Last week, I used a little something called Make-a-Referral Week to save my out-of-town bacon.
From now on, and until further notice, I'm instituting Referral Friday to save someone else's.
Whose? Yours, maybe.
Or my hair colorist's. Or my favorite local eatery. Or a (good, nice) one-person law practice, or a haberdasher, or a rodeo clown. (Hey, I haven't met one yet, but I might, and s/he might be great and just the thing for some demento company outing or Bobby Hill kid's birthday party.)
If I may, might I suggest you do the same? In your way of course, which may not be blogging. As I said in an email to John Jantsch (the originator of Make-a-Referral Week), I just flat-out love the idea of Referral Friday as a wide-open concept. Blog it, tweet it, podcast it, what have you: it's all good, quite literally.
On the other hand, having been frozen in place by the blank page myself from time to time, I know it's nice to have some serving suggestions. Here's what I lobbed over the net (and, you know, the 'Net, haha) to John:
- tweet a great local service
- post an interview with your fave small biz/solopreneur on your site
- release a podcast or vidcast with same
- create or add to your "referral" page on your website (I used your Make-a-Referral Week to set up five of 'em)
- make a phone call referral
I know you, as a kind and conscientious reader of this here blog, probably refer people left, down, up, right and six ways to Sunday, every ding-dong day of the week. The point about making it Referral Friday is to bring a little light and attention to this thing we do, both to remind us that we have some goddamn control over our goddamn destinies and to hip other people to the beauty that is endless referral.
My referral for this week is going to be for the locals, or for anyone traveling through who happens to break a heel doing some of that endless walking we do here in L.A.: Pasquale Shoe Repair.
I've been patronizing them since I found them in their last location just off the Miracle Mile. They've brought dozens of boots, shoes and handbags back to life, many of them repeat visits. They do impeccable work, they charge for it and they tell me when it's not worth it anymore (or, on those rare occasions when I cheap out and buy inferior goods, when it never was).
Their new location has much more user-friendly parking, plus a beautiful little café adjacent. They done it up right, and the result is a completely pleasant service experience, from stem to stern.
The best solution for keeping one from feeling down at heel is to replace them regularly. The gracious and capable staff at Pasquale will do just that:
Pasquale Shoe Repair
(323) 936-6883
5616 San Vicente Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90019
xxx
c
Image by Lachlan Hardy via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.