Your Business Has More to Offer Than its Products
About 3 or 4 months ago I read a blog post that completely changed my outlook on public relations and online marketing. Here is the fundamental idea: Most businesses have a lot more to offer than they...
View ArticleThe Mistake Process
This is a post about dealing with mistakes. To illustrate the process we use at JCD Repair, I’m going to use an example of an iPhone 4 that we broke. Before I go any farther, I’d like to state one...
View ArticleApplying for a Job on Craigslist
About 4 months ago I did a post on how to find a good employee using Craigslist. We’ve used the techniques discussed in that post a few times since then and hired several great, new employees. That...
View ArticleTop Tips from a Series on Time Management
Recently I was asked to write for a great Chicago startup blog called Technori. A few weeks ago they had me do a three part series on time management. The ironic thing is, each post turned out to be...
View ArticleMy Startup Made More Money Than Amazon
This is my third version of this post. The first attempt was a rant about how idiotic it is that so many people think it’s a good business practice to lose money and worry about profits later. Profits...
View ArticleMy Response to a Customer that Questioned My Employees’ Integrity
We recently received an email from one of our customers concerning his daughter’s iPhone which was rebroken. Our warranty policy does not cover phones that are dropped and broken again but we had a new...
View ArticleWhat is truly great customer service?
Great customer service is more than being nice (though that is important). Truly great customer service makes your customer’s life easier. It always starts with the question, “How can we make things...
View ArticleBlack hatting Yelp: How to wreck a company profile photo
A few days ago I went to our Chicago Yelp page to find that someone had gamed Yelp and managed to update our company profile picture to a close-up of a young woman that has absolutely nothing to do...
View ArticleA better interview question & 5 steps to succeeding in your company.
I own a own small business and have done a lot of interviewing over the years. I’m the one sitting on the hiring side of those interviews, and there is one question that gets asked by almost every...
View ArticleMariano’s Opening Day in Ukrainian Village
You might be wondering why a blog hosted on an iPhone repair site is writing about the opening of a grocery store in Chicago. That’s not what this post is about. Instead, it’s a short story about the...
View ArticleGreat Customer Service is More than a Smile
Great customer service is more than being nice (though that is important). It’s also about making a customer’s life easier. Great customer service examines every interaction with a customer and asks,...
View ArticleHow Our Sales Doubled Overnight: A Lesson About Suburbanites vs Urbanites
Sales from May 2011 to March 2012 On June 1st, 2011 our sales doubled from what they had been a day earlier. This is not an exaggeration. In May 2011 our Chicago store did about $7,000 worth of iPhone...
View ArticleGoogle Adwords vs. Facebook Ads – It Was No Contest
If you’re a small business owner like me, you’re busy. You don’t have a ton of time to read this or any other articles. So let me start with the conclusion: Google Adwords is a significantly better and...
View ArticleHow $55,000 in Missed Revenue per Year is a Significant Improvement
Want a really simple way to significantly increase the sales of your existing, appointment based business? Here it is: Call your customers the morning of their scheduled appointment. That’s it. Do that...
View ArticleHow to Find a Great Employee Using Craigslist
If you’ve ever posted on Craigslist you know: Craigslist can suck. It gets exponentially worse when posting a job position. You will get this kind of response: “I want 2 work for u.” Really? That’s how...
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