Hi, I’m
Justin Ashford
Do you want to learn from one of the most well-traveled and experienced techs on the planet? I have done more than just run a repair shop or two. I have traveled the planet doing everything from just spending time in local repair shops in different countries, to living directly in the heart of Shenzhen in the electronics market Huaqiangbei.
I’ve worked and slept in factories that make our industry turn as well as ran in-person training courses on multiple continents. I’m even known for coming up with some of the coolest tools and techniques that are used around the world. It's simple: if you want to learn from someone who’s been to the depths of repair and back, look no further.
After venturing to the farthest reaches of the industry, deep in the heart of Shenzhen, China, I remain committed to my mission of sharing my repair knowledge.
Interested in knowing my full story?
So you want to know more about me and my journey to the center of repair, well, strap in because it's a fun trip and I love to tell my own story as much as I want to help you grow through yours. The following is a synopsis of what I feel were the life experiences that brought me to be where I am today. If you want to know more about me and what im truly about, continue reading.
Growing up with a Family in Tech
Growing up with a Family in Tech It's important to know where we come from, it's how we find the best ways to relate to one another. I believe my background resonates with many who might come across this story, as both of my parents pursued highly technical careers. My mother Dawn, a versatile and skilled technology expert, was an IT systems administrator and an all-around "technomage" for as long as I can remember, till the end of her professional career. She is still adept at handling any IT challenge thrown her way, she can even microsolder! I would be confident to drop her into any tech forum and she would find herself at home instantly. My father Ray, on the other hand, possessed a rich history in rework, repair, and or sort of mechanical problem, and to this day continues to work with PCBs and machinery. In essence, I was born to play a role in this world of repair and IT.
Additionally, my stepfather Rick played a huge role in shaping my passion for technology. He himself, part of many of the earliest and most prolific hacking and cracking groups of the 90s, introduced a different type of mentality and inspired me to thoroughly explore the inner workings of computers. The unique blend of IT, repair, and general tech tomfoolery from all three of my parents in my life provided a solid foundation for my own journey to the center of repair, they are my 3 heroes of tech and I would not be this person today without all of them. I think my entire memory of childhood till 18 was spent as you would expect, tearing apart stuff, playing with computers, learning the ways of the wider scope of the emerging internet and letting it shape me through IRC, newsgroups, ICQ, AIM... all that nonsense. I'm very happy to think I was part of the earlier internet, not the earliest, but still close.
During this time, I learned a ton about standard computer stuff, as most techie kids do, and was also introduced to a healthy dose of basic through-hole soldering. Truly though, I had no clue how to solder well. I knew I needed Flux, soldering, with an Iron, but when something worked, it still felt magic because I couldn't figure out how the whole thing fits together.
Skipping to adulthood…
Life comes at you sideways sometimes. As I started needing to pay my bills, I think my tech life took a sideways direction, becoming more of a hobby as I, for some reason, found myself in a life of sales and public speaking interestingly enough I found a passion for photography. I ended up as a professional photographer and traveling salesman, doing a lot of what a city-based photographer does, weddings, school and prom stuff, headshots, whatever, making the money. I was also working in different malls at those kiosks, harassing people as they came by. You know the types of commission-only salespeople I'm talking about. They drive you crazy. My best friend and I would sell anything our boss handed us to any random person walking by. We learned that rejection means nothing in the grand scheme; it's just an opportunity.
Oddly enough, this part of my life, while devoid of any general tech work, was a huge push to help me become the person I am. It taught me all the hard-line ways to make things happen in a high-pressure, make-it-or-break-it sales environment. But I never forgot my roots, and as I slowly drifted away from surviving on sales jobs to getting back into tech, it helped me lock onto a great methodology in dealing with repair front-end skills, such as customer service, as well as learning to leverage my technical knowledge when it came down to the wire.
I remember my last sales job; I was doing more manager stuff now and running sales teams myself and training them to crush it, it was awesome. Back when polyurethane screen protectors were fresh on the market and tempered glass was just a gleam in someone's eye, we would sell those super strong cut-out screen protectors to anyone walking by. Android and iPhone were in their 1st generation on the market, and times were great. I was friends with all the wireless retail people in the mall and was slowly starting to find my way back to more technical, fun, nerd-tech-type jobs.
Headfirst into Repair
You know, sometimes it's more about who you know, than what you know. At the tail end of doing screen protectors maybe a year or so before I left direct sales, I made friends with a local repair company that was just getting started up, still in the early days, iPhone 2g 3g days, and we did a ton of referral business back and forth, it was a great time and I was pretty interested in the things they were up to.
At this point, I was starting to travel again for my current company to open new locations, train people, and repeat. One day as I was working, the friendly repair company called me and asked if my new mall location was nice, I said yes and encouraged them to move out there also, so they did, directly in front of the Apple store. A great situation to be in, especially so early in the game. Interestingly enough, through a circumstance in life, the same company offered me a job to go do the same thing for them, and really, how could I say no? Back in tech, doing repair, managing a shop from day one? Count me in! So I did and started to work for the repair company, traveling to open repair shops for them.
I will say, that my first 2-3 weeks of fixing devices were terrible, I was absolute garbage and questioned what I had gotten into for a moment, but then as soon as I was left alone in one of the new locations, I started to find my groove and do halfway decent work. Remember, nobody starts great, we all still gotta learn our fundamentals.
Working for this repair company, it felt as though I was the 5th wheel in the ownership circle, doing everything I could to push the company forward, that I had no part in owning. Creating all the different company docs and processes for my shops and sharing them with others within the company. Honestly… it was a great time to be in repair and I loved it.
During some of these discussions, I started to see how we dealt with tech damage caused by our guys, we would send them off to… the microsoldering person….. For me, this was a mental shock, so much so that I called my dad, the rework guy, who always has the answer, and I asked him, “Really, it's possible to solder something so small by hand? I thought all the phones were put together with machines” he told me yea! Sure! Why not? It's just done with hot air and solder paste. From that moment I took a serious interest in understanding this, I wanted to do it! I even called the ownership group and begged them to send me to a class to go learn. They said… no, but then send me a nice hakko FM202 and said they believed in me to just figure it out.
I was semi-furious that they would not send me to school, I was devoted and loyal to the company and only wanted to do better work, same as probably everyone reading this. But they said no.. and sent me an Iron to use with no instructions. This was not my first iron, but my dad said I needed hot air and paste to do the phones, so I was confused. I went online and instantly purchased some all-in-one rework unit and thought, yea, ill show you that I can do this and the true journey began. I left behind the basic hobbyist repair tech and chased the elusive microsoldering title. With my trusty new iron, and my father to guide me on the basics over the phone, I started to see success, but at times hit roadblocks due to the basic set of tools and lack of in-person mentorship. But my electrical theory was strong, I went to vocational school for a while before this thinking I wanted to work on security systems and spent almost 2 months learning electrical theory. So I was in a good place, my hand skills were still just beyond beginner though if I look back at it now. I was “ok” and could easily find myself in trouble on a PCB if I didn't apply 10000% focus in my crappy USB camera.
I wanted to be more serious, so I spoke to my dad more and he mentioned that if I can't see the things I'm working at correctly, then ill never get any further and I need to truly invest in better gear. So I bit the bullet and researched and ended up with a proper simufocal microscope, instead of a USB microscope, a Hakko fr 801 and I kept using my Hakko FM202 with foot pedal and progressed forward into the gauntlet of daily repairs.
I was still missing the microsoldering mentor I truly needed though, in person, to ask questions to. Until I met them one day while at a mall working, Dave the mall security guard…. My new mentor. I just didn't know it yet. He comes over to me while I'm “soldering” and asks me what I'm doing. I calmly and confidently say im “microsoldering:” and he proceeds to tell me that I think im soldering and im only fooling myself. I stopped dead in my tracks and put the iron up. And Dave explains he spent his entire career as an IPC training instructor and worked for Raytheon, and if you know the company, you know that there is 0% room for soldering error, period, end of story. Thankfully, Dave was a kickass dude and would look over my shoulder and be the final mentor needed to complete my basic training, We now have, My mom, My Dad, My Stepdad, and Dave the IPC angel who saved me from my crappy work.
Pro Repair Justin & The Art of Repair
After a few months of daily hand skills practice in basically all my free time, I really had the confidence to do anything on a motherboard, it was exhilarating. I loved it. And then they came for him. Ratheon came to my mall, found Dave, and pulled him out of retirement, the man is that legendary apparently, they needed him back. So I had to say goodbye to Dave and move forward on my own. I think Dave to this day still works at Raytheon doing product quality control and training.I was very fortunate to have been his student and wouldn't be where im at without his guidance.
After Dave left, I knew it was just about time and practice now, I had the 1 on 1, now it was time to fine-tune and think critically about the lessons I was given. I was starting to think more about other areas of repair, and I was doing a lot of inframe galaxy glass-only LOCA repair, I know, shame on me for using LOCA inside a device, but I halfway still stand behind my methodology. Either way, I needed to know more. And after some research, I learned about display refurbishing and I went crazy with the same fervor as when I learned microsoldering I mastered this new skill. There were tons of videos online, but not a single one in English, and none had instructions anyway. I just had to focus on what they were doing and try to figure out the unsaid inferences in the middle. How could I resist? A side note. At this point, iv split from the repair company and am doing my own thing, it's the best thing for me, I was excited but scared to be on my own a bit.
Around this time, my best friend Jon was my roommate, we traveled a lot together over the years doing sales, and working for the same people, and he took the time to dig into SEO and online marketing. He was doing well with it by the time he came out. The reason to bring Jon into this is that he doesn't take kindly to those who waste their potential and he's a notorious good soul who wants to help people. He can't help it. And I made the mistake of complaining a few too many times that things I wanted to learn didn't have videos online, and that there are no real serious channels to teach the crazy stuff or the weird nuances of repair and he looked me dead in the eye and told me that I was already doing the impossible in some ways and that with my background im the asshole for not sharing first when im the one asking the universe for it and that nobody earns the knowledge without hard work, nothing worthwhile is free. In reality, he just yelled at me as a best friend would, but that's the meaning he took away from it.
But he was right, I had a killer photography background that I had not touched in years and I was the microsoldering & refurb person now. And I struggled for years without the help I was still asking for, even after Dave, there were new subjects to understand... So I have no choice, the Art of Repair was brought into existence. Because nothing this complicated that it took me years be halfway good could be anything less than an art. This would be how I push forward, by doing the research and hard work and giving it to everyone else who deserves to know. And so I got to work learning from Jon about better marketing, SEO, and watching every type of youtube channel I could find to figure out how to do it right. A few months later, I was ready, and the first video went live. AOR was the best thing that ever happened to me, Now I had an outlet and a way to tie my other skills into my career and do better. The truth is, the Art of Repair has always been the thing that pushes me forward, its the thing I do when I want to express the extra repair energy I have. I think each video has been double-checking my methods and research so much that I always learn at least one new thing when I make a video, even about things I think I already know a ton about, I never want to let down the person watching.
So I continued pushing onward, into the 9 levels of repair hell, the never-ending gauntlet of endless repairs that a busy mall can throw at me and all the holiday hours any retail veteran can vouch for, and some years pass, Microsoldering now obeys my commands and Im doing microsoldering for myself and everyone around me, and Refurbishing displays is really saving me money on my inventory and Youtube is keeping me sharp. Repair life is good, the repair force is in equilibrium.
Or so I thought.
Helping Others
I started to notice strange things happening. My day-to-day repair life is being eaten up more by jobs that are coming from other shops around me, and I had other people doing the basics for me. But with that, I started getting calls for help in general. Things as basic as me picking up some devices for repair and people asking me to show them how to solder.. While im picking up work from them. But I knew without hesitation that I should just show them. I started the whole channel to help people online that I would never meet, why not show people who ask me in person too right?
So I did and started to give away to anyone who would listen and implement. I knew that they would get it with or without me at some point, isn't it better to be the person who just helped them and helped them on their journey? That's all I ever wanted myself and now im in the position to solve that problem, even if it's only for one person at that moment.
Well it got more intense, and I had a few people even show up at my shop trying to talk to me and ask questions, I was spending my entire morning just answering questions online for people, I loved it! I knew this was my path, so I continued to do as I was doing and people were offing to send me repairs from all over the place, but I kept things pretty local. My rule? If you can't drive to me, I won't repair it for you. I just enjoyed the relationship-building part alot and most of the time I would just invite the client to the back and have them oversee the repair as i explained my process to them. I loved having a very open relationship with shops that felt they could ask anything. Mail-in doesn't afford that and I was already a busy tech so I kept pushing. But in 2018 I randomly came across a Facebook post that weird enough, allowed me to push further than I ever thought I could and maybe I went Super Saiyan for the first time.
Moving to China
Oh my goodness, I moved to China, directly to the heart of Shenzhen, Huaqiangbei. At one point I was living directly above the IC market in the same building, outside of sleeping on a factory flood, you cant get closer to the game than that. Anyway, If you haven't heard, Huaqiangbei that's the global electronics market meca center, it's where technicians take their pilgrimage if there was one to take, It is a city with a million microsolderers and schools on every corner to teach you the ins and outs of repair, the Chinese way. It's where you learn how to microsolder before you are allowed to do screen repair. It's where repair spartans are born.
So the opportunity? Move to Shenzhen to oversee the quality of current and new projects for a USA wholesale parts distributor. Honestly, I only even enquired about the job because the post seemed cryptic and mysterious, only to realize it was the next big move in my journey to the center of repair.
It all seemed so willy wonka, I went for a one-week trip with the vendor and visited all their factories and showed them my chops, and thats all it took, we were locked in. All my research and work over the years prepped me for this one interview, and I nailed it. I was exhilarated.
From that point forward I was living mostly in Shenzhen and Hong Kong with trips around China to visit other partners, I was really able to see many parts of China and enjoy a ton of new food. It was wild, it was a fever dream of every single repair-related secret I could get my eyes on and it was all mine for learning and sharing. And then it hit, the no-camera policy everywhere. I lived there and for a fact im sure they knew who I was, I walked the entire market daily looking at and for new things to discover. Every time the phone came up, or Gopro came out, there was a security guard on his way to tell me no and delete it. I would show up at a factory, and they would realize I want to film and then would tell me no. I was lucky a few times, but overall it was more of a situation where I needed to remember as much as I could since most of the factories were not from long-time partners. The long-term guys were awesome about it.
During my stay, I worked on many projects from glass technology used in displays and tempered glass to full displays where we needed to solve industry-level issues as well as create the next generation of displays. I took a few months and created some of the best aftermarket batteries in the industry, incidentally stumbling on a major issue that affects repair even today where even a genuine Apple battery won't work on another device without saying it might be counterfeit! How crazy! Feel free to check that video out btw, and then the one a few months before that one where I freaking called it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nGnAdtTDCw
And my favorite project type was all the fun tool things that I got to do. I truly enjoyed helping influence some of our industries' tools and methodologies from this perspective. While tools were the most fun, they also produced a lot of headaches in the long term. But It's still something I love to be part of and strive to do better with.
China was great until it wasn't, I was thinking that I would be living there for the foreseeable future, then in Dec 2019 things got a little wild, Im sure we all know why, and I had to hop skip and jump out there asap. I headed to Europe for a cool conference and repair get-together, then to Vietnam to visit a childhood friend, not knowing that instead of heading back to China in a few weeks, I would be in the United States in 3 days. Originally I planned to be in Vietnam for almost a month. Where was I headed next? The USA! at least until I could travel again.
Growing up with a Family in Tech
Growing up with a Family in Tech It's important to know where we come from, it's how we find the best ways to relate to one another. I believe my background resonates with many who might come across this story, as both of my parents pursued highly technical careers. My mother Dawn, a versatile and skilled technology expert, was an IT systems administrator and an all-around "technomage" for as long as I can remember, till the end of her professional career. She is still adept at handling any IT challenge thrown her way, she can even microsolder! I would be confident to drop her into any tech forum and she would find herself at home instantly. My father Ray, on the other hand, possessed a rich history in rework, repair, and or sort of mechanical problem, and to this day continues to work with PCBs and machinery. In essence, I was born to play a role in this world of repair and IT.
Additionally, my stepfather Rick played a huge role in shaping my passion for technology. He himself, part of many of the earliest and most prolific hacking and cracking groups of the 90s, introduced a different type of mentality and inspired me to thoroughly explore the inner workings of computers. The unique blend of IT, repair, and general tech tomfoolery from all three of my parents in my life provided a solid foundation for my own journey to the center of repair, they are my 3 heroes of tech and I would not be this person today without all of them. I think my entire memory of childhood till 18 was spent as you would expect, tearing apart stuff, playing with computers, learning the ways of the wider scope of the emerging internet and letting it shape me through IRC, newsgroups, ICQ, AIM... all that nonsense. I'm very happy to think I was part of the earlier internet, not the earliest, but still close.
During this time, I learned a ton about standard computer stuff, as most techie kids do, and was also introduced to a healthy dose of basic through-hole soldering. Truly though, I had no clue how to solder well. I knew I needed Flux, soldering, with an Iron, but when something worked, it still felt magic because I couldn't figure out how the whole thing fits together.
Skipping to adulthood…
Life comes at you sideways sometimes. As I started needing to pay my bills, I think my tech life took a sideways direction, becoming more of a hobby as I, for some reason, found myself in a life of sales and public speaking interestingly enough I found a passion for photography. I ended up as a professional photographer and traveling salesman, doing a lot of what a city-based photographer does, weddings, school and prom stuff, headshots, whatever, making the money. I was also working in different malls at those kiosks, harassing people as they came by. You know the types of commission-only salespeople I'm talking about. They drive you crazy. My best friend and I would sell anything our boss handed us to any random person walking by. We learned that rejection means nothing in the grand scheme; it's just an opportunity.
Oddly enough, this part of my life, while devoid of any general tech work, was a huge push to help me become the person I am. It taught me all the hard-line ways to make things happen in a high-pressure, make-it-or-break-it sales environment. But I never forgot my roots, and as I slowly drifted away from surviving on sales jobs to getting back into tech, it helped me lock onto a great methodology in dealing with repair front-end skills, such as customer service, as well as learning to leverage my technical knowledge when it came down to the wire.
I remember my last sales job; I was doing more manager stuff now and running sales teams myself and training them to crush it, it was awesome. Back when polyurethane screen protectors were fresh on the market and tempered glass was just a gleam in someone's eye, we would sell those super strong cut-out screen protectors to anyone walking by. Android and iPhone were in their 1st generation on the market, and times were great. I was friends with all the wireless retail people in the mall and was slowly starting to find my way back to more technical, fun, nerd-tech-type jobs.
Headfirst into Repair
You know, sometimes it's more about who you know, than what you know. At the tail end of doing screen protectors maybe a year or so before I left direct sales, I made friends with a local repair company that was just getting started up, still in the early days, iPhone 2g 3g days, and we did a ton of referral business back and forth, it was a great time and I was pretty interested in the things they were up to.
At this point, I was starting to travel again for my current company to open new locations, train people, and repeat. One day as I was working, the friendly repair company called me and asked if my new mall location was nice, I said yes and encouraged them to move out there also, so they did, directly in front of the Apple store. A great situation to be in, especially so early in the game. Interestingly enough, through a circumstance in life, the same company offered me a job to go do the same thing for them, and really, how could I say no? Back in tech, doing repair, managing a shop from day one? Count me in! So I did and started to work for the repair company, traveling to open repair shops for them.
I will say, that my first 2-3 weeks of fixing devices were terrible, I was absolute garbage and questioned what I had gotten into for a moment, but then as soon as I was left alone in one of the new locations, I started to find my groove and do halfway decent work. Remember, nobody starts great, we all still gotta learn our fundamentals.
Working for this repair company, it felt as though I was the 5th wheel in the ownership circle, doing everything I could to push the company forward, that I had no part in owning. Creating all the different company docs and processes for my shops and sharing them with others within the company. Honestly… it was a great time to be in repair and I loved it.
During some of these discussions, I started to see how we dealt with tech damage caused by our guys, we would send them off to… the microsoldering person….. For me, this was a mental shock, so much so that I called my dad, the rework guy, who always has the answer, and I asked him, “Really, it's possible to solder something so small by hand? I thought all the phones were put together with machines” he told me yea! Sure! Why not? It's just done with hot air and solder paste. From that moment I took a serious interest in understanding this, I wanted to do it! I even called the ownership group and begged them to send me to a class to go learn. They said… no, but then send me a nice hakko FM202 and said they believed in me to just figure it out.
I was semi-furious that they would not send me to school, I was devoted and loyal to the company and only wanted to do better work, same as probably everyone reading this. But they said no.. and sent me an Iron to use with no instructions. This was not my first iron, but my dad said I needed hot air and paste to do the phones, so I was confused. I went online and instantly purchased some all-in-one rework unit and thought, yea, ill show you that I can do this and the true journey began. I left behind the basic hobbyist repair tech and chased the elusive microsoldering title. With my trusty new iron, and my father to guide me on the basics over the phone, I started to see success, but at times hit roadblocks due to the basic set of tools and lack of in-person mentorship. But my electrical theory was strong, I went to vocational school for a while before this thinking I wanted to work on security systems and spent almost 2 months learning electrical theory. So I was in a good place, my hand skills were still just beyond beginner though if I look back at it now. I was “ok” and could easily find myself in trouble on a PCB if I didn't apply 10000% focus in my crappy USB camera.
I wanted to be more serious, so I spoke to my dad more and he mentioned that if I can't see the things I'm working at correctly, then ill never get any further and I need to truly invest in better gear. So I bit the bullet and researched and ended up with a proper simufocal microscope, instead of a USB microscope, a Hakko fr 801 and I kept using my Hakko FM202 with foot pedal and progressed forward into the gauntlet of daily repairs.
I was still missing the microsoldering mentor I truly needed though, in person, to ask questions to. Until I met them one day while at a mall working, Dave the mall security guard…. My new mentor. I just didn't know it yet. He comes over to me while I'm “soldering” and asks me what I'm doing. I calmly and confidently say im “microsoldering:” and he proceeds to tell me that I think im soldering and im only fooling myself. I stopped dead in my tracks and put the iron up. And Dave explains he spent his entire career as an IPC training instructor and worked for Raytheon, and if you know the company, you know that there is 0% room for soldering error, period, end of story. Thankfully, Dave was a kickass dude and would look over my shoulder and be the final mentor needed to complete my basic training, We now have, My mom, My Dad, My Stepdad, and Dave the IPC angel who saved me from my crappy work.
Pro Repair Justin & The Art of Repair
After a few months of daily hand skills practice in basically all my free time, I really had the confidence to do anything on a motherboard, it was exhilarating. I loved it. And then they came for him. Ratheon came to my mall, found Dave, and pulled him out of retirement, the man is that legendary apparently, they needed him back. So I had to say goodbye to Dave and move forward on my own. I think Dave to this day still works at Raytheon doing product quality control and training.I was very fortunate to have been his student and wouldn't be where im at without his guidance.
After Dave left, I knew it was just about time and practice now, I had the 1 on 1, now it was time to fine-tune and think critically about the lessons I was given. I was starting to think more about other areas of repair, and I was doing a lot of inframe galaxy glass-only LOCA repair, I know, shame on me for using LOCA inside a device, but I halfway still stand behind my methodology. Either way, I needed to know more. And after some research, I learned about display refurbishing and I went crazy with the same fervor as when I learned microsoldering I mastered this new skill. There were tons of videos online, but not a single one in English, and none had instructions anyway. I just had to focus on what they were doing and try to figure out the unsaid inferences in the middle. How could I resist? A side note. At this point, iv split from the repair company and am doing my own thing, it's the best thing for me, I was excited but scared to be on my own a bit.
Around this time, my best friend Jon was my roommate, we traveled a lot together over the years doing sales, and working for the same people, and he took the time to dig into SEO and online marketing. He was doing well with it by the time he came out. The reason to bring Jon into this is that he doesn't take kindly to those who waste their potential and he's a notorious good soul who wants to help people. He can't help it. And I made the mistake of complaining a few too many times that things I wanted to learn didn't have videos online, and that there are no real serious channels to teach the crazy stuff or the weird nuances of repair and he looked me dead in the eye and told me that I was already doing the impossible in some ways and that with my background im the asshole for not sharing first when im the one asking the universe for it and that nobody earns the knowledge without hard work, nothing worthwhile is free. In reality, he just yelled at me as a best friend would, but that's the meaning he took away from it.
But he was right, I had a killer photography background that I had not touched in years and I was the microsoldering & refurb person now. And I struggled for years without the help I was still asking for, even after Dave, there were new subjects to understand... So I have no choice, the Art of Repair was brought into existence. Because nothing this complicated that it took me years be halfway good could be anything less than an art. This would be how I push forward, by doing the research and hard work and giving it to everyone else who deserves to know. And so I got to work learning from Jon about better marketing, SEO, and watching every type of youtube channel I could find to figure out how to do it right. A few months later, I was ready, and the first video went live. AOR was the best thing that ever happened to me, Now I had an outlet and a way to tie my other skills into my career and do better. The truth is, the Art of Repair has always been the thing that pushes me forward, its the thing I do when I want to express the extra repair energy I have. I think each video has been double-checking my methods and research so much that I always learn at least one new thing when I make a video, even about things I think I already know a ton about, I never want to let down the person watching.
So I continued pushing onward, into the 9 levels of repair hell, the never-ending gauntlet of endless repairs that a busy mall can throw at me and all the holiday hours any retail veteran can vouch for, and some years pass, Microsoldering now obeys my commands and Im doing microsoldering for myself and everyone around me, and Refurbishing displays is really saving me money on my inventory and Youtube is keeping me sharp. Repair life is good, the repair force is in equilibrium.
Or so I thought.
Helping Others
I started to notice strange things happening. My day-to-day repair life is being eaten up more by jobs that are coming from other shops around me, and I had other people doing the basics for me. But with that, I started getting calls for help in general. Things as basic as me picking up some devices for repair and people asking me to show them how to solder.. While im picking up work from them. But I knew without hesitation that I should just show them. I started the whole channel to help people online that I would never meet, why not show people who ask me in person too right?
So I did and started to give away to anyone who would listen and implement. I knew that they would get it with or without me at some point, isn't it better to be the person who just helped them and helped them on their journey? That's all I ever wanted myself and now im in the position to solve that problem, even if it's only for one person at that moment.
Well it got more intense, and I had a few people even show up at my shop trying to talk to me and ask questions, I was spending my entire morning just answering questions online for people, I loved it! I knew this was my path, so I continued to do as I was doing and people were offing to send me repairs from all over the place, but I kept things pretty local. My rule? If you can't drive to me, I won't repair it for you. I just enjoyed the relationship-building part alot and most of the time I would just invite the client to the back and have them oversee the repair as i explained my process to them. I loved having a very open relationship with shops that felt they could ask anything. Mail-in doesn't afford that and I was already a busy tech so I kept pushing. But in 2018 I randomly came across a Facebook post that weird enough, allowed me to push further than I ever thought I could and maybe I went Super Saiyan for the first time.
Moving to China
Oh my goodness, I moved to China, directly to the heart of Shenzhen, Huaqiangbei. At one point I was living directly above the IC market in the same building, outside of sleeping on a factory flood, you cant get closer to the game than that. Anyway, If you haven't heard, Huaqiangbei that's the global electronics market meca center, it's where technicians take their pilgrimage if there was one to take, It is a city with a million microsolderers and schools on every corner to teach you the ins and outs of repair, the Chinese way. It's where you learn how to microsolder before you are allowed to do screen repair. It's where repair spartans are born.
So the opportunity? Move to Shenzhen to oversee the quality of current and new projects for a USA wholesale parts distributor. Honestly, I only even enquired about the job because the post seemed cryptic and mysterious, only to realize it was the next big move in my journey to the center of repair.
It all seemed so willy wonka, I went for a one-week trip with the vendor and visited all their factories and showed them my chops, and thats all it took, we were locked in. All my research and work over the years prepped me for this one interview, and I nailed it. I was exhilarated.
From that point forward I was living mostly in Shenzhen and Hong Kong with trips around China to visit other partners, I was really able to see many parts of China and enjoy a ton of new food. It was wild, it was a fever dream of every single repair-related secret I could get my eyes on and it was all mine for learning and sharing. And then it hit, the no-camera policy everywhere. I lived there and for a fact im sure they knew who I was, I walked the entire market daily looking at and for new things to discover. Every time the phone came up, or Gopro came out, there was a security guard on his way to tell me no and delete it. I would show up at a factory, and they would realize I want to film and then would tell me no. I was lucky a few times, but overall it was more of a situation where I needed to remember as much as I could since most of the factories were not from long-time partners. The long-term guys were awesome about it.
During my stay, I worked on many projects from glass technology used in displays and tempered glass to full displays where we needed to solve industry-level issues as well as create the next generation of displays. I took a few months and created some of the best aftermarket batteries in the industry, incidentally stumbling on a major issue that affects repair even today where even a genuine Apple battery won't work on another device without saying it might be counterfeit! How crazy! Feel free to check that video out btw, and then the one a few months before that one where I freaking called it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nGnAdtTDCw
And my favorite project type was all the fun tool things that I got to do. I truly enjoyed helping influence some of our industries' tools and methodologies from this perspective. While tools were the most fun, they also produced a lot of headaches in the long term. But It's still something I love to be part of and strive to do better with.
China was great until it wasn't, I was thinking that I would be living there for the foreseeable future, then in Dec 2019 things got a little wild, Im sure we all know why, and I had to hop skip and jump out there asap. I headed to Europe for a cool conference and repair get-together, then to Vietnam to visit a childhood friend, not knowing that instead of heading back to China in a few weeks, I would be in the United States in 3 days. Originally I planned to be in Vietnam for almost a month. Where was I headed next? The USA! at least until I could travel again.
Growing up with a Family in Tech
Growing up with a Family in Tech It's important to know where we come from, it's how we find the best ways to relate to one another. I believe my background resonates with many who might come across this story, as both of my parents pursued highly technical careers. My mother Dawn, a versatile and skilled technology expert, was an IT systems administrator and an all-around "technomage" for as long as I can remember, till the end of her professional career. She is still adept at handling any IT challenge thrown her way, she can even microsolder! I would be confident to drop her into any tech forum and she would find herself at home instantly. My father Ray, on the other hand, possessed a rich history in rework, repair, and or sort of mechanical problem, and to this day continues to work with PCBs and machinery. In essence, I was born to play a role in this world of repair and IT.
Additionally, my stepfather Rick played a huge role in shaping my passion for technology. He himself, part of many of the earliest and most prolific hacking and cracking groups of the 90s, introduced a different type of mentality and inspired me to thoroughly explore the inner workings of computers. The unique blend of IT, repair, and general tech tomfoolery from all three of my parents in my life provided a solid foundation for my own journey to the center of repair, they are my 3 heroes of tech and I would not be this person today without all of them. I think my entire memory of childhood till 18 was spent as you would expect, tearing apart stuff, playing with computers, learning the ways of the wider scope of the emerging internet and letting it shape me through IRC, newsgroups, ICQ, AIM... all that nonsense. I'm very happy to think I was part of the earlier internet, not the earliest, but still close.
During this time, I learned a ton about standard computer stuff, as most techie kids do, and was also introduced to a healthy dose of basic through-hole soldering. Truly though, I had no clue how to solder well. I knew I needed Flux, soldering, with an Iron, but when something worked, it still felt magic because I couldn't figure out how the whole thing fits together.
Skipping to adulthood…
Life comes at you sideways sometimes. As I started needing to pay my bills, I think my tech life took a sideways direction, becoming more of a hobby as I, for some reason, found myself in a life of sales and public speaking interestingly enough I found a passion for photography. I ended up as a professional photographer and traveling salesman, doing a lot of what a city-based photographer does, weddings, school and prom stuff, headshots, whatever, making the money. I was also working in different malls at those kiosks, harassing people as they came by. You know the types of commission-only salespeople I'm talking about. They drive you crazy. My best friend and I would sell anything our boss handed us to any random person walking by. We learned that rejection means nothing in the grand scheme; it's just an opportunity.
Oddly enough, this part of my life, while devoid of any general tech work, was a huge push to help me become the person I am. It taught me all the hard-line ways to make things happen in a high-pressure, make-it-or-break-it sales environment. But I never forgot my roots, and as I slowly drifted away from surviving on sales jobs to getting back into tech, it helped me lock onto a great methodology in dealing with repair front-end skills, such as customer service, as well as learning to leverage my technical knowledge when it came down to the wire.
I remember my last sales job; I was doing more manager stuff now and running sales teams myself and training them to crush it, it was awesome. Back when polyurethane screen protectors were fresh on the market and tempered glass was just a gleam in someone's eye, we would sell those super strong cut-out screen protectors to anyone walking by. Android and iPhone were in their 1st generation on the market, and times were great. I was friends with all the wireless retail people in the mall and was slowly starting to find my way back to more technical, fun, nerd-tech-type jobs.
Headfirst into Repair
You know, sometimes it's more about who you know, than what you know. At the tail end of doing screen protectors maybe a year or so before I left direct sales, I made friends with a local repair company that was just getting started up, still in the early days, iPhone 2g 3g days, and we did a ton of referral business back and forth, it was a great time and I was pretty interested in the things they were up to.
At this point, I was starting to travel again for my current company to open new locations, train people, and repeat. One day as I was working, the friendly repair company called me and asked if my new mall location was nice, I said yes and encouraged them to move out there also, so they did, directly in front of the Apple store. A great situation to be in, especially so early in the game. Interestingly enough, through a circumstance in life, the same company offered me a job to go do the same thing for them, and really, how could I say no? Back in tech, doing repair, managing a shop from day one? Count me in! So I did and started to work for the repair company, traveling to open repair shops for them.
I will say, that my first 2-3 weeks of fixing devices were terrible, I was absolute garbage and questioned what I had gotten into for a moment, but then as soon as I was left alone in one of the new locations, I started to find my groove and do halfway decent work. Remember, nobody starts great, we all still gotta learn our fundamentals.
Working for this repair company, it felt as though I was the 5th wheel in the ownership circle, doing everything I could to push the company forward, that I had no part in owning. Creating all the different company docs and processes for my shops and sharing them with others within the company. Honestly… it was a great time to be in repair and I loved it.
During some of these discussions, I started to see how we dealt with tech damage caused by our guys, we would send them off to… the microsoldering person….. For me, this was a mental shock, so much so that I called my dad, the rework guy, who always has the answer, and I asked him, “Really, it's possible to solder something so small by hand? I thought all the phones were put together with machines” he told me yea! Sure! Why not? It's just done with hot air and solder paste. From that moment I took a serious interest in understanding this, I wanted to do it! I even called the ownership group and begged them to send me to a class to go learn. They said… no, but then send me a nice hakko FM202 and said they believed in me to just figure it out.
I was semi-furious that they would not send me to school, I was devoted and loyal to the company and only wanted to do better work, same as probably everyone reading this. But they said no.. and sent me an Iron to use with no instructions. This was not my first iron, but my dad said I needed hot air and paste to do the phones, so I was confused. I went online and instantly purchased some all-in-one rework unit and thought, yea, ill show you that I can do this and the true journey began. I left behind the basic hobbyist repair tech and chased the elusive microsoldering title. With my trusty new iron, and my father to guide me on the basics over the phone, I started to see success, but at times hit roadblocks due to the basic set of tools and lack of in-person mentorship. But my electrical theory was strong, I went to vocational school for a while before this thinking I wanted to work on security systems and spent almost 2 months learning electrical theory. So I was in a good place, my hand skills were still just beyond beginner though if I look back at it now. I was “ok” and could easily find myself in trouble on a PCB if I didn't apply 10000% focus in my crappy USB camera.
I wanted to be more serious, so I spoke to my dad more and he mentioned that if I can't see the things I'm working at correctly, then ill never get any further and I need to truly invest in better gear. So I bit the bullet and researched and ended up with a proper simufocal microscope, instead of a USB microscope, a Hakko fr 801 and I kept using my Hakko FM202 with foot pedal and progressed forward into the gauntlet of daily repairs.
I was still missing the microsoldering mentor I truly needed though, in person, to ask questions to. Until I met them one day while at a mall working, Dave the mall security guard…. My new mentor. I just didn't know it yet. He comes over to me while I'm “soldering” and asks me what I'm doing. I calmly and confidently say im “microsoldering:” and he proceeds to tell me that I think im soldering and im only fooling myself. I stopped dead in my tracks and put the iron up. And Dave explains he spent his entire career as an IPC training instructor and worked for Raytheon, and if you know the company, you know that there is 0% room for soldering error, period, end of story. Thankfully, Dave was a kickass dude and would look over my shoulder and be the final mentor needed to complete my basic training, We now have, My mom, My Dad, My Stepdad, and Dave the IPC angel who saved me from my crappy work.
Pro Repair Justin & The Art of Repair
After a few months of daily hand skills practice in basically all my free time, I really had the confidence to do anything on a motherboard, it was exhilarating. I loved it. And then they came for him. Ratheon came to my mall, found Dave, and pulled him out of retirement, the man is that legendary apparently, they needed him back. So I had to say goodbye to Dave and move forward on my own. I think Dave to this day still works at Raytheon doing product quality control and training.I was very fortunate to have been his student and wouldn't be where im at without his guidance.
After Dave left, I knew it was just about time and practice now, I had the 1 on 1, now it was time to fine-tune and think critically about the lessons I was given. I was starting to think more about other areas of repair, and I was doing a lot of inframe galaxy glass-only LOCA repair, I know, shame on me for using LOCA inside a device, but I halfway still stand behind my methodology. Either way, I needed to know more. And after some research, I learned about display refurbishing and I went crazy with the same fervor as when I learned microsoldering I mastered this new skill. There were tons of videos online, but not a single one in English, and none had instructions anyway. I just had to focus on what they were doing and try to figure out the unsaid inferences in the middle. How could I resist? A side note. At this point, iv split from the repair company and am doing my own thing, it's the best thing for me, I was excited but scared to be on my own a bit.
Around this time, my best friend Jon was my roommate, we traveled a lot together over the years doing sales, and working for the same people, and he took the time to dig into SEO and online marketing. He was doing well with it by the time he came out. The reason to bring Jon into this is that he doesn't take kindly to those who waste their potential and he's a notorious good soul who wants to help people. He can't help it. And I made the mistake of complaining a few too many times that things I wanted to learn didn't have videos online, and that there are no real serious channels to teach the crazy stuff or the weird nuances of repair and he looked me dead in the eye and told me that I was already doing the impossible in some ways and that with my background im the asshole for not sharing first when im the one asking the universe for it and that nobody earns the knowledge without hard work, nothing worthwhile is free. In reality, he just yelled at me as a best friend would, but that's the meaning he took away from it.
But he was right, I had a killer photography background that I had not touched in years and I was the microsoldering & refurb person now. And I struggled for years without the help I was still asking for, even after Dave, there were new subjects to understand... So I have no choice, the Art of Repair was brought into existence. Because nothing this complicated that it took me years be halfway good could be anything less than an art. This would be how I push forward, by doing the research and hard work and giving it to everyone else who deserves to know. And so I got to work learning from Jon about better marketing, SEO, and watching every type of youtube channel I could find to figure out how to do it right. A few months later, I was ready, and the first video went live. AOR was the best thing that ever happened to me, Now I had an outlet and a way to tie my other skills into my career and do better. The truth is, the Art of Repair has always been the thing that pushes me forward, its the thing I do when I want to express the extra repair energy I have. I think each video has been double-checking my methods and research so much that I always learn at least one new thing when I make a video, even about things I think I already know a ton about, I never want to let down the person watching.
So I continued pushing onward, into the 9 levels of repair hell, the never-ending gauntlet of endless repairs that a busy mall can throw at me and all the holiday hours any retail veteran can vouch for, and some years pass, Microsoldering now obeys my commands and Im doing microsoldering for myself and everyone around me, and Refurbishing displays is really saving me money on my inventory and Youtube is keeping me sharp. Repair life is good, the repair force is in equilibrium.
Or so I thought.
Helping Others
I started to notice strange things happening. My day-to-day repair life is being eaten up more by jobs that are coming from other shops around me, and I had other people doing the basics for me. But with that, I started getting calls for help in general. Things as basic as me picking up some devices for repair and people asking me to show them how to solder.. While im picking up work from them. But I knew without hesitation that I should just show them. I started the whole channel to help people online that I would never meet, why not show people who ask me in person too right?
So I did and started to give away to anyone who would listen and implement. I knew that they would get it with or without me at some point, isn't it better to be the person who just helped them and helped them on their journey? That's all I ever wanted myself and now im in the position to solve that problem, even if it's only for one person at that moment.
Well it got more intense, and I had a few people even show up at my shop trying to talk to me and ask questions, I was spending my entire morning just answering questions online for people, I loved it! I knew this was my path, so I continued to do as I was doing and people were offing to send me repairs from all over the place, but I kept things pretty local. My rule? If you can't drive to me, I won't repair it for you. I just enjoyed the relationship-building part alot and most of the time I would just invite the client to the back and have them oversee the repair as i explained my process to them. I loved having a very open relationship with shops that felt they could ask anything. Mail-in doesn't afford that and I was already a busy tech so I kept pushing. But in 2018 I randomly came across a Facebook post that weird enough, allowed me to push further than I ever thought I could and maybe I went Super Saiyan for the first time.
Moving to China
Oh my goodness, I moved to China, directly to the heart of Shenzhen, Huaqiangbei. At one point I was living directly above the IC market in the same building, outside of sleeping on a factory flood, you cant get closer to the game than that. Anyway, If you haven't heard, Huaqiangbei that's the global electronics market meca center, it's where technicians take their pilgrimage if there was one to take, It is a city with a million microsolderers and schools on every corner to teach you the ins and outs of repair, the Chinese way. It's where you learn how to microsolder before you are allowed to do screen repair. It's where repair spartans are born.
So the opportunity? Move to Shenzhen to oversee the quality of current and new projects for a USA wholesale parts distributor. Honestly, I only even enquired about the job because the post seemed cryptic and mysterious, only to realize it was the next big move in my journey to the center of repair.
It all seemed so willy wonka, I went for a one-week trip with the vendor and visited all their factories and showed them my chops, and thats all it took, we were locked in. All my research and work over the years prepped me for this one interview, and I nailed it. I was exhilarated.
From that point forward I was living mostly in Shenzhen and Hong Kong with trips around China to visit other partners, I was really able to see many parts of China and enjoy a ton of new food. It was wild, it was a fever dream of every single repair-related secret I could get my eyes on and it was all mine for learning and sharing. And then it hit, the no-camera policy everywhere. I lived there and for a fact im sure they knew who I was, I walked the entire market daily looking at and for new things to discover. Every time the phone came up, or Gopro came out, there was a security guard on his way to tell me no and delete it. I would show up at a factory, and they would realize I want to film and then would tell me no. I was lucky a few times, but overall it was more of a situation where I needed to remember as much as I could since most of the factories were not from long-time partners. The long-term guys were awesome about it.
During my stay, I worked on many projects from glass technology used in displays and tempered glass to full displays where we needed to solve industry-level issues as well as create the next generation of displays. I took a few months and created some of the best aftermarket batteries in the industry, incidentally stumbling on a major issue that affects repair even today where even a genuine Apple battery won't work on another device without saying it might be counterfeit! How crazy! Feel free to check that video out btw, and then the one a few months before that one where I freaking called it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nGnAdtTDCw
And my favorite project type was all the fun tool things that I got to do. I truly enjoyed helping influence some of our industries' tools and methodologies from this perspective. While tools were the most fun, they also produced a lot of headaches in the long term. But It's still something I love to be part of and strive to do better with.
China was great until it wasn't, I was thinking that I would be living there for the foreseeable future, then in Dec 2019 things got a little wild, Im sure we all know why, and I had to hop skip and jump out there asap. I headed to Europe for a cool conference and repair get-together, then to Vietnam to visit a childhood friend, not knowing that instead of heading back to China in a few weeks, I would be in the United States in 3 days. Originally I planned to be in Vietnam for almost a month. Where was I headed next? The USA! at least until I could travel again.
Growing up with a Family in Tech
Growing up with a Family in Tech It's important to know where we come from, it's how we find the best ways to relate to one another. I believe my background resonates with many who might come across this story, as both of my parents pursued highly technical careers. My mother Dawn, a versatile and skilled technology expert, was an IT systems administrator and an all-around "technomage" for as long as I can remember, till the end of her professional career. She is still adept at handling any IT challenge thrown her way, she can even microsolder! I would be confident to drop her into any tech forum and she would find herself at home instantly. My father Ray, on the other hand, possessed a rich history in rework, repair, and or sort of mechanical problem, and to this day continues to work with PCBs and machinery. In essence, I was born to play a role in this world of repair and IT.
Additionally, my stepfather Rick played a huge role in shaping my passion for technology. He himself, part of many of the earliest and most prolific hacking and cracking groups of the 90s, introduced a different type of mentality and inspired me to thoroughly explore the inner workings of computers. The unique blend of IT, repair, and general tech tomfoolery from all three of my parents in my life provided a solid foundation for my own journey to the center of repair, they are my 3 heroes of tech and I would not be this person today without all of them. I think my entire memory of childhood till 18 was spent as you would expect, tearing apart stuff, playing with computers, learning the ways of the wider scope of the emerging internet and letting it shape me through IRC, newsgroups, ICQ, AIM... all that nonsense. I'm very happy to think I was part of the earlier internet, not the earliest, but still close.
During this time, I learned a ton about standard computer stuff, as most techie kids do, and was also introduced to a healthy dose of basic through-hole soldering. Truly though, I had no clue how to solder well. I knew I needed Flux, soldering, with an Iron, but when something worked, it still felt magic because I couldn't figure out how the whole thing fits together.
Skipping to adulthood…
Life comes at you sideways sometimes. As I started needing to pay my bills, I think my tech life took a sideways direction, becoming more of a hobby as I, for some reason, found myself in a life of sales and public speaking interestingly enough I found a passion for photography. I ended up as a professional photographer and traveling salesman, doing a lot of what a city-based photographer does, weddings, school and prom stuff, headshots, whatever, making the money. I was also working in different malls at those kiosks, harassing people as they came by. You know the types of commission-only salespeople I'm talking about. They drive you crazy. My best friend and I would sell anything our boss handed us to any random person walking by. We learned that rejection means nothing in the grand scheme; it's just an opportunity.
Oddly enough, this part of my life, while devoid of any general tech work, was a huge push to help me become the person I am. It taught me all the hard-line ways to make things happen in a high-pressure, make-it-or-break-it sales environment. But I never forgot my roots, and as I slowly drifted away from surviving on sales jobs to getting back into tech, it helped me lock onto a great methodology in dealing with repair front-end skills, such as customer service, as well as learning to leverage my technical knowledge when it came down to the wire.
I remember my last sales job; I was doing more manager stuff now and running sales teams myself and training them to crush it, it was awesome. Back when polyurethane screen protectors were fresh on the market and tempered glass was just a gleam in someone's eye, we would sell those super strong cut-out screen protectors to anyone walking by. Android and iPhone were in their 1st generation on the market, and times were great. I was friends with all the wireless retail people in the mall and was slowly starting to find my way back to more technical, fun, nerd-tech-type jobs.
Headfirst into Repair
You know, sometimes it's more about who you know, than what you know. At the tail end of doing screen protectors maybe a year or so before I left direct sales, I made friends with a local repair company that was just getting started up, still in the early days, iPhone 2g 3g days, and we did a ton of referral business back and forth, it was a great time and I was pretty interested in the things they were up to.
At this point, I was starting to travel again for my current company to open new locations, train people, and repeat. One day as I was working, the friendly repair company called me and asked if my new mall location was nice, I said yes and encouraged them to move out there also, so they did, directly in front of the Apple store. A great situation to be in, especially so early in the game. Interestingly enough, through a circumstance in life, the same company offered me a job to go do the same thing for them, and really, how could I say no? Back in tech, doing repair, managing a shop from day one? Count me in! So I did and started to work for the repair company, traveling to open repair shops for them.
I will say, that my first 2-3 weeks of fixing devices were terrible, I was absolute garbage and questioned what I had gotten into for a moment, but then as soon as I was left alone in one of the new locations, I started to find my groove and do halfway decent work. Remember, nobody starts great, we all still gotta learn our fundamentals.
Working for this repair company, it felt as though I was the 5th wheel in the ownership circle, doing everything I could to push the company forward, that I had no part in owning. Creating all the different company docs and processes for my shops and sharing them with others within the company. Honestly… it was a great time to be in repair and I loved it.
During some of these discussions, I started to see how we dealt with tech damage caused by our guys, we would send them off to… the microsoldering person….. For me, this was a mental shock, so much so that I called my dad, the rework guy, who always has the answer, and I asked him, “Really, it's possible to solder something so small by hand? I thought all the phones were put together with machines” he told me yea! Sure! Why not? It's just done with hot air and solder paste. From that moment I took a serious interest in understanding this, I wanted to do it! I even called the ownership group and begged them to send me to a class to go learn. They said… no, but then send me a nice hakko FM202 and said they believed in me to just figure it out.
I was semi-furious that they would not send me to school, I was devoted and loyal to the company and only wanted to do better work, same as probably everyone reading this. But they said no.. and sent me an Iron to use with no instructions. This was not my first iron, but my dad said I needed hot air and paste to do the phones, so I was confused. I went online and instantly purchased some all-in-one rework unit and thought, yea, ill show you that I can do this and the true journey began. I left behind the basic hobbyist repair tech and chased the elusive microsoldering title. With my trusty new iron, and my father to guide me on the basics over the phone, I started to see success, but at times hit roadblocks due to the basic set of tools and lack of in-person mentorship. But my electrical theory was strong, I went to vocational school for a while before this thinking I wanted to work on security systems and spent almost 2 months learning electrical theory. So I was in a good place, my hand skills were still just beyond beginner though if I look back at it now. I was “ok” and could easily find myself in trouble on a PCB if I didn't apply 10000% focus in my crappy USB camera.
I wanted to be more serious, so I spoke to my dad more and he mentioned that if I can't see the things I'm working at correctly, then ill never get any further and I need to truly invest in better gear. So I bit the bullet and researched and ended up with a proper simufocal microscope, instead of a USB microscope, a Hakko fr 801 and I kept using my Hakko FM202 with foot pedal and progressed forward into the gauntlet of daily repairs.
I was still missing the microsoldering mentor I truly needed though, in person, to ask questions to. Until I met them one day while at a mall working, Dave the mall security guard…. My new mentor. I just didn't know it yet. He comes over to me while I'm “soldering” and asks me what I'm doing. I calmly and confidently say im “microsoldering:” and he proceeds to tell me that I think im soldering and im only fooling myself. I stopped dead in my tracks and put the iron up. And Dave explains he spent his entire career as an IPC training instructor and worked for Raytheon, and if you know the company, you know that there is 0% room for soldering error, period, end of story. Thankfully, Dave was a kickass dude and would look over my shoulder and be the final mentor needed to complete my basic training, We now have, My mom, My Dad, My Stepdad, and Dave the IPC angel who saved me from my crappy work.
Pro Repair Justin & The Art of Repair
After a few months of daily hand skills practice in basically all my free time, I really had the confidence to do anything on a motherboard, it was exhilarating. I loved it. And then they came for him. Ratheon came to my mall, found Dave, and pulled him out of retirement, the man is that legendary apparently, they needed him back. So I had to say goodbye to Dave and move forward on my own. I think Dave to this day still works at Raytheon doing product quality control and training.I was very fortunate to have been his student and wouldn't be where im at without his guidance.
After Dave left, I knew it was just about time and practice now, I had the 1 on 1, now it was time to fine-tune and think critically about the lessons I was given. I was starting to think more about other areas of repair, and I was doing a lot of inframe galaxy glass-only LOCA repair, I know, shame on me for using LOCA inside a device, but I halfway still stand behind my methodology. Either way, I needed to know more. And after some research, I learned about display refurbishing and I went crazy with the same fervor as when I learned microsoldering I mastered this new skill. There were tons of videos online, but not a single one in English, and none had instructions anyway. I just had to focus on what they were doing and try to figure out the unsaid inferences in the middle. How could I resist? A side note. At this point, iv split from the repair company and am doing my own thing, it's the best thing for me, I was excited but scared to be on my own a bit.
Around this time, my best friend Jon was my roommate, we traveled a lot together over the years doing sales, and working for the same people, and he took the time to dig into SEO and online marketing. He was doing well with it by the time he came out. The reason to bring Jon into this is that he doesn't take kindly to those who waste their potential and he's a notorious good soul who wants to help people. He can't help it. And I made the mistake of complaining a few too many times that things I wanted to learn didn't have videos online, and that there are no real serious channels to teach the crazy stuff or the weird nuances of repair and he looked me dead in the eye and told me that I was already doing the impossible in some ways and that with my background im the asshole for not sharing first when im the one asking the universe for it and that nobody earns the knowledge without hard work, nothing worthwhile is free. In reality, he just yelled at me as a best friend would, but that's the meaning he took away from it.
But he was right, I had a killer photography background that I had not touched in years and I was the microsoldering & refurb person now. And I struggled for years without the help I was still asking for, even after Dave, there were new subjects to understand... So I have no choice, the Art of Repair was brought into existence. Because nothing this complicated that it took me years be halfway good could be anything less than an art. This would be how I push forward, by doing the research and hard work and giving it to everyone else who deserves to know. And so I got to work learning from Jon about better marketing, SEO, and watching every type of youtube channel I could find to figure out how to do it right. A few months later, I was ready, and the first video went live. AOR was the best thing that ever happened to me, Now I had an outlet and a way to tie my other skills into my career and do better. The truth is, the Art of Repair has always been the thing that pushes me forward, its the thing I do when I want to express the extra repair energy I have. I think each video has been double-checking my methods and research so much that I always learn at least one new thing when I make a video, even about things I think I already know a ton about, I never want to let down the person watching.
So I continued pushing onward, into the 9 levels of repair hell, the never-ending gauntlet of endless repairs that a busy mall can throw at me and all the holiday hours any retail veteran can vouch for, and some years pass, Microsoldering now obeys my commands and Im doing microsoldering for myself and everyone around me, and Refurbishing displays is really saving me money on my inventory and Youtube is keeping me sharp. Repair life is good, the repair force is in equilibrium.
Or so I thought.
Helping Others
I started to notice strange things happening. My day-to-day repair life is being eaten up more by jobs that are coming from other shops around me, and I had other people doing the basics for me. But with that, I started getting calls for help in general. Things as basic as me picking up some devices for repair and people asking me to show them how to solder.. While im picking up work from them. But I knew without hesitation that I should just show them. I started the whole channel to help people online that I would never meet, why not show people who ask me in person too right?
So I did and started to give away to anyone who would listen and implement. I knew that they would get it with or without me at some point, isn't it better to be the person who just helped them and helped them on their journey? That's all I ever wanted myself and now im in the position to solve that problem, even if it's only for one person at that moment.
Well it got more intense, and I had a few people even show up at my shop trying to talk to me and ask questions, I was spending my entire morning just answering questions online for people, I loved it! I knew this was my path, so I continued to do as I was doing and people were offing to send me repairs from all over the place, but I kept things pretty local. My rule? If you can't drive to me, I won't repair it for you. I just enjoyed the relationship-building part alot and most of the time I would just invite the client to the back and have them oversee the repair as i explained my process to them. I loved having a very open relationship with shops that felt they could ask anything. Mail-in doesn't afford that and I was already a busy tech so I kept pushing. But in 2018 I randomly came across a Facebook post that weird enough, allowed me to push further than I ever thought I could and maybe I went Super Saiyan for the first time.
Moving to China
Oh my goodness, I moved to China, directly to the heart of Shenzhen, Huaqiangbei. At one point I was living directly above the IC market in the same building, outside of sleeping on a factory flood, you cant get closer to the game than that. Anyway, If you haven't heard, Huaqiangbei that's the global electronics market meca center, it's where technicians take their pilgrimage if there was one to take, It is a city with a million microsolderers and schools on every corner to teach you the ins and outs of repair, the Chinese way. It's where you learn how to microsolder before you are allowed to do screen repair. It's where repair spartans are born.
So the opportunity? Move to Shenzhen to oversee the quality of current and new projects for a USA wholesale parts distributor. Honestly, I only even enquired about the job because the post seemed cryptic and mysterious, only to realize it was the next big move in my journey to the center of repair.
It all seemed so willy wonka, I went for a one-week trip with the vendor and visited all their factories and showed them my chops, and thats all it took, we were locked in. All my research and work over the years prepped me for this one interview, and I nailed it. I was exhilarated.
From that point forward I was living mostly in Shenzhen and Hong Kong with trips around China to visit other partners, I was really able to see many parts of China and enjoy a ton of new food. It was wild, it was a fever dream of every single repair-related secret I could get my eyes on and it was all mine for learning and sharing. And then it hit, the no-camera policy everywhere. I lived there and for a fact im sure they knew who I was, I walked the entire market daily looking at and for new things to discover. Every time the phone came up, or Gopro came out, there was a security guard on his way to tell me no and delete it. I would show up at a factory, and they would realize I want to film and then would tell me no. I was lucky a few times, but overall it was more of a situation where I needed to remember as much as I could since most of the factories were not from long-time partners. The long-term guys were awesome about it.
During my stay, I worked on many projects from glass technology used in displays and tempered glass to full displays where we needed to solve industry-level issues as well as create the next generation of displays. I took a few months and created some of the best aftermarket batteries in the industry, incidentally stumbling on a major issue that affects repair even today where even a genuine Apple battery won't work on another device without saying it might be counterfeit! How crazy! Feel free to check that video out btw, and then the one a few months before that one where I freaking called it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nGnAdtTDCw
And my favorite project type was all the fun tool things that I got to do. I truly enjoyed helping influence some of our industries' tools and methodologies from this perspective. While tools were the most fun, they also produced a lot of headaches in the long term. But It's still something I love to be part of and strive to do better with.
China was great until it wasn't, I was thinking that I would be living there for the foreseeable future, then in Dec 2019 things got a little wild, Im sure we all know why, and I had to hop skip and jump out there asap. I headed to Europe for a cool conference and repair get-together, then to Vietnam to visit a childhood friend, not knowing that instead of heading back to China in a few weeks, I would be in the United States in 3 days. Originally I planned to be in Vietnam for almost a month. Where was I headed next? The USA! at least until I could travel again.
Growing up with a Family in Tech
Growing up with a Family in Tech It's important to know where we come from, it's how we find the best ways to relate to one another. I believe my background resonates with many who might come across this story, as both of my parents pursued highly technical careers. My mother Dawn, a versatile and skilled technology expert, was an IT systems administrator and an all-around "technomage" for as long as I can remember, till the end of her professional career. She is still adept at handling any IT challenge thrown her way, she can even microsolder! I would be confident to drop her into any tech forum and she would find herself at home instantly. My father Ray, on the other hand, possessed a rich history in rework, repair, and or sort of mechanical problem, and to this day continues to work with PCBs and machinery. In essence, I was born to play a role in this world of repair and IT.
Additionally, my stepfather Rick played a huge role in shaping my passion for technology. He himself, part of many of the earliest and most prolific hacking and cracking groups of the 90s, introduced a different type of mentality and inspired me to thoroughly explore the inner workings of computers. The unique blend of IT, repair, and general tech tomfoolery from all three of my parents in my life provided a solid foundation for my own journey to the center of repair, they are my 3 heroes of tech and I would not be this person today without all of them. I think my entire memory of childhood till 18 was spent as you would expect, tearing apart stuff, playing with computers, learning the ways of the wider scope of the emerging internet and letting it shape me through IRC, newsgroups, ICQ, AIM... all that nonsense. I'm very happy to think I was part of the earlier internet, not the earliest, but still close.
During this time, I learned a ton about standard computer stuff, as most techie kids do, and was also introduced to a healthy dose of basic through-hole soldering. Truly though, I had no clue how to solder well. I knew I needed Flux, soldering, with an Iron, but when something worked, it still felt magic because I couldn't figure out how the whole thing fits together.
Skipping to adulthood…
Life comes at you sideways sometimes. As I started needing to pay my bills, I think my tech life took a sideways direction, becoming more of a hobby as I, for some reason, found myself in a life of sales and public speaking interestingly enough I found a passion for photography. I ended up as a professional photographer and traveling salesman, doing a lot of what a city-based photographer does, weddings, school and prom stuff, headshots, whatever, making the money. I was also working in different malls at those kiosks, harassing people as they came by. You know the types of commission-only salespeople I'm talking about. They drive you crazy. My best friend and I would sell anything our boss handed us to any random person walking by. We learned that rejection means nothing in the grand scheme; it's just an opportunity.
Oddly enough, this part of my life, while devoid of any general tech work, was a huge push to help me become the person I am. It taught me all the hard-line ways to make things happen in a high-pressure, make-it-or-break-it sales environment. But I never forgot my roots, and as I slowly drifted away from surviving on sales jobs to getting back into tech, it helped me lock onto a great methodology in dealing with repair front-end skills, such as customer service, as well as learning to leverage my technical knowledge when it came down to the wire.
I remember my last sales job; I was doing more manager stuff now and running sales teams myself and training them to crush it, it was awesome. Back when polyurethane screen protectors were fresh on the market and tempered glass was just a gleam in someone's eye, we would sell those super strong cut-out screen protectors to anyone walking by. Android and iPhone were in their 1st generation on the market, and times were great. I was friends with all the wireless retail people in the mall and was slowly starting to find my way back to more technical, fun, nerd-tech-type jobs.
Headfirst into Repair
You know, sometimes it's more about who you know, than what you know. At the tail end of doing screen protectors maybe a year or so before I left direct sales, I made friends with a local repair company that was just getting started up, still in the early days, iPhone 2g 3g days, and we did a ton of referral business back and forth, it was a great time and I was pretty interested in the things they were up to.
At this point, I was starting to travel again for my current company to open new locations, train people, and repeat. One day as I was working, the friendly repair company called me and asked if my new mall location was nice, I said yes and encouraged them to move out there also, so they did, directly in front of the Apple store. A great situation to be in, especially so early in the game. Interestingly enough, through a circumstance in life, the same company offered me a job to go do the same thing for them, and really, how could I say no? Back in tech, doing repair, managing a shop from day one? Count me in! So I did and started to work for the repair company, traveling to open repair shops for them.
I will say, that my first 2-3 weeks of fixing devices were terrible, I was absolute garbage and questioned what I had gotten into for a moment, but then as soon as I was left alone in one of the new locations, I started to find my groove and do halfway decent work. Remember, nobody starts great, we all still gotta learn our fundamentals.
Working for this repair company, it felt as though I was the 5th wheel in the ownership circle, doing everything I could to push the company forward, that I had no part in owning. Creating all the different company docs and processes for my shops and sharing them with others within the company. Honestly… it was a great time to be in repair and I loved it.
During some of these discussions, I started to see how we dealt with tech damage caused by our guys, we would send them off to… the microsoldering person….. For me, this was a mental shock, so much so that I called my dad, the rework guy, who always has the answer, and I asked him, “Really, it's possible to solder something so small by hand? I thought all the phones were put together with machines” he told me yea! Sure! Why not? It's just done with hot air and solder paste. From that moment I took a serious interest in understanding this, I wanted to do it! I even called the ownership group and begged them to send me to a class to go learn. They said… no, but then send me a nice hakko FM202 and said they believed in me to just figure it out.
I was semi-furious that they would not send me to school, I was devoted and loyal to the company and only wanted to do better work, same as probably everyone reading this. But they said no.. and sent me an Iron to use with no instructions. This was not my first iron, but my dad said I needed hot air and paste to do the phones, so I was confused. I went online and instantly purchased some all-in-one rework unit and thought, yea, ill show you that I can do this and the true journey began. I left behind the basic hobbyist repair tech and chased the elusive microsoldering title. With my trusty new iron, and my father to guide me on the basics over the phone, I started to see success, but at times hit roadblocks due to the basic set of tools and lack of in-person mentorship. But my electrical theory was strong, I went to vocational school for a while before this thinking I wanted to work on security systems and spent almost 2 months learning electrical theory. So I was in a good place, my hand skills were still just beyond beginner though if I look back at it now. I was “ok” and could easily find myself in trouble on a PCB if I didn't apply 10000% focus in my crappy USB camera.
I wanted to be more serious, so I spoke to my dad more and he mentioned that if I can't see the things I'm working at correctly, then ill never get any further and I need to truly invest in better gear. So I bit the bullet and researched and ended up with a proper simufocal microscope, instead of a USB microscope, a Hakko fr 801 and I kept using my Hakko FM202 with foot pedal and progressed forward into the gauntlet of daily repairs.
I was still missing the microsoldering mentor I truly needed though, in person, to ask questions to. Until I met them one day while at a mall working, Dave the mall security guard…. My new mentor. I just didn't know it yet. He comes over to me while I'm “soldering” and asks me what I'm doing. I calmly and confidently say im “microsoldering:” and he proceeds to tell me that I think im soldering and im only fooling myself. I stopped dead in my tracks and put the iron up. And Dave explains he spent his entire career as an IPC training instructor and worked for Raytheon, and if you know the company, you know that there is 0% room for soldering error, period, end of story. Thankfully, Dave was a kickass dude and would look over my shoulder and be the final mentor needed to complete my basic training, We now have, My mom, My Dad, My Stepdad, and Dave the IPC angel who saved me from my crappy work.
Pro Repair Justin & The Art of Repair
After a few months of daily hand skills practice in basically all my free time, I really had the confidence to do anything on a motherboard, it was exhilarating. I loved it. And then they came for him. Ratheon came to my mall, found Dave, and pulled him out of retirement, the man is that legendary apparently, they needed him back. So I had to say goodbye to Dave and move forward on my own. I think Dave to this day still works at Raytheon doing product quality control and training.I was very fortunate to have been his student and wouldn't be where im at without his guidance.
After Dave left, I knew it was just about time and practice now, I had the 1 on 1, now it was time to fine-tune and think critically about the lessons I was given. I was starting to think more about other areas of repair, and I was doing a lot of inframe galaxy glass-only LOCA repair, I know, shame on me for using LOCA inside a device, but I halfway still stand behind my methodology. Either way, I needed to know more. And after some research, I learned about display refurbishing and I went crazy with the same fervor as when I learned microsoldering I mastered this new skill. There were tons of videos online, but not a single one in English, and none had instructions anyway. I just had to focus on what they were doing and try to figure out the unsaid inferences in the middle. How could I resist? A side note. At this point, iv split from the repair company and am doing my own thing, it's the best thing for me, I was excited but scared to be on my own a bit.
Around this time, my best friend Jon was my roommate, we traveled a lot together over the years doing sales, and working for the same people, and he took the time to dig into SEO and online marketing. He was doing well with it by the time he came out. The reason to bring Jon into this is that he doesn't take kindly to those who waste their potential and he's a notorious good soul who wants to help people. He can't help it. And I made the mistake of complaining a few too many times that things I wanted to learn didn't have videos online, and that there are no real serious channels to teach the crazy stuff or the weird nuances of repair and he looked me dead in the eye and told me that I was already doing the impossible in some ways and that with my background im the asshole for not sharing first when im the one asking the universe for it and that nobody earns the knowledge without hard work, nothing worthwhile is free. In reality, he just yelled at me as a best friend would, but that's the meaning he took away from it.
But he was right, I had a killer photography background that I had not touched in years and I was the microsoldering & refurb person now. And I struggled for years without the help I was still asking for, even after Dave, there were new subjects to understand... So I have no choice, the Art of Repair was brought into existence. Because nothing this complicated that it took me years be halfway good could be anything less than an art. This would be how I push forward, by doing the research and hard work and giving it to everyone else who deserves to know. And so I got to work learning from Jon about better marketing, SEO, and watching every type of youtube channel I could find to figure out how to do it right. A few months later, I was ready, and the first video went live. AOR was the best thing that ever happened to me, Now I had an outlet and a way to tie my other skills into my career and do better. The truth is, the Art of Repair has always been the thing that pushes me forward, its the thing I do when I want to express the extra repair energy I have. I think each video has been double-checking my methods and research so much that I always learn at least one new thing when I make a video, even about things I think I already know a ton about, I never want to let down the person watching.
So I continued pushing onward, into the 9 levels of repair hell, the never-ending gauntlet of endless repairs that a busy mall can throw at me and all the holiday hours any retail veteran can vouch for, and some years pass, Microsoldering now obeys my commands and Im doing microsoldering for myself and everyone around me, and Refurbishing displays is really saving me money on my inventory and Youtube is keeping me sharp. Repair life is good, the repair force is in equilibrium.
Or so I thought.
Helping Others
I started to notice strange things happening. My day-to-day repair life is being eaten up more by jobs that are coming from other shops around me, and I had other people doing the basics for me. But with that, I started getting calls for help in general. Things as basic as me picking up some devices for repair and people asking me to show them how to solder.. While im picking up work from them. But I knew without hesitation that I should just show them. I started the whole channel to help people online that I would never meet, why not show people who ask me in person too right?
So I did and started to give away to anyone who would listen and implement. I knew that they would get it with or without me at some point, isn't it better to be the person who just helped them and helped them on their journey? That's all I ever wanted myself and now im in the position to solve that problem, even if it's only for one person at that moment.
Well it got more intense, and I had a few people even show up at my shop trying to talk to me and ask questions, I was spending my entire morning just answering questions online for people, I loved it! I knew this was my path, so I continued to do as I was doing and people were offing to send me repairs from all over the place, but I kept things pretty local. My rule? If you can't drive to me, I won't repair it for you. I just enjoyed the relationship-building part alot and most of the time I would just invite the client to the back and have them oversee the repair as i explained my process to them. I loved having a very open relationship with shops that felt they could ask anything. Mail-in doesn't afford that and I was already a busy tech so I kept pushing. But in 2018 I randomly came across a Facebook post that weird enough, allowed me to push further than I ever thought I could and maybe I went Super Saiyan for the first time.
Moving to China
Oh my goodness, I moved to China, directly to the heart of Shenzhen, Huaqiangbei. At one point I was living directly above the IC market in the same building, outside of sleeping on a factory flood, you cant get closer to the game than that. Anyway, If you haven't heard, Huaqiangbei that's the global electronics market meca center, it's where technicians take their pilgrimage if there was one to take, It is a city with a million microsolderers and schools on every corner to teach you the ins and outs of repair, the Chinese way. It's where you learn how to microsolder before you are allowed to do screen repair. It's where repair spartans are born.
So the opportunity? Move to Shenzhen to oversee the quality of current and new projects for a USA wholesale parts distributor. Honestly, I only even enquired about the job because the post seemed cryptic and mysterious, only to realize it was the next big move in my journey to the center of repair.
It all seemed so willy wonka, I went for a one-week trip with the vendor and visited all their factories and showed them my chops, and thats all it took, we were locked in. All my research and work over the years prepped me for this one interview, and I nailed it. I was exhilarated.
From that point forward I was living mostly in Shenzhen and Hong Kong with trips around China to visit other partners, I was really able to see many parts of China and enjoy a ton of new food. It was wild, it was a fever dream of every single repair-related secret I could get my eyes on and it was all mine for learning and sharing. And then it hit, the no-camera policy everywhere. I lived there and for a fact im sure they knew who I was, I walked the entire market daily looking at and for new things to discover. Every time the phone came up, or Gopro came out, there was a security guard on his way to tell me no and delete it. I would show up at a factory, and they would realize I want to film and then would tell me no. I was lucky a few times, but overall it was more of a situation where I needed to remember as much as I could since most of the factories were not from long-time partners. The long-term guys were awesome about it.
During my stay, I worked on many projects from glass technology used in displays and tempered glass to full displays where we needed to solve industry-level issues as well as create the next generation of displays. I took a few months and created some of the best aftermarket batteries in the industry, incidentally stumbling on a major issue that affects repair even today where even a genuine Apple battery won't work on another device without saying it might be counterfeit! How crazy! Feel free to check that video out btw, and then the one a few months before that one where I freaking called it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nGnAdtTDCw
And my favorite project type was all the fun tool things that I got to do. I truly enjoyed helping influence some of our industries' tools and methodologies from this perspective. While tools were the most fun, they also produced a lot of headaches in the long term. But It's still something I love to be part of and strive to do better with.
China was great until it wasn't, I was thinking that I would be living there for the foreseeable future, then in Dec 2019 things got a little wild, Im sure we all know why, and I had to hop skip and jump out there asap. I headed to Europe for a cool conference and repair get-together, then to Vietnam to visit a childhood friend, not knowing that instead of heading back to China in a few weeks, I would be in the United States in 3 days. Originally I planned to be in Vietnam for almost a month. Where was I headed next? The USA! at least until I could travel again.
Growing up with a Family in Tech
Growing up with a Family in Tech It's important to know where we come from, it's how we find the best ways to relate to one another. I believe my background resonates with many who might come across this story, as both of my parents pursued highly technical careers. My mother Dawn, a versatile and skilled technology expert, was an IT systems administrator and an all-around "technomage" for as long as I can remember, till the end of her professional career. She is still adept at handling any IT challenge thrown her way, she can even microsolder! I would be confident to drop her into any tech forum and she would find herself at home instantly. My father Ray, on the other hand, possessed a rich history in rework, repair, and or sort of mechanical problem, and to this day continues to work with PCBs and machinery. In essence, I was born to play a role in this world of repair and IT.
Additionally, my stepfather Rick played a huge role in shaping my passion for technology. He himself, part of many of the earliest and most prolific hacking and cracking groups of the 90s, introduced a different type of mentality and inspired me to thoroughly explore the inner workings of computers. The unique blend of IT, repair, and general tech tomfoolery from all three of my parents in my life provided a solid foundation for my own journey to the center of repair, they are my 3 heroes of tech and I would not be this person today without all of them. I think my entire memory of childhood till 18 was spent as you would expect, tearing apart stuff, playing with computers, learning the ways of the wider scope of the emerging internet and letting it shape me through IRC, newsgroups, ICQ, AIM... all that nonsense. I'm very happy to think I was part of the earlier internet, not the earliest, but still close.
During this time, I learned a ton about standard computer stuff, as most techie kids do, and was also introduced to a healthy dose of basic through-hole soldering. Truly though, I had no clue how to solder well. I knew I needed Flux, soldering, with an Iron, but when something worked, it still felt magic because I couldn't figure out how the whole thing fits together.
Skipping to adulthood…
Life comes at you sideways sometimes. As I started needing to pay my bills, I think my tech life took a sideways direction, becoming more of a hobby as I, for some reason, found myself in a life of sales and public speaking interestingly enough I found a passion for photography. I ended up as a professional photographer and traveling salesman, doing a lot of what a city-based photographer does, weddings, school and prom stuff, headshots, whatever, making the money. I was also working in different malls at those kiosks, harassing people as they came by. You know the types of commission-only salespeople I'm talking about. They drive you crazy. My best friend and I would sell anything our boss handed us to any random person walking by. We learned that rejection means nothing in the grand scheme; it's just an opportunity.
Oddly enough, this part of my life, while devoid of any general tech work, was a huge push to help me become the person I am. It taught me all the hard-line ways to make things happen in a high-pressure, make-it-or-break-it sales environment. But I never forgot my roots, and as I slowly drifted away from surviving on sales jobs to getting back into tech, it helped me lock onto a great methodology in dealing with repair front-end skills, such as customer service, as well as learning to leverage my technical knowledge when it came down to the wire.
I remember my last sales job; I was doing more manager stuff now and running sales teams myself and training them to crush it, it was awesome. Back when polyurethane screen protectors were fresh on the market and tempered glass was just a gleam in someone's eye, we would sell those super strong cut-out screen protectors to anyone walking by. Android and iPhone were in their 1st generation on the market, and times were great. I was friends with all the wireless retail people in the mall and was slowly starting to find my way back to more technical, fun, nerd-tech-type jobs.
Headfirst into Repair
You know, sometimes it's more about who you know, than what you know. At the tail end of doing screen protectors maybe a year or so before I left direct sales, I made friends with a local repair company that was just getting started up, still in the early days, iPhone 2g 3g days, and we did a ton of referral business back and forth, it was a great time and I was pretty interested in the things they were up to.
At this point, I was starting to travel again for my current company to open new locations, train people, and repeat. One day as I was working, the friendly repair company called me and asked if my new mall location was nice, I said yes and encouraged them to move out there also, so they did, directly in front of the Apple store. A great situation to be in, especially so early in the game. Interestingly enough, through a circumstance in life, the same company offered me a job to go do the same thing for them, and really, how could I say no? Back in tech, doing repair, managing a shop from day one? Count me in! So I did and started to work for the repair company, traveling to open repair shops for them.
I will say, that my first 2-3 weeks of fixing devices were terrible, I was absolute garbage and questioned what I had gotten into for a moment, but then as soon as I was left alone in one of the new locations, I started to find my groove and do halfway decent work. Remember, nobody starts great, we all still gotta learn our fundamentals.
Working for this repair company, it felt as though I was the 5th wheel in the ownership circle, doing everything I could to push the company forward, that I had no part in owning. Creating all the different company docs and processes for my shops and sharing them with others within the company. Honestly… it was a great time to be in repair and I loved it.
During some of these discussions, I started to see how we dealt with tech damage caused by our guys, we would send them off to… the microsoldering person….. For me, this was a mental shock, so much so that I called my dad, the rework guy, who always has the answer, and I asked him, “Really, it's possible to solder something so small by hand? I thought all the phones were put together with machines” he told me yea! Sure! Why not? It's just done with hot air and solder paste. From that moment I took a serious interest in understanding this, I wanted to do it! I even called the ownership group and begged them to send me to a class to go learn. They said… no, but then send me a nice hakko FM202 and said they believed in me to just figure it out.
I was semi-furious that they would not send me to school, I was devoted and loyal to the company and only wanted to do better work, same as probably everyone reading this. But they said no.. and sent me an Iron to use with no instructions. This was not my first iron, but my dad said I needed hot air and paste to do the phones, so I was confused. I went online and instantly purchased some all-in-one rework unit and thought, yea, ill show you that I can do this and the true journey began. I left behind the basic hobbyist repair tech and chased the elusive microsoldering title. With my trusty new iron, and my father to guide me on the basics over the phone, I started to see success, but at times hit roadblocks due to the basic set of tools and lack of in-person mentorship. But my electrical theory was strong, I went to vocational school for a while before this thinking I wanted to work on security systems and spent almost 2 months learning electrical theory. So I was in a good place, my hand skills were still just beyond beginner though if I look back at it now. I was “ok” and could easily find myself in trouble on a PCB if I didn't apply 10000% focus in my crappy USB camera.
I wanted to be more serious, so I spoke to my dad more and he mentioned that if I can't see the things I'm working at correctly, then ill never get any further and I need to truly invest in better gear. So I bit the bullet and researched and ended up with a proper simufocal microscope, instead of a USB microscope, a Hakko fr 801 and I kept using my Hakko FM202 with foot pedal and progressed forward into the gauntlet of daily repairs.
I was still missing the microsoldering mentor I truly needed though, in person, to ask questions to. Until I met them one day while at a mall working, Dave the mall security guard…. My new mentor. I just didn't know it yet. He comes over to me while I'm “soldering” and asks me what I'm doing. I calmly and confidently say im “microsoldering:” and he proceeds to tell me that I think im soldering and im only fooling myself. I stopped dead in my tracks and put the iron up. And Dave explains he spent his entire career as an IPC training instructor and worked for Raytheon, and if you know the company, you know that there is 0% room for soldering error, period, end of story. Thankfully, Dave was a kickass dude and would look over my shoulder and be the final mentor needed to complete my basic training, We now have, My mom, My Dad, My Stepdad, and Dave the IPC angel who saved me from my crappy work.
Pro Repair Justin & The Art of Repair
After a few months of daily hand skills practice in basically all my free time, I really had the confidence to do anything on a motherboard, it was exhilarating. I loved it. And then they came for him. Ratheon came to my mall, found Dave, and pulled him out of retirement, the man is that legendary apparently, they needed him back. So I had to say goodbye to Dave and move forward on my own. I think Dave to this day still works at Raytheon doing product quality control and training.I was very fortunate to have been his student and wouldn't be where im at without his guidance.
After Dave left, I knew it was just about time and practice now, I had the 1 on 1, now it was time to fine-tune and think critically about the lessons I was given. I was starting to think more about other areas of repair, and I was doing a lot of inframe galaxy glass-only LOCA repair, I know, shame on me for using LOCA inside a device, but I halfway still stand behind my methodology. Either way, I needed to know more. And after some research, I learned about display refurbishing and I went crazy with the same fervor as when I learned microsoldering I mastered this new skill. There were tons of videos online, but not a single one in English, and none had instructions anyway. I just had to focus on what they were doing and try to figure out the unsaid inferences in the middle. How could I resist? A side note. At this point, iv split from the repair company and am doing my own thing, it's the best thing for me, I was excited but scared to be on my own a bit.
Around this time, my best friend Jon was my roommate, we traveled a lot together over the years doing sales, and working for the same people, and he took the time to dig into SEO and online marketing. He was doing well with it by the time he came out. The reason to bring Jon into this is that he doesn't take kindly to those who waste their potential and he's a notorious good soul who wants to help people. He can't help it. And I made the mistake of complaining a few too many times that things I wanted to learn didn't have videos online, and that there are no real serious channels to teach the crazy stuff or the weird nuances of repair and he looked me dead in the eye and told me that I was already doing the impossible in some ways and that with my background im the asshole for not sharing first when im the one asking the universe for it and that nobody earns the knowledge without hard work, nothing worthwhile is free. In reality, he just yelled at me as a best friend would, but that's the meaning he took away from it.
But he was right, I had a killer photography background that I had not touched in years and I was the microsoldering & refurb person now. And I struggled for years without the help I was still asking for, even after Dave, there were new subjects to understand... So I have no choice, the Art of Repair was brought into existence. Because nothing this complicated that it took me years be halfway good could be anything less than an art. This would be how I push forward, by doing the research and hard work and giving it to everyone else who deserves to know. And so I got to work learning from Jon about better marketing, SEO, and watching every type of youtube channel I could find to figure out how to do it right. A few months later, I was ready, and the first video went live. AOR was the best thing that ever happened to me, Now I had an outlet and a way to tie my other skills into my career and do better. The truth is, the Art of Repair has always been the thing that pushes me forward, its the thing I do when I want to express the extra repair energy I have. I think each video has been double-checking my methods and research so much that I always learn at least one new thing when I make a video, even about things I think I already know a ton about, I never want to let down the person watching.
So I continued pushing onward, into the 9 levels of repair hell, the never-ending gauntlet of endless repairs that a busy mall can throw at me and all the holiday hours any retail veteran can vouch for, and some years pass, Microsoldering now obeys my commands and Im doing microsoldering for myself and everyone around me, and Refurbishing displays is really saving me money on my inventory and Youtube is keeping me sharp. Repair life is good, the repair force is in equilibrium.
Or so I thought.
Helping Others
I started to notice strange things happening. My day-to-day repair life is being eaten up more by jobs that are coming from other shops around me, and I had other people doing the basics for me. But with that, I started getting calls for help in general. Things as basic as me picking up some devices for repair and people asking me to show them how to solder.. While im picking up work from them. But I knew without hesitation that I should just show them. I started the whole channel to help people online that I would never meet, why not show people who ask me in person too right?
So I did and started to give away to anyone who would listen and implement. I knew that they would get it with or without me at some point, isn't it better to be the person who just helped them and helped them on their journey? That's all I ever wanted myself and now im in the position to solve that problem, even if it's only for one person at that moment.
Well it got more intense, and I had a few people even show up at my shop trying to talk to me and ask questions, I was spending my entire morning just answering questions online for people, I loved it! I knew this was my path, so I continued to do as I was doing and people were offing to send me repairs from all over the place, but I kept things pretty local. My rule? If you can't drive to me, I won't repair it for you. I just enjoyed the relationship-building part alot and most of the time I would just invite the client to the back and have them oversee the repair as i explained my process to them. I loved having a very open relationship with shops that felt they could ask anything. Mail-in doesn't afford that and I was already a busy tech so I kept pushing. But in 2018 I randomly came across a Facebook post that weird enough, allowed me to push further than I ever thought I could and maybe I went Super Saiyan for the first time.
Moving to China
Oh my goodness, I moved to China, directly to the heart of Shenzhen, Huaqiangbei. At one point I was living directly above the IC market in the same building, outside of sleeping on a factory flood, you cant get closer to the game than that. Anyway, If you haven't heard, Huaqiangbei that's the global electronics market meca center, it's where technicians take their pilgrimage if there was one to take, It is a city with a million microsolderers and schools on every corner to teach you the ins and outs of repair, the Chinese way. It's where you learn how to microsolder before you are allowed to do screen repair. It's where repair spartans are born.
So the opportunity? Move to Shenzhen to oversee the quality of current and new projects for a USA wholesale parts distributor. Honestly, I only even enquired about the job because the post seemed cryptic and mysterious, only to realize it was the next big move in my journey to the center of repair.
It all seemed so willy wonka, I went for a one-week trip with the vendor and visited all their factories and showed them my chops, and thats all it took, we were locked in. All my research and work over the years prepped me for this one interview, and I nailed it. I was exhilarated.
From that point forward I was living mostly in Shenzhen and Hong Kong with trips around China to visit other partners, I was really able to see many parts of China and enjoy a ton of new food. It was wild, it was a fever dream of every single repair-related secret I could get my eyes on and it was all mine for learning and sharing. And then it hit, the no-camera policy everywhere. I lived there and for a fact im sure they knew who I was, I walked the entire market daily looking at and for new things to discover. Every time the phone came up, or Gopro came out, there was a security guard on his way to tell me no and delete it. I would show up at a factory, and they would realize I want to film and then would tell me no. I was lucky a few times, but overall it was more of a situation where I needed to remember as much as I could since most of the factories were not from long-time partners. The long-term guys were awesome about it.
During my stay, I worked on many projects from glass technology used in displays and tempered glass to full displays where we needed to solve industry-level issues as well as create the next generation of displays. I took a few months and created some of the best aftermarket batteries in the industry, incidentally stumbling on a major issue that affects repair even today where even a genuine Apple battery won't work on another device without saying it might be counterfeit! How crazy! Feel free to check that video out btw, and then the one a few months before that one where I freaking called it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nGnAdtTDCw
And my favorite project type was all the fun tool things that I got to do. I truly enjoyed helping influence some of our industries' tools and methodologies from this perspective. While tools were the most fun, they also produced a lot of headaches in the long term. But It's still something I love to be part of and strive to do better with.
China was great until it wasn't, I was thinking that I would be living there for the foreseeable future, then in Dec 2019 things got a little wild, Im sure we all know why, and I had to hop skip and jump out there asap. I headed to Europe for a cool conference and repair get-together, then to Vietnam to visit a childhood friend, not knowing that instead of heading back to China in a few weeks, I would be in the United States in 3 days. Originally I planned to be in Vietnam for almost a month. Where was I headed next? The USA! at least until I could travel again.
Growing up with a Family in Tech
Growing up with a Family in Tech It's important to know where we come from, it's how we find the best ways to relate to one another. I believe my background resonates with many who might come across this story, as both of my parents pursued highly technical careers. My mother Dawn, a versatile and skilled technology expert, was an IT systems administrator and an all-around "technomage" for as long as I can remember, till the end of her professional career. She is still adept at handling any IT challenge thrown her way, she can even microsolder! I would be confident to drop her into any tech forum and she would find herself at home instantly. My father Ray, on the other hand, possessed a rich history in rework, repair, and or sort of mechanical problem, and to this day continues to work with PCBs and machinery. In essence, I was born to play a role in this world of repair and IT.
Additionally, my stepfather Rick played a huge role in shaping my passion for technology. He himself, part of many of the earliest and most prolific hacking and cracking groups of the 90s, introduced a different type of mentality and inspired me to thoroughly explore the inner workings of computers. The unique blend of IT, repair, and general tech tomfoolery from all three of my parents in my life provided a solid foundation for my own journey to the center of repair, they are my 3 heroes of tech and I would not be this person today without all of them. I think my entire memory of childhood till 18 was spent as you would expect, tearing apart stuff, playing with computers, learning the ways of the wider scope of the emerging internet and letting it shape me through IRC, newsgroups, ICQ, AIM... all that nonsense. I'm very happy to think I was part of the earlier internet, not the earliest, but still close.
During this time, I learned a ton about standard computer stuff, as most techie kids do, and was also introduced to a healthy dose of basic through-hole soldering. Truly though, I had no clue how to solder well. I knew I needed Flux, soldering, with an Iron, but when something worked, it still felt magic because I couldn't figure out how the whole thing fits together.
Skipping to adulthood…
Life comes at you sideways sometimes. As I started needing to pay my bills, I think my tech life took a sideways direction, becoming more of a hobby as I, for some reason, found myself in a life of sales and public speaking interestingly enough I found a passion for photography. I ended up as a professional photographer and traveling salesman, doing a lot of what a city-based photographer does, weddings, school and prom stuff, headshots, whatever, making the money. I was also working in different malls at those kiosks, harassing people as they came by. You know the types of commission-only salespeople I'm talking about. They drive you crazy. My best friend and I would sell anything our boss handed us to any random person walking by. We learned that rejection means nothing in the grand scheme; it's just an opportunity.
Oddly enough, this part of my life, while devoid of any general tech work, was a huge push to help me become the person I am. It taught me all the hard-line ways to make things happen in a high-pressure, make-it-or-break-it sales environment. But I never forgot my roots, and as I slowly drifted away from surviving on sales jobs to getting back into tech, it helped me lock onto a great methodology in dealing with repair front-end skills, such as customer service, as well as learning to leverage my technical knowledge when it came down to the wire.
I remember my last sales job; I was doing more manager stuff now and running sales teams myself and training them to crush it, it was awesome. Back when polyurethane screen protectors were fresh on the market and tempered glass was just a gleam in someone's eye, we would sell those super strong cut-out screen protectors to anyone walking by. Android and iPhone were in their 1st generation on the market, and times were great. I was friends with all the wireless retail people in the mall and was slowly starting to find my way back to more technical, fun, nerd-tech-type jobs.
Headfirst into Repair
You know, sometimes it's more about who you know, than what you know. At the tail end of doing screen protectors maybe a year or so before I left direct sales, I made friends with a local repair company that was just getting started up, still in the early days, iPhone 2g 3g days, and we did a ton of referral business back and forth, it was a great time and I was pretty interested in the things they were up to.
At this point, I was starting to travel again for my current company to open new locations, train people, and repeat. One day as I was working, the friendly repair company called me and asked if my new mall location was nice, I said yes and encouraged them to move out there also, so they did, directly in front of the Apple store. A great situation to be in, especially so early in the game. Interestingly enough, through a circumstance in life, the same company offered me a job to go do the same thing for them, and really, how could I say no? Back in tech, doing repair, managing a shop from day one? Count me in! So I did and started to work for the repair company, traveling to open repair shops for them.
I will say, that my first 2-3 weeks of fixing devices were terrible, I was absolute garbage and questioned what I had gotten into for a moment, but then as soon as I was left alone in one of the new locations, I started to find my groove and do halfway decent work. Remember, nobody starts great, we all still gotta learn our fundamentals.
Working for this repair company, it felt as though I was the 5th wheel in the ownership circle, doing everything I could to push the company forward, that I had no part in owning. Creating all the different company docs and processes for my shops and sharing them with others within the company. Honestly… it was a great time to be in repair and I loved it.
During some of these discussions, I started to see how we dealt with tech damage caused by our guys, we would send them off to… the microsoldering person….. For me, this was a mental shock, so much so that I called my dad, the rework guy, who always has the answer, and I asked him, “Really, it's possible to solder something so small by hand? I thought all the phones were put together with machines” he told me yea! Sure! Why not? It's just done with hot air and solder paste. From that moment I took a serious interest in understanding this, I wanted to do it! I even called the ownership group and begged them to send me to a class to go learn. They said… no, but then send me a nice hakko FM202 and said they believed in me to just figure it out.
I was semi-furious that they would not send me to school, I was devoted and loyal to the company and only wanted to do better work, same as probably everyone reading this. But they said no.. and sent me an Iron to use with no instructions. This was not my first iron, but my dad said I needed hot air and paste to do the phones, so I was confused. I went online and instantly purchased some all-in-one rework unit and thought, yea, ill show you that I can do this and the true journey began. I left behind the basic hobbyist repair tech and chased the elusive microsoldering title. With my trusty new iron, and my father to guide me on the basics over the phone, I started to see success, but at times hit roadblocks due to the basic set of tools and lack of in-person mentorship. But my electrical theory was strong, I went to vocational school for a while before this thinking I wanted to work on security systems and spent almost 2 months learning electrical theory. So I was in a good place, my hand skills were still just beyond beginner though if I look back at it now. I was “ok” and could easily find myself in trouble on a PCB if I didn't apply 10000% focus in my crappy USB camera.
I wanted to be more serious, so I spoke to my dad more and he mentioned that if I can't see the things I'm working at correctly, then ill never get any further and I need to truly invest in better gear. So I bit the bullet and researched and ended up with a proper simufocal microscope, instead of a USB microscope, a Hakko fr 801 and I kept using my Hakko FM202 with foot pedal and progressed forward into the gauntlet of daily repairs.
I was still missing the microsoldering mentor I truly needed though, in person, to ask questions to. Until I met them one day while at a mall working, Dave the mall security guard…. My new mentor. I just didn't know it yet. He comes over to me while I'm “soldering” and asks me what I'm doing. I calmly and confidently say im “microsoldering:” and he proceeds to tell me that I think im soldering and im only fooling myself. I stopped dead in my tracks and put the iron up. And Dave explains he spent his entire career as an IPC training instructor and worked for Raytheon, and if you know the company, you know that there is 0% room for soldering error, period, end of story. Thankfully, Dave was a kickass dude and would look over my shoulder and be the final mentor needed to complete my basic training, We now have, My mom, My Dad, My Stepdad, and Dave the IPC angel who saved me from my crappy work.
Pro Repair Justin & The Art of Repair
After a few months of daily hand skills practice in basically all my free time, I really had the confidence to do anything on a motherboard, it was exhilarating. I loved it. And then they came for him. Ratheon came to my mall, found Dave, and pulled him out of retirement, the man is that legendary apparently, they needed him back. So I had to say goodbye to Dave and move forward on my own. I think Dave to this day still works at Raytheon doing product quality control and training.I was very fortunate to have been his student and wouldn't be where im at without his guidance.
After Dave left, I knew it was just about time and practice now, I had the 1 on 1, now it was time to fine-tune and think critically about the lessons I was given. I was starting to think more about other areas of repair, and I was doing a lot of inframe galaxy glass-only LOCA repair, I know, shame on me for using LOCA inside a device, but I halfway still stand behind my methodology. Either way, I needed to know more. And after some research, I learned about display refurbishing and I went crazy with the same fervor as when I learned microsoldering I mastered this new skill. There were tons of videos online, but not a single one in English, and none had instructions anyway. I just had to focus on what they were doing and try to figure out the unsaid inferences in the middle. How could I resist? A side note. At this point, iv split from the repair company and am doing my own thing, it's the best thing for me, I was excited but scared to be on my own a bit.
Around this time, my best friend Jon was my roommate, we traveled a lot together over the years doing sales, and working for the same people, and he took the time to dig into SEO and online marketing. He was doing well with it by the time he came out. The reason to bring Jon into this is that he doesn't take kindly to those who waste their potential and he's a notorious good soul who wants to help people. He can't help it. And I made the mistake of complaining a few too many times that things I wanted to learn didn't have videos online, and that there are no real serious channels to teach the crazy stuff or the weird nuances of repair and he looked me dead in the eye and told me that I was already doing the impossible in some ways and that with my background im the asshole for not sharing first when im the one asking the universe for it and that nobody earns the knowledge without hard work, nothing worthwhile is free. In reality, he just yelled at me as a best friend would, but that's the meaning he took away from it.
But he was right, I had a killer photography background that I had not touched in years and I was the microsoldering & refurb person now. And I struggled for years without the help I was still asking for, even after Dave, there were new subjects to understand... So I have no choice, the Art of Repair was brought into existence. Because nothing this complicated that it took me years be halfway good could be anything less than an art. This would be how I push forward, by doing the research and hard work and giving it to everyone else who deserves to know. And so I got to work learning from Jon about better marketing, SEO, and watching every type of youtube channel I could find to figure out how to do it right. A few months later, I was ready, and the first video went live. AOR was the best thing that ever happened to me, Now I had an outlet and a way to tie my other skills into my career and do better. The truth is, the Art of Repair has always been the thing that pushes me forward, its the thing I do when I want to express the extra repair energy I have. I think each video has been double-checking my methods and research so much that I always learn at least one new thing when I make a video, even about things I think I already know a ton about, I never want to let down the person watching.
So I continued pushing onward, into the 9 levels of repair hell, the never-ending gauntlet of endless repairs that a busy mall can throw at me and all the holiday hours any retail veteran can vouch for, and some years pass, Microsoldering now obeys my commands and Im doing microsoldering for myself and everyone around me, and Refurbishing displays is really saving me money on my inventory and Youtube is keeping me sharp. Repair life is good, the repair force is in equilibrium.
Or so I thought.
Helping Others
I started to notice strange things happening. My day-to-day repair life is being eaten up more by jobs that are coming from other shops around me, and I had other people doing the basics for me. But with that, I started getting calls for help in general. Things as basic as me picking up some devices for repair and people asking me to show them how to solder.. While im picking up work from them. But I knew without hesitation that I should just show them. I started the whole channel to help people online that I would never meet, why not show people who ask me in person too right?
So I did and started to give away to anyone who would listen and implement. I knew that they would get it with or without me at some point, isn't it better to be the person who just helped them and helped them on their journey? That's all I ever wanted myself and now im in the position to solve that problem, even if it's only for one person at that moment.
Well it got more intense, and I had a few people even show up at my shop trying to talk to me and ask questions, I was spending my entire morning just answering questions online for people, I loved it! I knew this was my path, so I continued to do as I was doing and people were offing to send me repairs from all over the place, but I kept things pretty local. My rule? If you can't drive to me, I won't repair it for you. I just enjoyed the relationship-building part alot and most of the time I would just invite the client to the back and have them oversee the repair as i explained my process to them. I loved having a very open relationship with shops that felt they could ask anything. Mail-in doesn't afford that and I was already a busy tech so I kept pushing. But in 2018 I randomly came across a Facebook post that weird enough, allowed me to push further than I ever thought I could and maybe I went Super Saiyan for the first time.
Moving to China
Oh my goodness, I moved to China, directly to the heart of Shenzhen, Huaqiangbei. At one point I was living directly above the IC market in the same building, outside of sleeping on a factory flood, you cant get closer to the game than that. Anyway, If you haven't heard, Huaqiangbei that's the global electronics market meca center, it's where technicians take their pilgrimage if there was one to take, It is a city with a million microsolderers and schools on every corner to teach you the ins and outs of repair, the Chinese way. It's where you learn how to microsolder before you are allowed to do screen repair. It's where repair spartans are born.
So the opportunity? Move to Shenzhen to oversee the quality of current and new projects for a USA wholesale parts distributor. Honestly, I only even enquired about the job because the post seemed cryptic and mysterious, only to realize it was the next big move in my journey to the center of repair.
It all seemed so willy wonka, I went for a one-week trip with the vendor and visited all their factories and showed them my chops, and thats all it took, we were locked in. All my research and work over the years prepped me for this one interview, and I nailed it. I was exhilarated.
From that point forward I was living mostly in Shenzhen and Hong Kong with trips around China to visit other partners, I was really able to see many parts of China and enjoy a ton of new food. It was wild, it was a fever dream of every single repair-related secret I could get my eyes on and it was all mine for learning and sharing. And then it hit, the no-camera policy everywhere. I lived there and for a fact im sure they knew who I was, I walked the entire market daily looking at and for new things to discover. Every time the phone came up, or Gopro came out, there was a security guard on his way to tell me no and delete it. I would show up at a factory, and they would realize I want to film and then would tell me no. I was lucky a few times, but overall it was more of a situation where I needed to remember as much as I could since most of the factories were not from long-time partners. The long-term guys were awesome about it.
During my stay, I worked on many projects from glass technology used in displays and tempered glass to full displays where we needed to solve industry-level issues as well as create the next generation of displays. I took a few months and created some of the best aftermarket batteries in the industry, incidentally stumbling on a major issue that affects repair even today where even a genuine Apple battery won't work on another device without saying it might be counterfeit! How crazy! Feel free to check that video out btw, and then the one a few months before that one where I freaking called it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nGnAdtTDCw
And my favorite project type was all the fun tool things that I got to do. I truly enjoyed helping influence some of our industries' tools and methodologies from this perspective. While tools were the most fun, they also produced a lot of headaches in the long term. But It's still something I love to be part of and strive to do better with.
China was great until it wasn't, I was thinking that I would be living there for the foreseeable future, then in Dec 2019 things got a little wild, Im sure we all know why, and I had to hop skip and jump out there asap. I headed to Europe for a cool conference and repair get-together, then to Vietnam to visit a childhood friend, not knowing that instead of heading back to China in a few weeks, I would be in the United States in 3 days. Originally I planned to be in Vietnam for almost a month. Where was I headed next? The USA! at least until I could travel again.
Growing up with a Family in Tech
Growing up with a Family in Tech It's important to know where we come from, it's how we find the best ways to relate to one another. I believe my background resonates with many who might come across this story, as both of my parents pursued highly technical careers. My mother Dawn, a versatile and skilled technology expert, was an IT systems administrator and an all-around "technomage" for as long as I can remember, till the end of her professional career. She is still adept at handling any IT challenge thrown her way, she can even microsolder! I would be confident to drop her into any tech forum and she would find herself at home instantly. My father Ray, on the other hand, possessed a rich history in rework, repair, and or sort of mechanical problem, and to this day continues to work with PCBs and machinery. In essence, I was born to play a role in this world of repair and IT.
Additionally, my stepfather Rick played a huge role in shaping my passion for technology. He himself, part of many of the earliest and most prolific hacking and cracking groups of the 90s, introduced a different type of mentality and inspired me to thoroughly explore the inner workings of computers. The unique blend of IT, repair, and general tech tomfoolery from all three of my parents in my life provided a solid foundation for my own journey to the center of repair, they are my 3 heroes of tech and I would not be this person today without all of them. I think my entire memory of childhood till 18 was spent as you would expect, tearing apart stuff, playing with computers, learning the ways of the wider scope of the emerging internet and letting it shape me through IRC, newsgroups, ICQ, AIM... all that nonsense. I'm very happy to think I was part of the earlier internet, not the earliest, but still close.
During this time, I learned a ton about standard computer stuff, as most techie kids do, and was also introduced to a healthy dose of basic through-hole soldering. Truly though, I had no clue how to solder well. I knew I needed Flux, soldering, with an Iron, but when something worked, it still felt magic because I couldn't figure out how the whole thing fits together.
Skipping to adulthood…
Life comes at you sideways sometimes. As I started needing to pay my bills, I think my tech life took a sideways direction, becoming more of a hobby as I, for some reason, found myself in a life of sales and public speaking interestingly enough I found a passion for photography. I ended up as a professional photographer and traveling salesman, doing a lot of what a city-based photographer does, weddings, school and prom stuff, headshots, whatever, making the money. I was also working in different malls at those kiosks, harassing people as they came by. You know the types of commission-only salespeople I'm talking about. They drive you crazy. My best friend and I would sell anything our boss handed us to any random person walking by. We learned that rejection means nothing in the grand scheme; it's just an opportunity.
Oddly enough, this part of my life, while devoid of any general tech work, was a huge push to help me become the person I am. It taught me all the hard-line ways to make things happen in a high-pressure, make-it-or-break-it sales environment. But I never forgot my roots, and as I slowly drifted away from surviving on sales jobs to getting back into tech, it helped me lock onto a great methodology in dealing with repair front-end skills, such as customer service, as well as learning to leverage my technical knowledge when it came down to the wire.
I remember my last sales job; I was doing more manager stuff now and running sales teams myself and training them to crush it, it was awesome. Back when polyurethane screen protectors were fresh on the market and tempered glass was just a gleam in someone's eye, we would sell those super strong cut-out screen protectors to anyone walking by. Android and iPhone were in their 1st generation on the market, and times were great. I was friends with all the wireless retail people in the mall and was slowly starting to find my way back to more technical, fun, nerd-tech-type jobs.
Headfirst into Repair
You know, sometimes it's more about who you know, than what you know. At the tail end of doing screen protectors maybe a year or so before I left direct sales, I made friends with a local repair company that was just getting started up, still in the early days, iPhone 2g 3g days, and we did a ton of referral business back and forth, it was a great time and I was pretty interested in the things they were up to.
At this point, I was starting to travel again for my current company to open new locations, train people, and repeat. One day as I was working, the friendly repair company called me and asked if my new mall location was nice, I said yes and encouraged them to move out there also, so they did, directly in front of the Apple store. A great situation to be in, especially so early in the game. Interestingly enough, through a circumstance in life, the same company offered me a job to go do the same thing for them, and really, how could I say no? Back in tech, doing repair, managing a shop from day one? Count me in! So I did and started to work for the repair company, traveling to open repair shops for them.
I will say, that my first 2-3 weeks of fixing devices were terrible, I was absolute garbage and questioned what I had gotten into for a moment, but then as soon as I was left alone in one of the new locations, I started to find my groove and do halfway decent work. Remember, nobody starts great, we all still gotta learn our fundamentals.
Working for this repair company, it felt as though I was the 5th wheel in the ownership circle, doing everything I could to push the company forward, that I had no part in owning. Creating all the different company docs and processes for my shops and sharing them with others within the company. Honestly… it was a great time to be in repair and I loved it.
During some of these discussions, I started to see how we dealt with tech damage caused by our guys, we would send them off to… the microsoldering person….. For me, this was a mental shock, so much so that I called my dad, the rework guy, who always has the answer, and I asked him, “Really, it's possible to solder something so small by hand? I thought all the phones were put together with machines” he told me yea! Sure! Why not? It's just done with hot air and solder paste. From that moment I took a serious interest in understanding this, I wanted to do it! I even called the ownership group and begged them to send me to a class to go learn. They said… no, but then send me a nice hakko FM202 and said they believed in me to just figure it out.
I was semi-furious that they would not send me to school, I was devoted and loyal to the company and only wanted to do better work, same as probably everyone reading this. But they said no.. and sent me an Iron to use with no instructions. This was not my first iron, but my dad said I needed hot air and paste to do the phones, so I was confused. I went online and instantly purchased some all-in-one rework unit and thought, yea, ill show you that I can do this and the true journey began. I left behind the basic hobbyist repair tech and chased the elusive microsoldering title. With my trusty new iron, and my father to guide me on the basics over the phone, I started to see success, but at times hit roadblocks due to the basic set of tools and lack of in-person mentorship. But my electrical theory was strong, I went to vocational school for a while before this thinking I wanted to work on security systems and spent almost 2 months learning electrical theory. So I was in a good place, my hand skills were still just beyond beginner though if I look back at it now. I was “ok” and could easily find myself in trouble on a PCB if I didn't apply 10000% focus in my crappy USB camera.
I wanted to be more serious, so I spoke to my dad more and he mentioned that if I can't see the things I'm working at correctly, then ill never get any further and I need to truly invest in better gear. So I bit the bullet and researched and ended up with a proper simufocal microscope, instead of a USB microscope, a Hakko fr 801 and I kept using my Hakko FM202 with foot pedal and progressed forward into the gauntlet of daily repairs.
I was still missing the microsoldering mentor I truly needed though, in person, to ask questions to. Until I met them one day while at a mall working, Dave the mall security guard…. My new mentor. I just didn't know it yet. He comes over to me while I'm “soldering” and asks me what I'm doing. I calmly and confidently say im “microsoldering:” and he proceeds to tell me that I think im soldering and im only fooling myself. I stopped dead in my tracks and put the iron up. And Dave explains he spent his entire career as an IPC training instructor and worked for Raytheon, and if you know the company, you know that there is 0% room for soldering error, period, end of story. Thankfully, Dave was a kickass dude and would look over my shoulder and be the final mentor needed to complete my basic training, We now have, My mom, My Dad, My Stepdad, and Dave the IPC angel who saved me from my crappy work.
Pro Repair Justin & The Art of Repair
After a few months of daily hand skills practice in basically all my free time, I really had the confidence to do anything on a motherboard, it was exhilarating. I loved it. And then they came for him. Ratheon came to my mall, found Dave, and pulled him out of retirement, the man is that legendary apparently, they needed him back. So I had to say goodbye to Dave and move forward on my own. I think Dave to this day still works at Raytheon doing product quality control and training.I was very fortunate to have been his student and wouldn't be where im at without his guidance.
After Dave left, I knew it was just about time and practice now, I had the 1 on 1, now it was time to fine-tune and think critically about the lessons I was given. I was starting to think more about other areas of repair, and I was doing a lot of inframe galaxy glass-only LOCA repair, I know, shame on me for using LOCA inside a device, but I halfway still stand behind my methodology. Either way, I needed to know more. And after some research, I learned about display refurbishing and I went crazy with the same fervor as when I learned microsoldering I mastered this new skill. There were tons of videos online, but not a single one in English, and none had instructions anyway. I just had to focus on what they were doing and try to figure out the unsaid inferences in the middle. How could I resist? A side note. At this point, iv split from the repair company and am doing my own thing, it's the best thing for me, I was excited but scared to be on my own a bit.
Around this time, my best friend Jon was my roommate, we traveled a lot together over the years doing sales, and working for the same people, and he took the time to dig into SEO and online marketing. He was doing well with it by the time he came out. The reason to bring Jon into this is that he doesn't take kindly to those who waste their potential and he's a notorious good soul who wants to help people. He can't help it. And I made the mistake of complaining a few too many times that things I wanted to learn didn't have videos online, and that there are no real serious channels to teach the crazy stuff or the weird nuances of repair and he looked me dead in the eye and told me that I was already doing the impossible in some ways and that with my background im the asshole for not sharing first when im the one asking the universe for it and that nobody earns the knowledge without hard work, nothing worthwhile is free. In reality, he just yelled at me as a best friend would, but that's the meaning he took away from it.
But he was right, I had a killer photography background that I had not touched in years and I was the microsoldering & refurb person now. And I struggled for years without the help I was still asking for, even after Dave, there were new subjects to understand... So I have no choice, the Art of Repair was brought into existence. Because nothing this complicated that it took me years be halfway good could be anything less than an art. This would be how I push forward, by doing the research and hard work and giving it to everyone else who deserves to know. And so I got to work learning from Jon about better marketing, SEO, and watching every type of youtube channel I could find to figure out how to do it right. A few months later, I was ready, and the first video went live. AOR was the best thing that ever happened to me, Now I had an outlet and a way to tie my other skills into my career and do better. The truth is, the Art of Repair has always been the thing that pushes me forward, its the thing I do when I want to express the extra repair energy I have. I think each video has been double-checking my methods and research so much that I always learn at least one new thing when I make a video, even about things I think I already know a ton about, I never want to let down the person watching.
So I continued pushing onward, into the 9 levels of repair hell, the never-ending gauntlet of endless repairs that a busy mall can throw at me and all the holiday hours any retail veteran can vouch for, and some years pass, Microsoldering now obeys my commands and Im doing microsoldering for myself and everyone around me, and Refurbishing displays is really saving me money on my inventory and Youtube is keeping me sharp. Repair life is good, the repair force is in equilibrium.
Or so I thought.
Helping Others
I started to notice strange things happening. My day-to-day repair life is being eaten up more by jobs that are coming from other shops around me, and I had other people doing the basics for me. But with that, I started getting calls for help in general. Things as basic as me picking up some devices for repair and people asking me to show them how to solder.. While im picking up work from them. But I knew without hesitation that I should just show them. I started the whole channel to help people online that I would never meet, why not show people who ask me in person too right?
So I did and started to give away to anyone who would listen and implement. I knew that they would get it with or without me at some point, isn't it better to be the person who just helped them and helped them on their journey? That's all I ever wanted myself and now im in the position to solve that problem, even if it's only for one person at that moment.
Well it got more intense, and I had a few people even show up at my shop trying to talk to me and ask questions, I was spending my entire morning just answering questions online for people, I loved it! I knew this was my path, so I continued to do as I was doing and people were offing to send me repairs from all over the place, but I kept things pretty local. My rule? If you can't drive to me, I won't repair it for you. I just enjoyed the relationship-building part alot and most of the time I would just invite the client to the back and have them oversee the repair as i explained my process to them. I loved having a very open relationship with shops that felt they could ask anything. Mail-in doesn't afford that and I was already a busy tech so I kept pushing. But in 2018 I randomly came across a Facebook post that weird enough, allowed me to push further than I ever thought I could and maybe I went Super Saiyan for the first time.
Moving to China
Oh my goodness, I moved to China, directly to the heart of Shenzhen, Huaqiangbei. At one point I was living directly above the IC market in the same building, outside of sleeping on a factory flood, you cant get closer to the game than that. Anyway, If you haven't heard, Huaqiangbei that's the global electronics market meca center, it's where technicians take their pilgrimage if there was one to take, It is a city with a million microsolderers and schools on every corner to teach you the ins and outs of repair, the Chinese way. It's where you learn how to microsolder before you are allowed to do screen repair. It's where repair spartans are born.
So the opportunity? Move to Shenzhen to oversee the quality of current and new projects for a USA wholesale parts distributor. Honestly, I only even enquired about the job because the post seemed cryptic and mysterious, only to realize it was the next big move in my journey to the center of repair.
It all seemed so willy wonka, I went for a one-week trip with the vendor and visited all their factories and showed them my chops, and thats all it took, we were locked in. All my research and work over the years prepped me for this one interview, and I nailed it. I was exhilarated.
From that point forward I was living mostly in Shenzhen and Hong Kong with trips around China to visit other partners, I was really able to see many parts of China and enjoy a ton of new food. It was wild, it was a fever dream of every single repair-related secret I could get my eyes on and it was all mine for learning and sharing. And then it hit, the no-camera policy everywhere. I lived there and for a fact im sure they knew who I was, I walked the entire market daily looking at and for new things to discover. Every time the phone came up, or Gopro came out, there was a security guard on his way to tell me no and delete it. I would show up at a factory, and they would realize I want to film and then would tell me no. I was lucky a few times, but overall it was more of a situation where I needed to remember as much as I could since most of the factories were not from long-time partners. The long-term guys were awesome about it.
During my stay, I worked on many projects from glass technology used in displays and tempered glass to full displays where we needed to solve industry-level issues as well as create the next generation of displays. I took a few months and created some of the best aftermarket batteries in the industry, incidentally stumbling on a major issue that affects repair even today where even a genuine Apple battery won't work on another device without saying it might be counterfeit! How crazy! Feel free to check that video out btw, and then the one a few months before that one where I freaking called it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nGnAdtTDCw
And my favorite project type was all the fun tool things that I got to do. I truly enjoyed helping influence some of our industries' tools and methodologies from this perspective. While tools were the most fun, they also produced a lot of headaches in the long term. But It's still something I love to be part of and strive to do better with.
China was great until it wasn't, I was thinking that I would be living there for the foreseeable future, then in Dec 2019 things got a little wild, Im sure we all know why, and I had to hop skip and jump out there asap. I headed to Europe for a cool conference and repair get-together, then to Vietnam to visit a childhood friend, not knowing that instead of heading back to China in a few weeks, I would be in the United States in 3 days. Originally I planned to be in Vietnam for almost a month. Where was I headed next? The USA! at least until I could travel again.
Growing up with a Family in Tech
It’s important to know where we come from, it’s how we find the best ways to relate to one another. I believe my background resonates with many who might come across this story, as both of my parents pursued highly technical careers. My mother Dawn, a versatile and skilled technology expert, was an IT systems administrator and an all-around “technomage” for as long as I can remember, till the end of her professional career. She is still adept at handling any IT challenge thrown her way, she can even microsolder! I would be confident to drop her into any tech forum and she would find herself at home instantly. My father Ray, on the other hand, possessed a rich history in rework, repair, and or sort of mechanical problem, and to this day continues to work with PCBs and machinery. In essence, I was born to play a role in this world of repair and IT.
Additionally, my stepfather Rick played a huge role in shaping my passion for technology. He himself, part of many of the earliest and most prolific hacking and cracking groups of the 90s, introduced a different type of mentality and inspired me to thoroughly explore the inner workings of computers. The unique blend of IT, repair, and general tech tomfoolery from all three of my parents in my life provided a solid foundation for my own journey to the center of repair, they are my 3 heroes of tech and I would not be this person today without all of them. I think my entire memory of childhood till 18 was spent as you would expect, tearing apart stuff, playing with computers, learning the ways of the wider scope of the emerging internet and letting it shape me through IRC, newsgroups, ICQ, AIM… all that nonsense. I’m very happy to think I was part of the earlier internet, not the earliest, but still close.
During this time, I learned a ton about standard computer stuff, as most techie kids do, and was also introduced to a healthy dose of basic through-hole soldering. Truly though, I had no clue how to solder well. I knew I needed Flux, soldering, with an Iron, but when something worked, it still felt magic because I couldn’t figure out how the whole thing fits together.
Skipping to adulthood…
Life comes at you sideways sometimes. As I started needing to pay my bills, I think my tech life took a sideways direction, becoming more of a hobby as I, for some reason, found myself in a life of sales and public speaking interestingly enough I found a passion for photography. I ended up as a professional photographer and traveling salesman, doing a lot of what a city-based photographer does, weddings, school and prom stuff, headshots, whatever, making the money. I was also working in different malls at those kiosks, harassing people as they came by. You know the types of commission-only salespeople I’m talking about. They drive you crazy. My best friend and I would sell anything our boss handed us to any random person walking by. We learned that rejection means nothing in the grand scheme; it’s just an opportunity
Oddly enough, this part of my life, while devoid of any general tech work, was a huge push to help me become the person I am. It taught me all the hard-line ways to make things happen in a high-pressure, make-it-or-break-it sales environment. But I never forgot my roots, and as I slowly drifted away from surviving on sales jobs to getting back into tech, it helped me lock onto a great methodology in dealing with repair front-end skills, such as customer service, as well as learning to leverage my technical knowledge when it came down to the wire.
I remember my last sales job; I was doing more manager stuff now and running sales teams myself and training them to crush it, it was awesome. Back when polyurethane screen protectors were fresh on the market and tempered glass was just a gleam in someone’s eye, we would sell those super strong cut-out screen protectors to anyone walking by. Android and iPhone were in their 1st generation on the market, and times were great. I was friends with all the wireless retail people in the mall and was slowly starting to find my way back to more technical, fun, nerd-tech-type jobs.
Headfirst into Repair
You know, sometimes it’s more about who you know, than what you know. At the tail end of doing screen protectors maybe a year or so before I left direct sales, I made friends with a local repair company that was just getting started up, still in the early days, iPhone 2g 3g days, and we did a ton of referral business back and forth, it was a great time and I was pretty interested in the things they were up to.
At this point, I was starting to travel again for my current company to open new locations, train people, and repeat. One day as I was working, the friendly repair company called me and asked if my new mall location was nice, I said yes and encouraged them to move out there also, so they did, directly in front of the Apple store. A great situation to be in, especially so early in the game. Interestingly enough, through a circumstance in life, the same company offered me a job to go do the same thing for them, and really, how could I say no? Back in tech, doing repair, managing a shop from day one? Count me in! So I did and started to work for the repair company, traveling to open repair shops for them.
I will say, that my first 2-3 weeks of fixing devices were terrible, I was absolute garbage and questioned what I had gotten into for a moment, but then as soon as I was left alone in one of the new locations, I started to find my groove and do halfway decent work. Remember, nobody starts great, we all still gotta learn our fundamentals.
Working for this repair company, it felt as though I was the 5th wheel in the ownership circle, doing everything I could to push the company forward, that I had no part in owning. Creating all the different company docs and processes for my shops and sharing them with others within the company. Honestly… it was a great time to be in repair and I loved it.
During some of these discussions, I started to see how we dealt with tech damage caused by our guys, we would send them off to… the microsoldering person….. For me, this was a mental shock, so much so that I called my dad, the rework guy, who always has the answer, and I asked him, “Really, it’s possible to solder something so small by hand? I thought all the phones were put together with machines” he told me yea! Sure! Why not? It’s just done with hot air and solder paste. From that moment I took a serious interest in understanding this, I wanted to do it! I even called the ownership group and begged them to send me to a class to go learn. They said… no, but then send me a nice hakko FM202 and said they believed in me to just figure it out.
I was semi-furious that they would not send me to school, I was devoted and loyal to the company and only wanted to do better work, same as probably everyone reading this. But they said no.. and sent me an Iron to use with no instructions. This was not my first iron, but my dad said I needed hot air and paste to do the phones, so I was confused. I went online and instantly purchased some all-in-one rework unit and thought, yea, ill show you that I can do this and the true journey began.
I left behind the basic hobbyist repair tech and chased the elusive microsoldering title. With my trusty new iron, and my father to guide me on the basics over the phone, I started to see success, but at times hit roadblocks due to the basic set of tools and lack of in-person mentorship. But my electrical theory was strong, I went to vocational school for a while before this thinking I wanted to work on security systems and spent almost 2 months learning electrical theory. So I was in a good place, my hand skills were still just beyond beginner though if I look back at it now. I was “ok” and could easily find myself in trouble on a PCB if I didn’t apply 10000% focus in my crappy USB camera.
I wanted to be more serious, so I spoke to my dad more and he mentioned that if I can’t see the things I’m working at correctly, then ill never get any further and I need to truly invest in better gear. So I bit the bullet and researched and ended up with a proper simufocal microscope, instead of a USB microscope, a Hakko fr 801 and I kept using my Hakko FM202 with foot pedal and progressed forward into the gauntlet of daily repairs.
I was still missing the microsoldering mentor I truly needed though, in person, to ask questions to. Until I met them one day while at a mall working, Dave the mall security guard…. My new mentor. I just didn’t know it yet. He comes over to me while I’m “soldering” and asks me what I’m doing. I calmly and confidently say im “microsoldering:” and he proceeds to tell me that I think im soldering and im only fooling myself. I stopped dead in my tracks and put the iron up. And Dave explains he spent his entire career as an IPC training instructor and worked for Raytheon, and if you know the company, you know that there is 0% room for soldering error, period, end of story. Thankfully, Dave was a kickass dude and would look over my shoulder and be the final mentor needed to complete my basic training, We now have, My mom, My Dad, My Stepdad, and Dave the IPC angel who saved me from my crappy work.
Pro Repair Justin & The Art of Repair
After a few months of daily hand skills practice in basically all my free time, I really had the confidence to do anything on a motherboard, it was exhilarating. I loved it. And then they came for him. Ratheon came to my mall, found Dave, and pulled him out of retirement, the man is that legendary apparently, they needed him back. So I had to say goodbye to Dave and move forward on my own. I think Dave to this day still works at Raytheon doing product quality control and training.I was very fortunate to have been his student and wouldn’t be where im at without his guidance.
After Dave left, I knew it was just about time and practice now, I had the 1 on 1, now it was time to fine-tune and think critically about the lessons I was given. I was starting to think more about other areas of repair, and I was doing a lot of inframe galaxy glass-only LOCA repair, I know, shame on me for using LOCA inside a device, but I halfway still stand behind my methodology. Either way, I needed to know more. And after some research, I learned about display refurbishing and I went crazy with the same fervor as when I learned microsoldering I mastered this new skill. There were tons of videos online, but not a single one in English, and none had instructions anyway. I just had to focus on what they were doing and try to figure out the unsaid inferences in the middle. How could I resist? A side note. At this point, iv split from the repair company and am doing my own thing, it’s the best thing for me, I was excited but scared to be on my own a bit.
Around this time, my best friend Jon was my roommate, we traveled a lot together over the years doing sales, and working for the same people, and he took the time to dig into SEO and online marketing. He was doing well with it by the time he came out. The reason to bring Jon into this is that he doesn’t take kindly to those who waste their potential and he’s a notorious good soul who wants to help people. He can’t help it. And I made the mistake of complaining a few too many times that things I wanted to learn didn’t have videos online, and that there are no real serious channels to teach the crazy stuff or the weird nuances of repair and he looked me dead in the eye and told me that I was already doing the impossible in some ways and that with my background im the asshole for not sharing first when im the one asking the universe for it and that nobody earns the knowledge without hard work, nothing worthwhile is free. In reality, he just yelled at me as a best friend would, but that’s the meaning he took away from it.
But he was right, I had a killer photography background that I had not touched in years and I was the microsoldering & refurb person now. And I struggled for years without the help I was still asking for, even after Dave, there were new subjects to understand… So I have no choice, the Art of Repair was brought into existence. Because nothing this complicated that it took me years be halfway good could be anything less than an art. This would be how I push forward, by doing the research and hard work and giving it to everyone else who deserves to know. And so I got to work learning from Jon about better marketing, SEO, and watching every type of youtube channel I could find to figure out how to do it right. A few months later, I was ready, and the first video went live.
AOR was the best thing that ever happened to me, Now I had an outlet and a way to tie my other skills into my career and do better. The truth is, the Art of Repair has always been the thing that pushes me forward, its the thing I do when I want to express the extra repair energy I have. I think each video has been double-checking my methods and research so much that I always learn at least one new thing when I make a video, even about things I think I already know a ton about, I never want to let down the person watching.
So I continued pushing onward, into the 9 levels of repair hell, the never-ending gauntlet of endless repairs that a busy mall can throw at me and all the holiday hours any retail veteran can vouch for, and some years pass, Microsoldering now obeys my commands and Im doing microsoldering for myself and everyone around me, and Refurbishing displays is really saving me money on my inventory and Youtube is keeping me sharp. Repair life is good, the repair force is in equilibrium.
Or so I thought.
Helping Others
I started to notice strange things happening. My day-to-day repair life is being eaten up more by jobs that are coming from other shops around me, and I had other people doing the basics for me. But with that, I started getting calls for help in general. Things as basic as me picking up some devices for repair and people asking me to show them how to solder.. While im picking up work from them. But I knew without hesitation that I should just show them. I started the whole channel to help people online that I would never meet, why not show people who ask me in person too right?
So I did and started to give away to anyone who would listen and implement. I knew that they would get it with or without me at some point, isn’t it better to be the person who just helped them and helped them on their journey? That’s all I ever wanted myself and now im in the position to solve that problem, even if it’s only for one person at that moment.
Well it got more intense, and I had a few people even show up at my shop trying to talk to me and ask questions, I was spending my entire morning just answering questions online for people, I loved it! I knew this was my path, so I continued to do as I was doing and people were offing to send me repairs from all over the place, but I kept things pretty local. My rule? If you can’t drive to me, I won’t repair it for you. I just enjoyed the relationship-building part alot and most of the time I would just invite the client to the back and have them oversee the repair as i explained my process to them. I loved having a very open relationship with shops that felt they could ask anything. Mail-in doesn’t afford that and I was already a busy tech so I kept pushing. But in 2018 I randomly came across a Facebook post that weird enough, allowed me to push further than I ever thought I could and maybe I went Super Saiyan for the first time.
Moving to China
Oh my goodness, I moved to China, directly to the heart of Shenzhen, Huaqiangbei. At one point I was living directly above the IC market in the same building, outside of sleeping on a factory flood, you cant get closer to the game than that. Anyway, If you haven’t heard, Huaqiangbei that’s the global electronics market meca center, it’s where technicians take their pilgrimage if there was one to take, It is a city with a million microsolderers and schools on every corner to teach you the ins and outs of repair, the Chinese way. It’s where you learn how to microsolder before you are allowed to do screen repair. It’s where repair spartans are born.
So the opportunity? Move to Shenzhen to oversee the quality of current and new projects for a USA wholesale parts distributor. Honestly, I only even enquired about the job because the post seemed cryptic and mysterious, only to realize it was the next big move in my journey to the center of repair.
It all seemed so willy wonka, I went for a one-week trip with the vendor and visited all their factories and showed them my chops, and thats all it took, we were locked in. All my research and work over the years prepped me for this one interview, and I nailed it. I was exhilarated.
From that point forward I was living mostly in Shenzhen and Hong Kong with trips around China to visit other partners, I was really able to see many parts of China and enjoy a ton of new food. It was wild, it was a fever dream of every single repair-related secret I could get my eyes on and it was all mine for learning and sharing. And then it hit, the no-camera policy everywhere. I lived there and for a fact im sure they knew who I was, I walked the entire market daily looking at and for new things to discover. Every time the phone came up, or Gopro came out, there was a security guard on his way to tell me no and delete it. I would show up at a factory, and they would realize I want to film and then would tell me no. I was lucky a few times, but overall it was more of a situation where I needed to remember as much as I could since most of the factories were not from long-time partners. The long-term guys were awesome about it.
During my stay, I worked on many projects from glass technology used in displays and tempered glass to full displays where we needed to solve industry-level issues as well as create the next generation of displays. I took a few months and created some of the best aftermarket batteries in the industry, incidentally stumbling on a major issue that affects repair even today where even a genuine Apple battery won’t work on another device without saying it might be counterfeit! How crazy! Feel free to check that video out btw, and then the one a few months before that one where I freaking called it!
And my favorite project type was all the fun tool things that I got to do. I truly enjoyed helping influence some of our industries’ tools and methodologies from this perspective. While tools were the most fun, they also produced a lot of headaches in the long term. But It’s still something I love to be part of and strive to do better with.
China was great until it wasn’t, I was thinking that I would be living there for the foreseeable future, then in Dec 2019 things got a little wild, Im sure we all know why, and I had to hop skip and jump out there asap. I headed to Europe for a cool conference and repair get-together, then to Vietnam to visit a childhood friend, not knowing that instead of heading back to China in a few weeks, I would be in the United States in 3 days. Originally I planned to be in Vietnam for almost a month. Where was I headed next? The USA! at least until I could travel again.
Currently Living Between Europe, South America, and The United States
The moment travel was on green light, I instantly flew back to Europe and started spending time in the Netherlands with a good partner I started working with during the year of downtime. They share a lot of the same repair values as the Art of Repair so it’s been great! Being in Europe as a whole was and is a blast, its where im at now for atleast half of the year, and I’ve got so many new and amazing adventures happening here. Im also spending quite a bit of time in South America now too, I intend to spread the Art of Repair to every repair shop I can!
If you have made it this far, I think you might be the type whos trying to push ahead too, I think many people like me just can’t get enough repair, and I hope you can see how much I want to empower your journey.
So, I’ll ask again: Do you want to learn from one of the most well-traveled and experienced techs on the planet?
If you’re ready to jumpstart your Journey to the center of repair, check out the cool things im doing below that you can also be part of!