Delving Into The Life Of A CEO: An Interview with David Rosner

Thanks to his family and friends, David Rosner dared to start his own business. He is the founder and CEO of iSupport, a Luxembourgish company that provides support to those who have an Apple device. Today, Mailbutler has the chance to get to know more about David’s job, how he organises himself to stay productive and how his daily work has changed due to Corona.

Hi David! Thanks for giving us the opportunity to learn more about you and your job. As we know, you are the founder of iSupport. But for those who are not familiar with your company, could you explain what your job is about?

Hi, thanks for having me for the interview...first of all.

So, my company is called iSupport. We are a small Luxembourgish company specialised (as the name says it) in Apple product support as well as the Apple ecosystem. This means that we do some sales but mainly specialise in bringing all kind of software solutions to private, but mainly small and medium sized companies. These solutions go from simple things like having all their marvelous Apple devices synchronise perfectly together to solutions for professional mail servers, decentralised backups, configuring of peripherals, in fact anything a small company would need to function with Apple devices in a business environment. 

I work alone (still) but do outsource to some freelancers occasionally. Nevertheless, I realise that I have grown too big to be small and alone, but still too small to be big too.

Oh! So, as you work alone, I imagine that you have to do a lot of different things in order to achieve your goals. Which are the main challenges you have to face, being a CEO and having such a big responsibility within the company?

I think my main goal is to give impeccable service to my customers. I strive to make all my customers 100% satisfied and treat them as I would wish to be treated if I was to have to use the services of a company myself. I don’t want to say it is easy always living up to the problem-resolution and solving all issues, but customers will cherish the transparency you show and also feel if you are sincere.

Too many companies don’t really love their customers and thus fail in delivering whatever service they sell. I turn it around and first love my customers and in return get a long-term business relationship with them. So to answer your question: my challenge is in putting customers at ease that we care about them, their devices, their data, their fidelity in long term and not just a one-shot “serve & bill”.

That’s a really good goal and, therefore, a big challenge! How did you decide to set up this kind of business alone?

Love the question and in fact have the spot-on answer I think:

In fact the idea for iSupport didn’t come from me. When I moved back to Luxembourg after having lived in Ghent in the flemish part of Belgium for 10 years, where by the way I worked in the fashion industry, I wasn’t quite sure what the next professional step in my life would be. As in the past I already always had a liking for IT and also took care of all needs in my previous company, my brother-in-law as well as a friend, independently of each other, asked for help with their Apple devices as they knew I was tech-savvy.

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They both were overwhelmed that I was able to solve their issues and were quite upset that the main Apple Premium Reseller here in Luxembourg wasn’t able to help them. They both told me they thought I should start a company offering these kind of services. I was baffled as first of all I wasn’t (and still don’t consider myself) an IT engineer but it seemed that my knowledge was sufficient to propose a large variety of services in this sector. I thus analysed the market, realised there were only very few companies proposing these services and launched my business a couple of months later.

I must also say that I am very lucky to somehow be a parasite on the success of the largest company in the world. I don’t have to convince people to buy the products but just let the others do their work in sales and then be ready to help customers when they can’t find solutions by themselves.

Wow, good story. You can be very glad that others trusted you to start a business! And that’s true, Apple is a well-known company with lots of loyal customers. You can take advantage of it and that’s really clever!

Let’s continue talking a little more about your job.  What does a typical day of David Rosner at iSupport look like? 

Gladly enough no days looks like the next. As iSupport is confronted with a large variety in requests of services, we are constantly challenged to switch between different tasks. Communication with the customer is a large section of problem resolution and keeping up good communication is probably a large part of our business. If someone asked me what a typical day at iSupport would look like, it would be very difficult to answer as our main job is problem-solving and believe me if I say that you can’t even imagine how many things can go wrong in IT.

Each day being different from the day before and carrying out lots of different tasks means that you have to organise yourself to finish everything in time. What is your secret to remember the deadlines of important tasks?

I don’t solely rely on setting up reminders in my calendar and so far don’t use any workflow software as the size of my company has not yet outsized my personal capacity to handle these tasks, but I definitely couldn’t do without two main tools. Although I am a very digital person, I still love little Post-It notes as they give me some physical view on what tasks still have to be completed, but the Tasks & Reminders function in Mailbutler (especially since the app on iOS also pushes notifications) makes this part of handling tasks a breeze.

Wow, it is interesting to know how you combine two different ways of managing things, the traditional and the digital way.

I would like to talk to you about the Corona crisis we all are facing right now. I imagine that it has also had an impact on you and your company. How exactly has it affected your work?

The present health-crisis has definitely changed the way people work. Our main challenge over the last couple of weeks has been up-keeping our level of service in supporting our customers, although not being able to physically meet them. Gladly enough we have very powerful remote assistance tools which make problem resolution easy.

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Nevertheless I think many companies realise how few resources they have devoted to remote accessibility of servers, conferencing for team work etc. On the other hand I believe that we may have a slightly different approach to regular office work in the future and will more often consider remote work from home.

Yes, that is true… Does it mean that you are working from home now?

I am working from home right now because of the sanitary restrictions. Most of the urgent tasks my customers have right now can be solved by remote assistance and as long as we need to fight the virus outbreak I’ll keep it this way. I wouldn’t really need an office as most of my work could be done from a remote location or at my customers offices and homes, but I nevertheless cherish having a specific space dedicated to work and with an ultra-high Internet connection, a conference room for meetings, a coffee machine and a basket for my dog Dita.

Well said! Now the best thing we could do is stay at home. And as you are doing home office, have you noticed a change in your productivity?

Workflow has slightly slowed down the last couple of days as many companies are waiting for the situation to evolve and have put a lot of their projects on hold. I profit from this time to continue remote assistance to those in need but also to at last find the time to work on a new website, perfect the administrative tools I work with right now (anybody running a company knows that a large part of the work is not the service one provides but the administrative load which comes with it) and get ready to have all the right tools waiting for the situation to return to normal. Work is definitely not quite as productive as working from my office, but this is mainly due to the personal decision to take it easier during this phase.

It is normal to perceive that our days are less productive now, but I think we have to get used to the current situation and do our best to increase our productivity.

Do you use any tools to stay productive enough so that you can continue with your tasks?

Well, I have quite some tools, but there is definitely one which I wouldn’t want to function without. Want to have a guess? As e-mail communication is very important in our workflow, and following up on emails and service requests by customers is one of our most tedious tasks, Mailbutler has definitely played a huge role in improving task management. Basically, Mailbutler has taken the hassle out of combing through e-mails to find that a specific request by a customer was forgotten or never completed. Be it for the possibility to make sure an e-mail has been received and read, followed up on or simply not forgotten is worth gold. 

Thanks! We are so glad that Mailbutler helps you improve the management of your company. Why did you decide to use Mailbutler?

I first discovered Mailbutler many years ago, long before it has all the marvelous functions it has right now and before I relied on it for professional productivity. I believe I was looking for a tool for making my signature look pretty & add some neat functions like icons with links to Facebook & other social media. When I started iSupport I quickly understood that Mailbutler had a one-of-a-kind integration into the native Mac Mail app and have ever since loved the ever-evolving functionalities and stability of this marvellous tool. I have shared it with numerous customers and all love it.

I think one has to have used it to understand the added value of this nifty little yet absolutely indispensable tool. 

Wow! Thanks a lot for your words. We are continuously working on improving Mailbutler and on providing the best service possible to make sure all of our customers will be as satisfied as you are!

Thanks again for giving us the opportunity to chat with you. We wish you all the best, David!

Did you read the last interview, where we had de chance to interview Jamie Lingwood? If not, keep reading this interesting article "An Interview About Living The Life Of A Solopreneur".