Latest / WTF to Unstuck™ with Clint Williams / Navigating Business Ownership with Neill Harmer
Transcript
- speaker-0: Hey there, I am Clint Williams and I work with small agencies and solopreneurs, and I talk about things like pricing, positioning, pipeline process, and people. My passion is helping folks really step into their role as either an owner or a team member and be excited to go to work every day. So today I've got the privilege of chatting with someone who I really admire and respect, and I'm proud to call a friend, Neil Harmer, owner of Rudder Digital. Rudder is the Calm Web Partner for Established Businesses. So Neil, welcome. Thanks for talking with me today. Hey man. Yeah, we go we go way back longer than either of us really want to admit, I think, right? speaker-1: Thanks for having me. Way longer. You don't have as much visible gray hair as I do, so ⁓ speaker-0: No, it all fell out. That's that's speaker-1: I am seeing you right there though. You're you're showing ⁓ you're showing ⁓ There's a lot speaker-0: There's a lot. I know. well, so today, like what I want to do with this, and thanks so much for being my first guest on these kind of list ⁓ little coffee chats, is what I'm calling them. I wanna ask you I know, right? I have a couple of questions and I gave you these earlier so you were able to think about them. But I kind of wanna go over just two questions and we're not gonna spend too much time because I know everybody's time is valuable. speaker-1: Swinger. speaker-0: But I'd love it if you'd answer a couple of those and then yeah, we'll just let the conversation take us for about four minutes and then I'll give you back some time in your day. So my ⁓ my first question, and I'm probably gonna ask this to a lot of people, but I I love asking this to you, is what is your favorite aspect of owning your own business? speaker-1: You know, I honestly I I sat and mold on this for the last couple hours since you sent it to me, and I don't have one thing that I can say is my absolute favorite. ⁓ I mean, there's a lot of things that I like. I can be heavily tattooed person and not worry about it. How's it affect the clients? I'm working from home. I get to do stuff that I need to do when I need to do it. But if I was to give one answer, it would probably be I get to deal with the people that are the decision maker. I'm not dealing with the middle of the middle of the middle of the middle. I am dealing with other small companies that have a stake in everything that I do for them. When they need a website done, it's because they need leads. They are living just as paycheck to paycheck as some of the rest of us with small businesses. So they need to make sure that they're putting their money where it matters. And those are who I I like dealing with. I mean, I come from corporate America. where I was being told how to do stuff from people that didn't even know what a website was half the time. So now I've got people asking questions, trying to lean in and understand the web and what it can do. speaker-0: I love that. That's awesome. Do you mainly work from home? speaker-1: ⁓ I work from home and I split my time at the the Verge coworking space, which has a really cool little space, great atmosphere. ⁓ and it just looks cool when you have clients come in when they ⁓ have to meet with you in person. It's a little cooler than saying, Hey, come over to my house speaker-0: That's that's a fair point. speaker-1: So I would never ask somebody come to my house, like speaker-0: Yeah, that'd be a little awkward. I would be like, I'm not sure about that. I already don't like to go to people's house to pick up Facebook things. And I'm like, Right. speaker-1: Yeah. What have we got? Come on in. speaker-0: Yeah, welcome. ⁓ okay. So I have a second question for you. So before your clients hired you, what what was keeping them up at night? speaker-1: A lot of the clients that I've gotten from different agencies, I'm not gonna name any names or point any fingers, but tell me when they talk to me, they love the fact that I didn't talk down to them and treat them like they were idiots. So a lot of the companies would talk to them like idiots or talk try to talk over them while why they needed something that they didn't need and would just sell them, ⁓ you have to have this extra server, you have to have this staging website that is gonna take us, you know, this many hours to build, but that, you know, they didn't need it. So I don't know if that necessarily kept them up at night, but that was always a worry for them. They just whatever they would get off the phone with these agencies or these people, they just felt stupid. And I try to not make people feel that way. speaker-0: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Do you find that with you know, treating them like like you're not talking down to them, do you find that the responsiveness is better and it makes for a much better working relationship? speaker-1: Hundred percent. Well and I mean, if I'm being honest, just answering an email anymore shocks clients. Like ⁓ you and I were talking earlier, how just responding to an email within an hour of getting it initially blows people's minds. They're like, Whoa, hey, you just responded to an email that the previous place would have taken a week or a month to respond to. So ⁓ being listening and and leaning in speaker-0: ⁓ man. speaker-1: when clients need something, ⁓ goes a long, long way. speaker-0: Man, I love that. Hey, we're at time. And I told you we weren't gonna spend all day doing this thing. So thank you for your time today. And ⁓ I'm excited. I'm gonna point everybody to your website and ⁓ we'll go from there. Thanks, man. It's good to see you. See ya. All right. Bye.