possible. Most of our clients appreciate this, some don't.... with an example being yesterday of someone who wanted me to make a through saddle on an old Washburn but completely neglect the fact that the nut was toast...., the neck needed a reset, the fret plane looked like a picket fence... and the client lacked the budget for anything and even had issues with the price of the bone saddle. In addition the saddle slot was crap and needed to be cleaned up with the Collins Saddle Mill too.
So the client asked me to neglect all of these other things and no matter how I patiently tried to explain that just like this thread and many of us believe saddles are key to action and set-up this guy didn't care... I even used the analogy that you are asking us to do a four wheel alignment and half of the wheels are missing.
So again if what we need to begin and complete a job is not available be it tangible or otherwise I am very keen to suggest that they may be happier going elsewhere and at times I add that I know I would be happier if they went elsewhere....
Don't get me wrong our clients get red carpet treatment, all of them, and we take it upon ourselves to go the extra 10 miles every day. But some people just can't get that we are not into doing lousy work or making something that needs precision adjustment and fitting to the instrument even if the client fails to see the need for the system view and the dependencies of one part to another...
Another thing that I've learned from my now 10 years as a Luthier is that everyone is an expert.... Even players consider themselves at times to be experts.
Wonder what most of these folks would do if they had to restring a Rick.... and are clueless to what Rick does differently with 12's than anyone else. There is a locally famous story about this where a client got very pissed at a very good shop insisting that they put the strings on his Rick Wrong. The client was wrong.....
Oh well, next.
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