Inside A Pro Racket Stringing Business In Cincinnati with Drew Violette

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This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together.
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Here's your host, Deborah Coviello.
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Hello and welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast Live.
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Are you in need of Racket Sports selling and repair business?
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One might be closer than you think.
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So today I have the pleasure of introducing to you your good neighbor, Drew Violet, with Next Level Stringing.
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How are you doing today, Drew?
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I'm doing great.
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Thank you.
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All right, and I'm excited to have you on the show.
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And this is a completely new industry for me.
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I've never met anybody, so I'm very excited to learn about you and your business.
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Yeah, it's a pretty small niche that I have carved out for myself, I guess.
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Uh well, tell us a little bit more about the work that you do, uh, the types of sports that you cover.
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How do you help people uh in the racket uh sports industry?
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Uh so I'm in the ProShop business.
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Uh basically I have uh one location with all my equipment to sell rackets, strings, grips, accessories.
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Um and with all that, I have I have four other locations that I drop off and pick up customer equipment, whether they're purchasing something or just a racket restring uh or grip or anything like that.
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Um sports-wise, I do anything that's basically a racket and a ball.
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Um or or like uh in Badman, they've got what's called a shuttlecock.
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Um, so they have strings in the rackets, I restring them.
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If they don't have strings in the paddles, like pickleball or platform tennis or padell, uh, I could do customization for the rackets, weights, uh, regrips, things like that.
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That's absolutely fascinating.
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There's gotta be a guy or a gal that does that when somebody just can't move forward with their sport because ah I hit it on somebody's head, I threw it on the ground or what have you.
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I mean, a quick question: what's the worst condition you have seen something come to you that you have to fix?
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Uh well, cracked butt caps.
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So, like for instance, on this racket here, it's got a butt cap, just like any other tennis racket, and they'll uh they're basically secured with um they're secured with like uh either glue of some sort, some adhesive.
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Most of the time it's staples.
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Uh so those will just come loose and you'll have to rip the whole entire butt cap off and redo that.
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But that or I would say the bumper guard.
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So the top of the racket has a plastic protection on it, and it just over time of scraping the ground over and over again, the plastic wears off and it starts getting into the metal of the racket.
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So I've seen some pretty bad bumper guard situations going on.
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So everybody has to have a guy to fix their rackets.
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But but what's really fascinating about this is I just didn't know that there was, you know, this kind of uh of industry or business.
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So just tell us a little bit, how did you even get into this line of work?
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Uh so I got into it because when I first started playing tennis as a freshman, uh, my high school coach had a machine at his house and he was a school teacher, so he just didn't have any time basically to continue to string all of our rackets.
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Um, and just asked anybody in the team.
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I raised my hand, of course, and I would love to learn how to string.
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Um, he showed me one racket one time how to do it, and then I just would go over there whenever my teammates or myself would break a string and I'd string the rackets for them, having no idea what I was doing.
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So that was kind of the start of it.
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But where I really took off was at uh Shadow Valley Tennis Club in Toledo, Ohio when I was in college.
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Um, I had already been stringing for maybe six or seven years.
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Um, and then I went to a pro shop there called First Serve Tennis Shop.
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Um, and I met my the guy who taught me everything I know.
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His name is Jeff Turner, uh really, really great guy.
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And I showed him what I knew how to do, and then he showed me what he knew how to do with the rackets, and I said, Oh, I guess I don't know what I'm doing uh at all.
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So he took me under his wing for about eight or nine years, um, and just taught me basically everything there is to know about re purposing tennis rackets and just re um, you know, just just getting anything back to to playing shape.
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What a niche industry.
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Yeah.
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So um so so one this is a this is a great opportunity to maybe educate um our listeners and our viewers.
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Um, are there any myths, misconceptions, misunderstandings uh about your industry, your business, or what you do?
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Uh sure.
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I mean the the biggest one is gonna be on well, I would say the biggest two things would be one is in in if you're in the tennis world, you know that it's appropriate to restring your rackets X amount of times per year.
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Uh so the biggest one I hear of is always however many times you play per week is how many times you should string your racket per year, which is not accurate for 90% of the community.
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So you'll hear that from the big box um tennis stores around in Cincinnati and all over the country.
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You'll hear it from anybody who just doesn't really know what they're doing.
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Because I always say if you're a beginner tennis player and you get a tennis bug and you're playing seven days a week, you really don't need to string your racket seven times a year.
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And then if you're an expert and you're a really high-level college player, pro player, and you're playing seven days a week, you'll need to string your racket a heck of a lot more than seven times a week or seven times a year.
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Um, so it's really not accurate for basically anybody.
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And I would say the other one is when you people will ask, How do I get more power in a racket from a string job?
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There's not a whole lot you can do.
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The the common misconception is the higher you go in tension, the more control, which is actually true.
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Um, when I think of control, I think of being able to not hit the ball so far.
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Uh, when you go looser in tension, it's told to every person on the planet like the lower you go in tension, the more power you get.
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Well, that's quite in fact, you know, it's not that's not correct at all.
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Uh, the looser you go, you'll get more depth on the ball.
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So it gives you the illusion of power.
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So you won't get anything more in miles per hour.
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So I don't think you get more power.
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So if I string a racket at 40 and another one at 60, my miles per hour will be very similar.
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So those are two big things that I think get told to the general public that aren't really true.
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Absolutely fascinating from the guy who's responsible for the performance or uh contributing to the performance of that athlete.
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Uh, very, very interesting.
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So uh again, a very niche industry that you're in, but um, you know, how do you market?
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How do you find your clients?
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Again, uh, marketing and getting the word out there is the heart of your business.
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So, what do you currently do to get that business or connect with those people that could use your services?
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Uh, I would say that I do a pretty poor job on that front.
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Uh, most of what I do, if it's online, Instagram, Facebook kind of thing, uh, that's gonna be mostly my wife doing that because I'm so bad on the you know, internet type of stuff where I'm getting the word out via social media.
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Um, I could definitely utilize that a lot better.
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But mostly what I do to promote my business is just word of mouth.
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So it's just old school.
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You know, I tell people, hey, I'll give you a discount of ten dollars per customer that you send my way.
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If they buy something for my shop, I'll give you ten dollars off your next purchase.
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And they could do that endlessly, so they can get a lot of free equipment from me or free services from me by doing that.
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So I've gone from zero back in 20, I want to say I moved to Cincinnati in 2015.
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And over the last 11 or 12 years, I've gone from zero customers to over 4,000 rackets I string per year.
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So, and that's all word of mouth, just people said you know, saying, Hey, I know a guy, Drew, you stripped, go ahead and go ahead and send your business his way.
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So that's what I've done.
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I mean, that's the beauty of being a good neighbor and just doing great work for people so they can continue to pursue their sport or their interests.
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Um, I mean, uh have you like done more podcast interviews?
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I mean, you're showing up today, you're doing just fine.
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Have you done other interviews?
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Yeah, I have actually.
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So um I had a really good interviewer, Steven, I can't recall his last name, is a really, really nice uh news journalist, um channel eight news, I believe, uh here locally, uh Butler County.
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And he does a really good job.
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So he interviewed me for probably, I don't know, two hours, and then Windows down to his, you know, his little segment about me, which is maybe three or four minutes.
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So that was really good.
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And then um I've done other I've done others as well.
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Okay, because I I know myself back in the day when I uh was doing the same thing, starting my own business.
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I would love to be on other people's shows, and then all of a sudden one day I said, I am tired of chasing to get on other people's shows.
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I would love to invite people onto my show.
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Uh, just curious, have you ever thought of having your own um what do we call it, uh, next level stringing podcast?
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I have not.
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That's uh first I've I've even heard anybody ask.
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You know, I'm just I'm just one of those people.
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I ask a lot of questions.
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That's my job as the host.
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I get to ask the questions.
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Um, but let's let's move on in another direction.
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I'm just curious.
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I mean, obviously, um, we like to know the people that we want potentially do business with.
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So tell us a little bit about what Drew does outside of War Profond or your hobbies when you're not stringing.
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Uh well, I have two daughters and a great wife.
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Um, so we like to hang out a lot at the house.
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We've got a really nice backyard and we just do a lot of stuff outside.
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We're we're not inside people watching TV.
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We're always outside doing something.
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We live in a nice uh little community.
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So I built in our cul-de-sac where we live.
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My neighbors I checked with, of course, before I did it, but they were all okay with me putting down two pickleball courts.
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So I spray painted two pickleball courts in the cul-de-sac, and we'll all get to the community together and play right there in the right in front of our houses.
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Um, that's a big thing we like to do.
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Uh, my wife and I met, and the first six or so dates, I think, were all hiking.
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So we went out to the woods and just went and did a bunch of hikes, Mount Erie, um, California, nature preserve.
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Uh, we did a couple of those, and then so we'd like to take the family.
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Um, we just did Mohegan last week, so you know, we do a lot of hiking and outdoors kind of thing.
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And the weather has been lovely lately, so enjoy it while you can.
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Well, it's supposed to rain tomorrow, I think.
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Um, so that's amazing.
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So, um, Drew, we're gonna start bringing this in.
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You've been a wealth of knowledge information.
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Again, I had no idea about your industry, so it's been great.
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But as we think about everybody remembers kind of last messages when they're done listening to a podcast, what would be like one thing that you want uh folks to remember uh about next level stringing?
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Uh for me and my company, the biggest thing I've always stressed is quality of work.
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So anywhere you go throughout the country and really throughout the world, I've been trained by the best, um, not only here locally and like when I was in Toledo, but I also traveled to Spain to train with Richard Parnell, who's with the GRSA.
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I'll be going to Germany this year in October and then back to Spain again in November to train with those guys.
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So those guys string for the pros, I string for the pros.
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So, really, with my business, if you're looking to get some high quality work, that's what I give.
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I give the best quality work around.
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So don't go to just Joe Schmoe like a friend because they're cheaper.
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Uh, but if you're looking to get a high quality job, and and the second part to that I would say is if it can be done on a racket or uh any kind of racket sport, I can do it.
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So any repairs that are possible, I can I perform all everything that's can be done on a racket minus a complete break.
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Of course, you can't fix that, but and if people wanted to learn more or connect or get a quote or just meet you, uh, how can they connect with you?
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Uh the two easiest ways, if you want to just watch some video footage, um, I've done a little bit on my Instagram page.
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It's just next level string.
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Some guy took the string ing uh for lacrosse, I guess.
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So my Instagram is just next level string, my Facebook is next level stringing.
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Um, and then the easiest way for my customers to get a hold of me um is just by my cell phone.
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So my cell phone, is that okay to put out?
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It is calling or texting me anytime.
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Um, I'll respond within a day at the very most, but generally within an hour.
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My cell phone is 567-224-8751.
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And again, you can call or text anytime.
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All right, well, Drew, I really appreciate you being on the show.
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It's been a great conversation, very enlightening, and I just want to wish you, all your customers, and your business the best moving forward.
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Thank you.
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I appreciate it.
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Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast.
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Nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show.
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Go to gnpsincennati.com.
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That's gnpsincennati.com or call 513 878 0987.