Ron Stauffer on 560 KBLU: Chamber Chatter

Good morning, Yuma. You're listening to Chamber Chatter, 560 AM KBLU. In the studio, we have Ron Stauffer, who is the owner, director. He is the guy at Lieder Digital. good morning, Ron. Good morning, John. Fairly new to the chamber and fairly new to Yuma. So when we discovered you were a chamber member, thank you very much for that, but I hear you moved to Yuma from Colorado, is that correct? Yeah, brand new. We ca- my wife and I and our five kids moved here on June 2nd welcome. Andy, we turned the blast furnace on for you. we made sure it was 115 degrees real quick. I hear I came at the worst possible time. But, we tell people, "Look, Yuma, our people are warm." You have to spin that correctly. Okay? You can't say hot, just

our people are warm. Andy, what's your take so far? You've been here about a month or two. What's your take so far? my first thought is I was amazed at how friendly the people on our street and our neighborhood were. I think we're probably the only family that's not in the military. That's a big difference. most of our neighbors are Marines, but very friendly and very welcoming. our kids have had a great time getting to know the other kids. so the people are warm. Yeah. I would agree with you there. definitely the weather is warm. This is definitely the, the hottest place I've ever lived in. Probably not the hottest place I've ever been, but, I'm just thinking, I grew up in California, and in Stockton there were some summers where I think we peaked at about 110 degrees. But boy, 114, 116, that's new for me. However, for Stockton, the humidity in Stockton, I spent a couple summers in Sacramento.

The humidity is just awful. That's my favorite part about Yuma, and that's part of why I picked Yuma. When we were looking to relocate, my wife and I, we were thinking, "Okay, I wanna go somewhere where there's no more snow." So we moved here from Colorado. We were up in Boulder County, a town called Longmont. And, we loved it there, but I just, I'm tired of the snow. I turned into a snowbird a little bit early. And, no humidity was a really important factor. We wanted to go somewhere warm, but where it wasn't humid. So that's definitely one of my favorite parts of living in Yuma. Well, welcome to Yuma. Thank you. we're glad that you're here, and of course, we're glad you joined the Yuma County Chamber of Commerce. And the great thing is, you don't have to shovel sunshine. that's one of the things we talk about here in Yuma. You are gonna absolutely love November, December, January.

Oh, yeah. It's paradise. It really is something special. We keep hearing that, and I keep telling my kids, wait. It'll get better." But it's funny you mention that, because as we were packing up to leave the house, we said, "What are the things that we need to bring with us?" And looked at the snowblower and said, "I don't think I'm gonna need that for the rest of my life." "So let's sell that." Very good. Toboggans and those things left behind. However, if you want snow, it's just a couple hours away. If you really are, just have to have some snow, it's not that far away. We'll hook you with that, too. so yeah, welcome again. Five kids? Five kids. br- age range? Yeah, I know. I, people tell me I still look like a kid myself. You are. But my kids are 14 down to seven. So my wife and I had five kids in six years.

Wow. Yeah. It's kept us busy ever since. and, and yet you still smile. I love it. I love it. Yeah. I miss Saturday morning breakfast, making breakfast to order for each of the kids. even if I was in the kitchen for four hours, didn't matter. It didn't matter what they wanted, I was there. I miss it. I really, really miss the, the Saturday morning hijinks, the cartoons, the Little League baseball. I really miss, I miss the chaos. Yeah. our house is full of chaos. I don't wanna borrow any, but I just miss it. I just miss it. Sure. So Lieder Digital, I checked out your website, and it's fascinating. You have a kind of a different take on website development. what's the wrinkle you bring to website development that others might not? there are several different ways to look at that. I think the, the thing that I've been

able to bring to the clients I've had over the past few years, I technically started my company in 2008, so I believe I'm going on almost 13 years now, is a lot of people, especially when they're starting a business, they don't know what they don't know, and they don't know what they need. So they'll look at something like a website or the internet in general and say, "This is confusing. Where do I start? Should I get a website? Should I build it myself? how do search engines work? What about social media?" And it's this vast, it's like looking up in the universe and stars everywhere, and it's pretty overwhelming. So what I really try to focus on for people is, I tell them, maybe not in so many words, but I'll say, "Look, I'll help you with everything. I'll help you understand how it works, and relax. I've seen it before." "I've done it before. You don't have to understand." 'Cause

sometimes they'll get into the weeds and say things like, I was talking to this other guy and he said we should build a website in PHP." And then this, this other friend said, no, it's all about ASP." And I just laugh and I say- … "You're getting way too far ahead of yourself. Let's figure out what your needs are first, and then work backwards from there to figure out what technology that w- we're gonna use." And especially with the clients that I work with, I do enough hand-holding and building the system, I think, right in the beginning so that they never even have to worry about that, to where they, if somebody asked them, "What's your website built in?" They wouldn't even know, 'cause it doesn't really matter to them. See, I believe in fairy dust. tha- that's the internet works and websites, it's fairy dust. I firmly believe in that. And that works for me, 'cause I, I know what I want it to do. I don't wanna know how it happens. Sure. I really don't, 'cause I overthink

things, and I don't wanna get caught in those weeds, I really don't. We have a great local internet provider, and w- the site works. It does what it's supposed to do, and that's all I need. I… It doesn't have to make coffee. It doesn't have to do any of that kind of stuff. Just get the information out there, and we open 24/7. I think that's one of the things I think small businesses don't realize, your website, you're open 24/7/365. And I think it's probably one of the things you mentioned as well when you talk especially to small businesses. That's a really good point. Somebody put it into perspective to me one time, and this is before I was even in the business. I don't remember who it was, and I wish I could, but somebody said, "If I were to come to you as a business and say, I have a salesman or a saleswoman," but in this case, he was painting a picture. "I have a salesman who wants to come work for you.

He will work 365 days a year, 24/7. He doesn't get sick. He doesn't ask vacation, and, he can talk to 800,000 people at the same time." How much money would you be willing to pay that salesman? Back up the Brinks truck. 50,000? 100,000? 200,000? It depends on what your total budget and your revenue is as your, for your company, pardon me. But the point is, you can't buy something that great. So the, a, a website serves as a 24/7 salesman. It's the most important, I think, investment you could possibly make. Think of it as an employee, and in that sense, yeah, my goodness, you can't … You can have an entire sales force that still can't compete with that. So how many Red Bulls do you

have to buy this employee? Yeah. you have to buy a Red Bull for the web developer sometimes- Okay. … to make it happen. Sugar-free or leaded? Oh, man. I haven't done that in a long time. I used to do all-nighters, especially when I was starting my business. Wow, so many all-nighters or, up till 2:00 in the morning or 3:00 in the morning just trying to launch things and learning on the job and figuring out, how does this whole website thing work and… I don't do that anymore. I have a schedule now, and I go to bed at night. I did that one time with my business at Huntington Beach, 1984. I showed up at my office Labor Day with my ex-wife and one of, my coworkers, and we had to rebuild the entire newspaper from when we started October of '83 to that day, every invoice, every transaction,

'cause our financials were a mess. And it fully was, we did an all-nighter. It was nuts, but we had to do it. And I said, "Okay, I can see I do that once and once only." Sure. but that's what small business does. You do what you gotta do. Oh, absolutely. So I wanna talk about, more about small business and especially hearing you out, if that's okay, after the break. Absolutely. You're listening to Chamber Chatter, 560 AM KBLU. We are back on Chamber Chatter, 560 AM KBLU. In studio, Ron Stauffer, who is the owner, director, everything of Lieder Digital. Good morning, Ron. Good morning. my, my business cards, the first ones I ever had printed, my job title, I decided I was gonna be the Godfather. The Godfather? Yeah, 'cause what's an owner or a founder? Who cares? I'm the Godfather. I don't do that anymore.

Don't you make an offer I can't refuse. Please, let's not go down that road. We're also on Facebook Live, sponsored by the Yuma Crossing National Heritage Area. We will in fact go on Facebook Live in that audience as well. So small business, you decided at some point in time, there was a fork in the road, Ron, where you said, "I'm gonna-" Do it on my own. w- was there an event, just a happening, just a, this lightning bolt? There w- what, what happened? Oh, there was an event, yeah, and, I'm not a- ashamed to say it. I got laid off. I was working for a home builder in 2009, and those of you who may remember- Huh … something terrible happened in the construction industry in 2009. It was awful. It started down, sliding downhill in 2008, but I hung on until 2009,

and then everybody we knew in the industry was just laying people off left and right, and I was in marketing. I was a marketing director for a home builder, and Thanksgiving, it was either Thanksgiving Day or the day before Thanksgiving 2009, I got laid off. And, so backing up a second, so I started my company in 2008, and I thought, I'm gonna do this on the side. This'll be nice. I'll, make some side income. I'll start building websites. I'll learn how to incorporate it, incorporate that into the way that I help market my current employer. Came in really handy when I got laid off … the very next year because all of a sudden I woke up and I thought, not only can I, y- I don't have a job anymore, but the skills that I have in the industry that I'm working for, I can't go get a job anywhere in town because everybody's laying everybody off. So it wasn't like I could say, "I

got laid off here, I'll just go next door and, pound the pavement and pass, pass out a bunch of resumes," 'cause nobody was hiring. So I thought, "Okay how about this? How about instead of looking for a job, I'll take my part-time business full time and give that a couple weeks, maybe six or eight weeks or something like that. If it doesn't work, then, maybe I'll go on unemployment and, try to get a job or something. I'll swallow my pride and say, 'I tried, but it didn't work.'" I tried, and it did work. So I'm a big fan of learning side hustles. And I'm also, firsthand proof that sometimes that side hustle comes in really handy because it turns into your main hustle. So I say I'm an acc- an accidental entrepreneur. I meet people who say things like, "Oh, I always knew I wanted to be my own boss," or, "I started my company

when I was 12 years old, selling things door to door with my wagon." For me, I never cared about that. you hear about Mark Cuban, he talks about- Right he sold trash bags, funny enough, door to door with his wagon. later he becomes this billionaire, right? But for me, I never cared about that. I never wanted to be self-employed. I never woke up in the morning and said, "You know what I think I should do? I should start a company." But on Thanksgiving Day or the day after, I woke up and said, "You know what I think I have to do? I have to start a company." So that's how I got into it. But you did, and I- I… Looking at your face, there's joy in what you're doing, there's joy in how you're doing it, and there's joy in being your own boss. Oh, yeah, it's a double-edged sword. You're probably tough on you as a boss.

and like you s- like you were saying before, sometimes you pull those all-nighters or, whatever you need to do to get the job done. as self-employed people, I have some fellow entrepreneurs who I like to joke around with sometimes, and we joke about "Someday if this doesn't work, we'll just go get a real job." Or, "Remember when we had paydays?" Yeah, paydays. Yeah. That was a thing, and benefits. Boy, that was a long time ago when I had benefits. Boy, those were the good old days. So it's a… I do like it. I… and I love it these days. I've learned to really embrace it. There are highs, but there are definitely lows. But my wife, it's funny enough, my wife, she has said and would tell you, "Oh yeah, you're totally cut out for this." But I never saw that myself. I never said "I, I think that I'm built for being a, a business owner." I never thought that. But once I did it, she said, "Yeah.

Oh, yeah, it's a… Your personality's real natural for that." And it's like, "Oh, okay. I guess so." So is there a fine line between courage and stupidity? is, is it like a fork in the road when you go down? 'Cause for me, that was me. I left the Los Angeles Times, the most secure job on the planet. Benefits of the yin-yang. it was a cocoon. And then I went on my own ad agency. I went off the deep end. But there, I think that might have been more stupidity than courage. I made it work. But you, more courage? Yeah, that's a tough question. It's funny because I ask myself would I do things the same now, and I don't know that I would. I think it takes a young person, in my case, a young man's perspective of I'm invincible and I can figure this stuff out and I can do anything.

Yeah, if I got laid off today, let's say, would I start a business? I don't know that I can say that I would. I think I would be a lot more entrenched in my ways of wanting that security and benefits and that sort of thing. So there's a level of sometimes you might say idiocy or just arrogance certainly. Stubborn. Stubbornness. Oh, yeah. There's elements in there. Oh, yeah. Got that. I think you have to have that, though. You have to have all those elements to go on your own and really be a solopreneur, entrepreneur. You have to have all those components. I believe in myself. I'm a grind- I'm a grinder. I'm gonna get this done. And even when there's days of, I don't wanna say despair, but not so fun days- Oh, sure you just, you gotta find a way to just, barrel through it. You just have to. And I was talking to my sister, funny enough. She just became a massage therapist,

and in massage therapy, most massage therapists are their own boss. They don't really work for someone else as an employee. Even if they do work for someone else, it's very part-time or contract basis. And I was just amazed at some of her questions, and I thought "Wow, yeah, this is really a bizarre life that I lead." She was saying things like, so if you wake up on Monday morning and you've got rent due on Friday, and you have no money coming in, what do you do?" And I thought, that's a great question, and I don't know the answer because you just, you wake up and you figure it out every day. You just barrel through it, and you just don't take no for an answer. So there are many times I wake up on a Monday morning and I think, "I got a big bill coming up," or, some huge financial commitment either at the end of the week or at the end of the month. I have no idea how I'm gonna pay that,

but I'm still gonna go to bed and go to sleep because I've been here, I've done that, and it's always worked out. 'cause bank robbery's not an option. Can't do that. But there are times, though, when you have to say, "I need revenue." Do people buy your services or do you sell your services? It's an inter- I can't tell if you're taking that, a phil- in a philosophical direction no, no. Because at the Chamber of Commerce, we have not sold memberships in years. We've had people want to join, so they buy into what we're doing. they look at what we're doing, say, "I wanna be part of that." So for us, there's no sales operations at the Chamber of Commerce. We're not selling it. That's a good pers- that's a good perspective. So people are purchasing it. they're seeing what we do, they're buying it. So for you, what Lieder Digital does, the way you do it, how you do it, are people buying your services

or are you selling your services? I would have to agree with you. I have the same perspective. For me, I always say that I only work with people that I know and and trust. Okay. And that people who know and and trust me. And I've literally told people in sales meetings, "If you don't like me, that's okay. I'm not here to push, I'm not here to push myself on you. I'm not gonna do the…" No offense to car salespeople, but the stereotype of, "What can I get you? what do I have to say- Get you to sign today to get you to sign on the line today?" I don't work that way. I never have, I never will. Good. I look at people and I say, if you want something immediately, and you're looking for the lowest s- cost service, I'm not your guy. But if you want a relationship, and you buy into me and who I am, and we feel like we can do well together-" That's how I like to work. And I have one client who has… She's

been a client for over 10 years, and every single month she sends me a check. Every single month for 10 years. And I look at that and I think, "Yeah, I, that, those are the people that I wanna work with." I must be s- doing something right. When I get to, because of accounting principles, I open the mail at the chamber. I open the mail-… hand it off to Cheryl, who does the financials. And I get these checks from members who I'm not sure I've ever personally met, but they're buying into our mission. They're buying into what we're doing for the community. They're buying into our process and how we represent Umatilla at the legislature, at the state capital, and with other members as well. And that's the rewarding thing. Like that check, every month for 10 years. It's amazing. 'Cause you're right, you have to choose two. You want fast, cheap, or good. Choose two.

Can't do all three. Yeah, exactly. But people want all three. That's just not re- not realistic. Yeah, and, it… What's funny though, something I learned, I was giving a presentation in Boulder, a couple months ago to a room full of entrepreneurs, and I was talking about how there are some clients who give you red flags before you m- or before you do business with them, and you think "Ooh, this was a bad client. I should not have worked with this, with this person," for whatever reason. Personality conflict, might be an ethical issue. I almost never work with those, thankfully. But there are some clients who have a yellow flag, and that's where they'll basically say, they'll start saying things like, I need it done fast, and cheap, and quickly," and, all these things. And I found, it's just 'cause they don't know what they're talking about or they don't know how your business works. So if you can get them over that hurdle and say, "Hey, that, that seems reasonable

from your perspective. Let me show you why it's gonna be a little bit more complicated than that." The, I look at those and I call them yellow flag clients, and I can turn them into great clients. And some of my best clients, honestly, are ones who came to me with ridiculous expectations, but I was able to say, "Let me take you through this process, and here's why I don't recommend that you take that approach," or, "Here's why what you're asking for can't really be done." And they, I think they appreciate that level of candor and they say, "I like this guy. I can trust this guy." I have that level of confidence with my web provider because he knows I don't know jack. I've nev- I've never even met Jack. So sometimes I'll call him and say, "I'm having a picnic." Okay. You know what a picnic is, right? I do. you need this one in your business. Picnic is problem in

chair, not in computer. Oh. Okay. and I have lots of picnics, and he'll get me off the ledge. "Here's what it's supposed to do. Here's what it can't do." A great relationship because, again, I just don't know. Sure. But I know what I want it to do, and when it doesn't, I get frustrated, and I have those picnics. it, it's al- it's always on me. And he's very gracious, and he's kind and considerate, and those kinds of relationships are really cherished and need to be nourished. So congratulations to you. Yeah, thanks. Lieder Digital, what's the phone number, sir? I use the phone so little, I don't even know. Okay. What's the website, then? Liederdigital.com. L-I-E-D-E-R-D-I-G-I-T-A-L. Liederdigital.com. And part of why I say I don't know is because first of all, I don't call myself, but I also just got a, an Arizona number, and I, I've had the same cell phone

number for 16 years- … but I have an Arizona number t- too, and, I've got- Lieder Digital will get it done. That's right. Again, thank you for joining the Chamber. And welcome to you at Liederdigital.com, L-I-E-D-E-R digital.com. Ron, it's been a joy. Thank you very much. And again, we'll be right back after this. You're listening to Chamber Chatter, 560 AM KVOU. Later.