Customer Spotlight

Humor: VDB Coins – Interfanatic Customer Spotlight

Cool Stuff on the Web, Customer Spotlight

“Like a warm summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air, and you.“⁠

– Langston Hughes

Humor makes everything better. As Hughes (one of my favorite poets) noted, humor can break the ice. No doubt, as he fought for Civil Rights, he had to break the tension more than once.

But humor is useful in business, too. In moderation, it makes business meetings easier to pass. It just makes dealings more fun.

And that’s where George Huber of VDB Coins uses humor to great effect.

George is a coin dealer. He works with only the nicest, most beautiful collectible coins. He doesn’t sell anything he wouldn’t want in his collection.

Because, as he puts it, “Life is too short to buy ugly coins.”

It’s memorable, it connects him to his customers, and it’s funny.

Coin collectors are picky, and sometimes very serious about the coins they buy. Light humor breathed into their consideration is a welcome respite from the seriousness of competition and strain of making just the right purchase.

And, George is a funny guy to talk to. Deadly serious about serious coins, but he just gets business.

Which is why we at Interfanatic were so pleased to design and build him a new website to replace his aging platform. George is great to work with. His customers seem to like his new site, too.

If you know nothing about the peak of collectible coins, but you find yourself piqued, take a peek into a worldwide traveling circus and multi-billion dollar industry:
https://vdbcoins.com

And if you know everything about collectible coins, check out VDB Coins. Talk to George Huber- he’ll teach you something. And you’re about guaranteed a chuckle, too.

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Endurance: Bryant Sports & Entertainment – Interfanatic Customer Spotlight

Cool Stuff on the Web, Customer Spotlight

“Children’s talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.“⁠

– Maya Angelou

Ah, to be like a child. To not know better. To just do, and to try, and to not worry too much for consequences.

Growing up – experience – teaches us to be reticent, to be conservative, to go with care. Which is great! And terrible.

But when you don’t know better, you just go through it. You endure. You don’t know better.

Which is great! And terrible.

The trick, we learn, it learn when to endure and when to stop and move on.

LA is a tough place to endure anything. But if you think it’s tough running a business, try enduring in entertainment, or in sports. That’s exactly what Desi Bryant has done: endured.

Desi is a hustler of the best possible definition. He always has a few things going. But he’s able to single out and represent best his people through hard work and diligence.

Desi Bryant endures.

We do, too. Like Desi, we don’t give up. Interfanatic sticks with it until there are results. That’s why endurance is the virtue we highlight this week.

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Family: Raffaello Ristorante – Interfanatic Customer Spotlight

Cool Stuff on the Web, Customer Spotlight

“Family is a life jacket in the stormy sea of life.“⁠

– J.K. Rowling

We can always depend on family. Rowling knows this – in the years she kept getting rejection for the Harry Potter novels, she indubitably had to rely on family more than once.

Family is always there for you – it’s always an embrace to keep you warm when things aren’t going the way you want.

And family is how we treat our customers. We bring them in and take care of them. When things get tough, we stand by and help them get through the issues.

Which brings me to Ráffaello Rístoranté.

You walk inside, and you are greeted with a smile and the smell of delicious Italian food. It’s not the fanciest of places, but it is the best of places. And a lot of that has to do with the way they treat you. They bring you into their family.

The restaurant business in LA is an even tougher one than most places. So for the Cutri family to last over 30 years feeding San Pedro – that’s impressive.

They’ve done it by providing exceptional food at an exceptional value. They always go a little further. They always do a little more.

And they treat you like family.

Next time you want the warm embrace of delicious italian, check out old San Pedro and Ráffaello Rístoranté. And you’ll find a whole new part of your family you didn’t know was there.

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Temperance: Tetra Graphics – Interfanatic Customer Spotlight

Cool Stuff on the Web, Customer Spotlight

“Temperance is a tree which has for its root very little contentment and for its fruit calm and peace.“⁠

– Buddha⁠

Buddha tells us that temperance results from feeling unsettled, and that result of employing temperance is that we feel settled.

So temperance is important.

Temperance like eating a Handel’s chocolate fudge sundae rather than a knocking down a banana split by yourself, or a Vermonster. Yes, Handel’s chocolate fudge sundaes definitely represents temperance well.

Another, perhaps better, example of temperance is Mike Wratchko and his Tetra Graphics.

Mike came to us looking for help with SEO. It was fun and challenging working with him, to try to promote his business on the Web.

Wratchko works in a tough industry. There are a lot of printers in Torrance. There are a lot of printers – many of them huge.

You have to temper yourself when you go to real SEO. It takes months of dedicated work to get results. But it can definitely be done.

Of course, it depends on your industry. If your industry is very niche, like you create “precision rubber seals for medical photo equipment,” you can target keywords a bit more easily than if you want your site showing for “photo equipment.”

But whether you have longtail keywords to target or common ones, the right, dedicated SEO strategy will yield results, so long as you temper your patience and follow through with the hard work.

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Resolution: Affordable Bookkeeping & Payroll – Interfanatic Customer Spotlight

Cool Stuff on the Web, Customer Spotlight

“Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed, is more important than any other one thing.“⁠

– Abraham Lincoln⁠

Candy Messer is a powerhouse.

It was fun working with her. She runs a tight ship, and she does a great job for her customers. And it is that way because she decided it would be that way. And she makes it that way. And she set down the law that this is how it shall be at her business.

Mind you, she’s not a miser. She’s just determined.

Like Honest Abe tells us, it is our own resolution to succeed that matters most.

Perhaps it was Lincoln’s resolution that brought the end of the Civil War. Perhaps it was a little divine intervention.

It could be the same for Candy. A champion for women-owned business; a champion for small and local business.

We had a lot of fun working with Candy, first updating her website, then designing her a new one. Since then, her company has grown, and she’s taken her site in-house. But she and her business are just the kind of local small business we enjoy working with.

Candy Messer’s Affordable Bookkeeping & Payroll is an inspiration of resolution.

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Sincerity: Durnell Jewelry – Interfanatic Customer Spotlight

Cool Stuff on the Web, Customer Spotlight

“Weak people cannot be sincere.”⁠

– François de La Rochefoucauld⁠

How does that sit with you?

Bridgett Durnell is not weak. After years being a successful jewelry designer for the big atelier houses, she struck out on her own. She immediately began making waves with her distinctive designs.

Durnell is best known for her engagement ring designs. As such, she trades in sincerity.

She takes her sincerity and gives symbols of forever grace and beauty. And she takes her talent sincerely and has built a business around it.

When François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld⁠, Prince de Marcillac wrote these words, he was thinking of a person just like Bridgett Durnell. Although I’m sure he became an expert in sincerity after having to deal with his ridiculous titles through a distinguished nobleman’s career.

We don’t always get it right. But we certainly mean to. And with those sincere intentions, we drive on to produce something great. We take our customers and their businesses sincerely.

It was a great pleasure working with Bridgett many years ago, and we’re pleased to see her continued success. Sincerely pleased.

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Tranquility: Fairmont Butte Motorsports Park – Interfanatic Customer Spotlight

Customer Spotlight, Motorsports

“The poor long for riches, the rich long for heaven, but the wise long for a state of tranquility.”⁠

– Swami Rama⁠

Good words; insightful.

When serial entrepreneur Tom Malloy wanted to create a haven for motorsports enthusiasts like himself, a great many people felt threatened. Nearby race courses, mostly. So they fought.

They organized a group that insisted that race cars kill poppies. Of course, if race cars drive over poppies, they don’t do anything for the gentle flowers’ long-term health.

The California Poppy Reserve was many miles from the planned operations. There was no way you would hear the cars from the distance, especially given the facility was nestled in a valley. But that didn’t get people up in arms.

So in the end, a fun business idea for the high desert of California had to be abandoned. Tom sought tranquility rather than fight.

And a solar power generating company became interested in the lands and Tom did quite well.

Tom sought tranquility in dealing with his digital marketing, also. Which is why he employed us to create a website. It was forthcoming with information for detractors and proponents alike.

By seeking tranquility in business rather than dealing with the ridiculousness, Malloy came out on top.

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Justice: Legal Management Solutions – Interfanatic Customer Spotlight

Customer Spotlight

If we do not maintain justice, justice will not maintain us.

– Francis Bacon

Wise words.

So what does justice have to do with business? We have to treat our customers fairly.

If we do not maintain our customers, our customers will not maintain us.

-Interfanatic Digital Marketing

Like Kurt Obermeyer’s Legal Management Solutions.

Fair, Helpful

Kurt figured out that some of the law firms he worked with were great at law, but not so good at running a business. Preparing for court? Great! Preparing a cashflow statement? Well…

So Kurt stepped in and helped law firms focus on law. He could have charged them whatever he wanted because they wouldn’t know any better, and heck, they needed his business operations expertise.

But he didn’t. He kept it fair.

And by operating a just business, charging fairly, and doing great work, Obermeyer was able to grow his business substantially.

Justice: The Root of Customer Appreciation

So often customers feel unfairly treated – especially when dealing with something complex and difficult to understand. Websites look simple, marketing seems black and white – you do this, you get customers.

But it’s not simple. It’s complex. And we at Interfanatic make sure our customers feel fairly treated by always shooting higher than our goals.

Maintain your customers…

Go above. Go beyond. Do great work. Like Interfanatic insists upon doing.

And your customers will keep coming back to you, too.

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Simplicity: Lilly Silks – Interfanatic Customer Spotlight

Customer Spotlight

There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.

– Leo Tolstoy

We all seek greatness in some way. Many of us seek greatness in business.

Simple. Elegant. Great.

Susan Lilly sought greatness in her own little corner of the fashion market – through hand-made silk scarves.

They were simple, and they were elegant. And they were great.

It was a genuine pleasure to work with Susan on her project. She’s since moved on from that business, leaving her silks real coveted collectors’ items. Oh, Susan took care of a great many gifts for me for quite some time!

Here, Tolstoy manages to pack a lot of heavy thinking into few words (instead of a lot of heavy thinking into many words, like usual). Simplicity, goodness and truth are the required ingredients for greatness, he says.

Simplicity: Often the Child of Complex Work

Sometimes performing a complex task yields simple results. Results so simple, they are discounted. Like when flat-earthers who use cellphones that require a geosynchoronous orbiting satellite network.

They don’t understand how it works. They just know it does. And they’re ungrateful to the efforts that made it so.

We shant be so hard on them; we all do it. Every day, people drive technological marvels without a thought to all of the complex safety that makes their cars easy to drive. We get so annoyed when our favorite video or tv show takes more than a few seconds to load. A cacophony of machinations yield a symphony of simplicity, yet we take the outrageous stance that it must be done more quickly, to please our flitting attentions.

And that’s what we see every day here at Interfanatic. Serpentine complexity orchestrated to create a simple result.

Keep it simple, stupid.

That’s what we strive for. To keep it simple. To make it great.

Just like Susan Lilly’s silks.

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Love: Abbracci Studio – Interfanatic Customer Spotlight

Customer Spotlight

Love is the flower you’ve got to let grow.

John Lennon

You want your business to grow. Or, you want your business to stay the same while you do less. It all happens with love.

Love your customers. Love your business. Your customers love you. Your business grows. Let it grow. Feed it with love.

And that’s what Tisha O’Dowd did with Abbracci Studio.

Abbracci is Italian for “hug”. What a beautiful sentiment on which to grow business.

Tisha successfully sold Abbracci Studio so she could spend more time with her growing family. She did it with love. She did it with hugs. She loved her customers. She loved her business. (Okay, not all of the time – none of us ever love our business 100% of the time. But over the long haul…)

In return, her customers loved her. They came back. They referred her. Her business grew. She fed her business with love until it was time to let it go.

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