Green Apple Sales Blog

Check out www.shareyoursoles.org It is a charity that was founded over a decade ago and has brought tons of shoes to people in need in over 40 countries including right here in the USA!

I am the President of Green Apple Sales, an internet marketing and web development firm based in New Lenox, Il.  I have been hunting for the last 6 months for a good solid charity to sponsor.  I looked at quite a few and spoke with the manager or director.  I did not feel personally or emotionally impacted by any of them.

Then I get an email from a friend Mary about Mona Purdy at Share Your Soles in Alsip, Il.  Mary explains that their website is never up to date and it is hard to find someone to do it consistently as they are all volunteers.

I told her I would give her a call.  We spoke and set up a day to meet.  I went to the warehouse to take a look at the operation and speak with Mona.  Wow!  That says it, huge, tons of volunteers, probably 200,000 pairs of shoes and everyone is working.  If you are in Chicago and you do not stop in to see this place you are really missing out.

Mona is a very real person and she is as genuine as they come.  I stayed for over 3 hours as she explained all about Share Your Soles while directing and talking to everyone else.  I left knowing exactly what they are about and I was overwhelmed by the first experience of being there and seeing so many people working together for a good cause.  I guess this proves the world ain’t all bad.

As you have probably figured out Green Apple Sales now proudly sponsors Share Your Soles, and we will be donating many of our services.  I suggest you go take a look for yourself.  After you do… I can almost guarantee you will be compelled to get involved in some way.

Even if you can not make it out there, or you are not near Chicago go to the Share Your Soles website and make a donation they have a ton of shoes and need more funds to clean and ship them.

Dan O’Callaghan

Alright listen up because I am tired of explaining this over the phone.  This will help anyone with a computer…who does not know.

Three simple things to keep your computer running faster:
1.) Clear your browser.(internet explorer, firefox, I recommend the Google Chrome browser)  How do I clear the browser? look for tools on your browser and delete all of the browsing history, cookies, cache.  Uncheck your saved “forms & password” so you don’t delete those.  Close the program.
2)If you are on a PC run “disc cleanup”  You can find this by going to the “start” botton then “all programs”-”System Tools”-”Disc Cleanup”  Run Disc cleanup.  If you have a MAC (and you should) you do not need to do this, it maintains itself.
3)Again if you have a PC…when “disc cleanup” is done run “disc defragmenter”  Go back to the same place you found disc cleanup and the disc defrag.. is right near it.  Defragment your C: drive.  When it is done.  Restart your computer.  Again if you have a MAC (and you should) it has a Journaling file system and it does this all by itself.

I know most of you will need to use all three steps because you have a PC.  Get a MAC.  If you are stuck with a PC check out LINUX, thousands of “distros” start with Ubuntu it is simple, they are all free.  Oh yeah it will run faster than any windows “distro”.

I dual boot my MacBook Pro with Linux (Ubuntu 9.04) and MAC OSX.  LINUX has no chains, you have access to everything and you will learn quite a bit about computers learning about it.

Many business owners have enough on their plate already and when things get tough it would be nice to have some help.

Give me 2 minutes to tell you how we can help you and your business.

Ok depending on what type of business you are in the solution varies.  Lets pick something like an automobile repair shop.  This will be good.

Now if there was say a small shop that did automotive repairs and has done well for 20 years.  Things are getting more competitive.  Some corporate chain opens down the street with a fancy facility and a huge sign.  They have a half a million dollar marketing budget annually.  Tough crowd huh?

Whatever.  Small business is still the closest to the people and personal service can not be replaced.  The key is finding a competitive edge, maybe you should do what they do?  Yeah right.  What you do is form a plan and use various cost-effective methods to market your business and bring it back to life.

It really is not as hard as you would think.  Sometimes people just ask themselves the wrong questions.  That is where we come in…  So back to the Garage.  John’s Auto Repair calls Green Apple Sales and explains that he is tired of Roman Noodles and business is slow.  He has all the situations I described above.

We begin by running a gorilla marketing campaign locally which costs very little and requires a little effort from the employees.  We come up with a creative approach to create a local “buzz” about the business.  Then a digital marketing launch.  You see one thing corporate America can never overcome is word of mouth advertising.  Well we now have the ability to do that through the internet and reach thousands of people with word of mouth.

The internet gives every business the ability to communicate directly with customers.  In the past you could only try to reach customers through advertising or media.  If you did not have tons of money for advertising or a connection that could get a reporter to write about you, you had no means.

The rules have changed, the web changed everything and we can show you how to harness this marketing tool PROPERLY to benefit give long term benefits to your business.

Call me if you have any questions…  We are here to help.  Small businesses are the blood that pumps through the heart of our communities.  We enjoy helping them prosper.

Cheers,

Dan O’Callaghan