The Digital Doctor will see you now

August 17, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

The Digital Doctor will see you now

Leo Mistrolia opened his gadget repair shop in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. He was 18 years old, had saved every dollar from working overnight at Wawa and apprenticing at another repair shop, and decided to take a leap of faith on a local storefront in New Jersey. "I thought that was a great idea," he says dryly. "Physical retail. Yeah. What could go wrong?" But he bet that people working remotely would need their devices working more than ever, and that the nearest repair option—a 45-minute drive away—was too far. For the first six months, he kept his overnight Wawa job and redirected his paychecks into the business account to stay afloat. Then the client base built, and "year after year, it's just been getting crazier and crazier."

The content business was always the dream

Continue reading the full summary in the app — free to try.

Read Full Summary →

Free • No credit card required

Listen to Audio Summary Open in App

Never miss an episode of The Vergecast

Get every new episode summarized in your inbox — free, ~5 minutes to read.

No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.

What you'll learn

1 (00:02) **Episode Introduction & Guest Setup** - David Pierce introduces Leo Mistrolia (The Digital Doctor) and explains the two-part structure: today is Leo’s personal story, tomorrow is a deep dive on "Ramageddon."
2 (03:46) **Origin Story: Why Start a Repair Shop in COVID?** - Leo explains he opened his shop at 18 during the peak of COVID, using savings from working at Wawa and a previous repair job.
3 (06:29) **Early Days: What People Brought In** - The first jobs were simple screen repairs, batteries, tablets, and water-damaged computers, with the mix changing week by week.
4 (07:57) **From Repair Shop to Content Business** - Leo describes his childhood dream of being a YouTuber, but the content side didn’t take off until he was established in the shop.
5 (10:47) **The Authenticity Principle: Customers as Content** - Leo explains that 90% of his customers now come because they saw his videos, some driving hours from Brooklyn or out of state.
6 (13:14) **The Core Tension: Business vs. Content** - Leo reveals his biggest current challenge: balancing the physical repair shop (30+ devices/day, 300 in queue) with the content business that feeds it.
7 (16:40) **What People Are Actually Fixing Now** - Leo describes the generational migration of repairs: iPhone 13s were the bread and butter a year ago, now it’s 15s, 16s, and 17s. Older phones (SEs, 11s) are rare.

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

A few years ago, Leo Mastrolia started a gadget repair shop. Little did he know he’d eventually become known across the internet as The Digital Doctor, and would learn to fix practically every gadget you can think of. On this episode, which is part one of our conversation with Leo, he tells us about his journey as a gadget fixer, the growth of his social channels, and how right-to-repair fights and upgrade cycles are affecting life in his store.