I’ve been Saying There’s got to be a better way for a long time.
Nearly forty years, actually.
I’ve worked through mainframes, desktop publishing, the early internet, websites, search engines, social media, automation and now AI.
The technology has changed completely. The way I approach a problem hasn’t.
TECHNOLOGY LEAPS
Back in my Day…
I started working in the business world in 1986, as a credit investigator at Chase Manhattan Bank. Back then, technology meant working on a mainframe and using a database that would look ancient today.
A lot has changed since then.
I’ve worked through personal computers becoming commonplace, desktop publishing, the early internet, websites, search engines, social media, cloud software, automation and now AI. I’ve watched technology completely change the way businesses operate, reach customers and get work done.
But one thing about the way I work hasn’t changed much at all.
I tend to look at something complicated, inefficient or unnecessarily difficult and think:
There’s got to be a better way!
This isn’t a new habit.
Years ago, while working with Motorola, I found a better way to handle a process that saved the two-way paging division, and ultimately the entire company, hundreds of thousands of dollars in printing costs.
It wasn’t some grand strategic initiative. There was a problem in front of me. I understood what we were trying to accomplish, looked at how it was being done and realized there was a better way to do it.
That instinct followed me into the work I do with small businesses today.
SAME OLD ME
The tools are different. The questions really aren’t.
01
What are we trying to accomplish?
02
Why are we doing it this way?
03
Is this still the right way?
04
Is there something simpler?
05
What happens to the people who actually have to use it?
And perhaps most importantly:
Does this make sense for the business?
Nearly forty years teaches you to be a little skeptical.
Especially when somebody tells a business owner what they have to buy.
I’ve spent decades watching people sell businesses what they needed to sell instead of what the business actually needed to buy.
I’ve watched small-business owners spend money wisely on websites, marketing, technology and other investments that genuinely helped their businesses.
I’ve also watched them get sold a bill of goods.
Expensive systems they didn’t need. Technology they couldn’t use. Marketing they didn’t understand. Websites that looked impressive but didn’t do much for the business. Subscriptions and services that quietly accumulated because somebody, somewhere, said they were necessary.
And when the salesperson was gone, the business owner was the one left living with it.
That has shaped the way I work.
I’m careful with a client’s money because I know what it takes for a small business to earn it.
That doesn’t mean I always recommend the least expensive option. Sometimes the right solution requires a substantial investment, and I’ll tell you that too.
But sometimes the basic version is plenty. Sometimes something can wait. Sometimes what you already have is perfectly good. Sometimes you need a specialist who knows more about a particular problem than I do.
And sometimes the smartest recommendation I can make is:
Leave it alone and keep your money in your pocket.
THAT’S HOW RUSTI BOOT GOT HERE
A natural progression and an awareness of what I was already doing.
Rusti Boot spent many years looking, from the outside, like a website and digital services company.
And I still build websites. I work with content, search visibility, messaging, marketing and technology. Those are things I know how to do.
But after enough years of working directly with small-business owners, something became increasingly obvious:
The thing someone asks for isn’t always the thing they actually need.
A website problem might really be a messaging problem. A marketing problem might be a visibility problem. A customer complaint might expose a process problem. A repetitive task might be solved with technology. And sometimes the thing everyone assumes is broken turns out to be working just fine.
So the questions got bigger.
Instead of simply asking what you want me to build, I want to understand what you’re trying to accomplish.
Instead of assuming the problem is where it first appears, I want to know what else might be connected to it.
And before I recommend that you spend money, I want to have a reason why.
Eventually I realized that wasn’t something extra I was doing around the edges of my work.
It was the work.
You’re not hiring a giant agency.
Rusti Boot is a small business, too.
When you talk to Rusti Boot about your business, you’re talking to me, Shelly Haffly. I’m the person asking the questions, doing the thinking, and making the recommendations.
When something requires expertise outside my lane, I’ll say so. When other specialists need to be involved, we can work with them. I don’t believe being useful requires pretending I know everything.
What I do bring is nearly forty years of experience working in and around businesses, decades of hands-on digital experience, a broad understanding of how the pieces affect one another—and a stubborn tendency to keep asking whether there might be a better way.
You know your business.
I bring the outside perspective, experience and questions.
Then we figure out what makes sense together.