Joanie has a conversation with Rich Yumul, a web designer and CEO of Sage Tree Solutions. Rich calls himself a “website therapist” because he helps clients have better relationships with their websites.
Highlights:
Q: How did you come to start your own company?
“I started out being a freelancing contractor. I got so much work, I started adding people. That’s when it started to become a full-fledged company.”
Q: How do you find a customer like Comicon?
“They actually found us. They were looking for somebody who could help them with a Drupal website. That’s our specialty.”
Q: What’s a website therapist and how can people have a better relationship with their website?
“Often when we deal with clients, they’re in a state of distress. Their budget has gone way over budget or time. There are three things to have a good relationship with your website.” Listen to the episode to learn more.
Q: How do you help clients decide what they want?
“I had to learn to translate… Don’t assume because you’re using the same terms, you’re right. The client’s paying the bills.”
Q: How do you bring empathy in to dealing with clients’ distress?
“I invested some time in learning about business. Usually the people we deal with are business directors or marketing people. Understanding business helped me understand how business problems create distress for them. I help them get to a better place.”
Q: What kinds of problems come up in working with the engineers at work?
“One thing that served me very well was to learn to not take things personally. When people are stressed out, they may be heated. Have the awareness if you’re starting to feel triggered, to take a step back and really try to listen to the message.”
Words of Wisdom:
“Be open to being educated.”
“Be a vocabulary detective.”
“Email is the worst way to communicate because so much can be read into the words of the message.”
Shout Outs:
San Diego STEM Ecosystem: sdstemecosystem.org
Toys for Joy: toys-for-joy.org
Contact Rich:
Email: rich@sagetree.com
Website: https://www.sagetree.com/
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