What can marketing and welding possibly have to do with each other? Quite a lot as it turns out.
The story begins with a bed. A broken bed. Our broken bed to be more specific.
It’s an urgent problem. The bed can’t be slept on since it’s the supporting metal frame that’s snapped. We need to find a welder to make an emergency house call.
And that’s the first stumbling block. We don’t actually know any welders.
Playing for time, hubby goes to the store to shop for dinner. That turns out to be an excellent move on his part. While he’s there he runs into an electrician we’ve used in the past for jobs which include hard-wiring our house for the Internet. Not one to miss an opportunity, hubby asked whether the electrician might be able to recommend a welder or two.
Indeed he can. But the electrician goes one better when he hears what the problem is. Knowing that hubby is an amateur handyman, he offers to lend us his own portable arc-welder. If hubby can pick it up, the electrician will give him a quick lesson in all-things-welding so we can fix the bed ourselves.
And that’s exactly what happens. With a bit of welding practice and a lot of experimentation, a few thousand red-hot sparks later and our bed is fixed.
It’s cost us nothing. Not even the cost of the welding electrodes. We do offer to pay when we return the welding machine but the electrician won’t take any money.
He’s got no choice about a blog post singing his praises though.
We like to work with decent, honest, caring people and he’s definitely one of those. And he’s at the top of hubby’s list of go-to electricians now for some projects he’s planning.
And that’s the connection between marketing and welding. If you work for yourself you’re never off duty. The electrician wasn’t working when hubby spoke to him and he certainly didn’t need to offer us his own welding machine. He went over and above in spectacular fashion and really helped us out.
And now I’m talking about it to the world. Word of mouth marketing at its best . And if you happen to live locally and want his name, let me know.