Episode 129 · 19 September 2024 · 49:32
Confessions of a CEO: Loneliness, Risk, and Building a Business with No Experience, with Harry Cramer
Featuring Harry Cramer
Confessions of a CEO: Loneliness, Risk, and Building a Business with No Experience, with Harry Cramer
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Introducing Harry Cramer and SmartClinic
Harry's background: from chilli-eating champion to founder
Starting Smart Clinic in 2015 with no industry experience
interview#startup#no-experience#2015
Occupational health vs. occupational psychology
interview#occupational-health#occupational-psychology#difference
How Smart Clinic disrupts a slow, paper-based industry
interview#disruption#paper-based#industry
Who needs occupational health services?
How Smart Clinic's flexible model works
Does a psychology background make a better leader?
interview#psychology#leadership#better-leader
The hardest thing about working with your partner
The growth journey: from deliberate slow start to 42 people
interview#growth#culture#42-people
The biggest learning curve from a people and culture perspective
interview#learning-curve#people#culture
How Harry's team would describe him as a leader
How psychology shapes his leadership style
Supporting teams through emotional labour
interview#emotional-labour#support#teams
What is emotional labour? (Leanne explains)
What Harry wants listeners to take away
interview#takeaways#key-messages#advice
Where to find Harry and Smart Clinic
Show notes
Confessions of a CEO: Loneliness, Risk, and Building a Business with No Experience — with Harry Cramer
Guest: Harry Cramer — founder and Managing Director of Smart Clinic, a specialist occupational health provider he launched in 2015 after starting his career in marketing. Nearly a decade on, Smart Clinic has grown to 43 employees, helping businesses across the UK reduce staff absences and support employee well-being.
Harry didn't set out to build an occupational health business. He came from marketing, had no healthcare background, and took a "naive" leap into an industry he knew little about. But that outsider perspective turned out to be his superpower — he spotted an industry stuck in paper trails and filing cabinets, and built a fast, tech-driven alternative.
In this episode, Harry opens up about what it's really like to build a business from scratch with no experience — including the loneliness of leadership, the reality of running a company alongside his wife Chloe, and why he believes growth isn't just about scaling up, but about improving the quality of what you do.
Top 3 Takeaways
Not knowing what you don't know can be an advantage. Harry entered occupational health with zero industry experience — and that outsider perspective let him see the absurdity of a paper-based, slow-moving sector. Sometimes naivety is a feature, not a bug.
Hard conversations never get easy — you just get better at them. Harry admits he doesn't think you ever get fully comfortable with difficult conversations, but you improve with time. The key is not avoiding them.
Growth is about quality, not just scale. Harry deliberately grew Smart Clinic slowly at first to "get everything right." His proudest metric isn't headcount — it's the low staff turnover and the thousands of hours his team have chosen to spend working with him.
More From Harry Cramer
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/harry-cramer-🧬-ba5b3833
Connect With Us
Get in touch, book a call, or find Al and Leanne on LinkedIn — all in one place: truthliesandwork.com/connect
Mental health support: findahelpline.com — UK: Samaritans 116 123 · Mind 0300 123 3393 — US: 988 — Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14
Truth, Lies & Work is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network.
Full transcript
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Al ElliottThe dirty little secret is that most businesses think they know their customers. They have the data, the records, the history, but it's scattered across 3 teams and 4 systems. And in our case, it's about 216,000 spreadsheets, which means nobody can actually use it.
Leanne ElliottWhat you should be doing is using HubSpot, because why? HubSpot connects it all— every interaction, every support ticket, every conversation— into one platform every team can work from. So when sales talks to a customer, marketing already knows the full story. And when you know more, you grow more.
Al ElliottNice. Check out hubspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.
Leanne ElliottHello and welcome to Truth, Lies and Work, the award-winning psychology podcast brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Leanne. I am a chartered psychologist.
Al ElliottMy name is Al. I am a business owner.
Leanne ElliottWe are here to help you simplify the science of work and build amazing workplace cultures.
Al ElliottYes, yes. Welcome, welcome. It is Thursday today, so this is our regular Thursday interview series. If you like to hear stories of how organisations big and small have built amazing workplace cultures, then our Thursday episodes like today are definitely right up your street. If you like to also keep abreast of the latest news and love a good Agony Aunt segment, then you'll like Tuesday episodes too, where we bring you our weekly news roundup. Our September segment, which is called New Voices, and of course our world-famous weekly Workplace Surgery, where I put your questions to Leanne.
Leanne ElliottBut as today is Thursday, let's get straight to our guest. Warren Buffett famously said, never invest in a business you cannot understand. The idea is simple. If you don't know the ins and outs of an industry, how can you expect to succeed? On the other hand, Richard Branson has a different take. If somebody offers you an amazing opportunity, but you are not sure you can do it, Say yes, then learn how to do it later. For Branson, it's about jumping in, taking risks, and figuring it out along the way. This raises an important question for budding entrepreneurs. Should you only stick to industries you know, or can you dive into something new and figure it out along the way? Our guest today, Harry Cramer, took the latter path. Harry is the founder and managing director of Smart Clinic, a specialist occupational health provider. Interestingly, Harry didn't start out in healthcare. He began his career in marketing and made the leap into the healthcare sector in 2015 when he founded Smart Clinic. Nearly a decade later, he's grown the company to 43 employees, including doctors, nurses, and therapists. But there's another layer to Harry's story. He runs a business alongside his wife Chloe, who manages HR and operations. If you are thinking about starting a business with your partner, you are definitely not alone. In fact, in the UK, 85.9% of private sector businesses are family-owned, and many of which are run by couples. Running a business with your partner does bring its unique challenges— balancing personal and professional lives, managing decision-making, and maintaining a strong relationship through it all. So how do you start a business in an unfamiliar industry? And how do you successfully build a company alongside your spouse? Well, in today's conversation, we'll explore Harry's journey, the lessons he's learned, and what aspiring entrepreneurs can take away from his experience.
Al ElliottSo let's go and meet Harry Cramer and learn the story of SmartClinic. Oh, and you're also going to get a great explanation of the difference between occupational health and occupational psychology.
Harry CramerMy name's Harry. I am the founder, technically, of a company called SmartClinic. We're an occupational health and wellbeing business, and we serve businesses, charities, schools, all sorts of people all over the UK. I would like to think that that's probably the thing that I would be famous for, but in reality, my much more interesting but probably tenuous claim to fame is that I am the grandson of the Italian chilli eating champion, which is pretty serious stuff.
Leanne ElliottWhat does it take to become a chilli-eating champion?
Harry CramerA lot of chillies, to be honest, and a lot of very spicy food. And I think it's clearly an inherited trait because it drives my wife absolutely mad, the fact that I put absolutely red hot sauce over all of her lovely cooking.
Leanne ElliottWhat a cool claim to fame. I love it. I love it. But as you said, you know, what you're probably more well known for in, in the business world, in the, uh, the wellness world, is Smart Clinic. You said you're kind of the founder of that, so tell us a bit about the story of, of setting up Smart Clinic.
Harry CramerWe started almost 10 years ago now, which feels pretty, pretty mad to say that, but we started in 2015. Um, and the story of us starting, well, a little bit like you, Leanne, my background is in psychology. Um, so I was doing probably some similar type of work to what you might have done in the past, actually, and I was working with kind of HR teams and businesses and organizations And things. I was asked to look at an occupational health contract for around about 400 or 500 schools. I had no experience of occupational health, knew frankly absolutely nothing of the industry. So it was really, really interesting to kind of do a little bit of research, learn a bit about it, and try and find out what I could. And what I found out most significantly was that it wasn't really very good. And it was a sector with a lot of people doing what I thought wasn't particularly great work. Very slow, very expensive, not particularly fit for purpose. So rather than sort of trying to help this client by fitting a bit of a square peg into a round hole, I thought, well, hold on, there's an opportunity here. There's lots of people that aren't getting what they need. It's obviously something that's very important to clients. By this stage, I'd sort of learned a little bit more about the medical industry.
Al ElliottYeah.
Harry CramerSo being a little bit younger and a little bit braver and a little bit more naive than I am now, I thought, well, if the right thing isn't there, let's go and start it. And here we are 10 years later. It seems to have gone okay so far.
Leanne ElliottI mean, there's, there's so many questions, but I'm aware that I don't want to kind of take— make any assumptions here that our listeners will necessarily understand, um, all these terms. So if anyone isn't sure, can you just tell us a bit about occupational health, how it works and how it is different to other areas people might have heard of?
Harry CramerSure, yes. Well, I mean, you'll be a lot better qualified than I am to talk about what occupational psychology is, but occupational health is a very different thing. So occupational health, typically, to put it into plain English, it's looking at what the impact of health is on somebody's work and what the impact of somebody's work is on somebody's health. And they're 2 quite disparate sort of areas of occupational health. The former really is looking about some Looking at somebody's fitness to work, whether they're able to do all or some of their role. If they've been absent from work, then how can we try and make sure their return to work is sustainable? How can we try and make sure that they're supported in the workplace? How can we try and make sure that their employer is doing everything they can to try and make sure that that employee's got every opportunity to work? Because as we all know, work is good for you. There's all sorts of fascinating and very comprehensive research on the fact that work is good for us both. Physically and mentally. Of course, the other half is how does, uh, work impact on somebody's health? That's when you start to think about safety-critical work. So the common example is things like people who work with vibrating tools. You can— they can develop a syndrome called HAVS, hand-arm vibration syndrome. So they need to have routine checks to make sure that their work isn't detrimentally impacting upon their, upon their health.
Leanne ElliottSo tell us about Smart Clinic. How is it different? How is it disrupting occupational health?
Harry CramerIt was a great opportunity to apply a little bit of common sense to an industry that seemed to be a little bit my way or the highway. And I can give you some examples of that, but ultimately, if a client's not getting what they need, either they've searched for the wrong thing, so they've bought the wrong thing or obtained the wrong type of service, or the organization isn't quite doing the right thing for them, so they're somehow not fulfilling their duties. In reality, in this world, it's usually probably some sort of combination of the two if a client's not getting what they need. Perhaps you've got a member of staff who's physically unwell. Perhaps you've got a member of staff who's mentally unwell. Perhaps you've got some sort of management issue going on and you're not really sure what to do about it. Perhaps somebody just needs some help. They don't need that help in 4 weeks' time or 6 weeks' time. They need that help now. So does the employer. And if you prolong issues, they don't get better. They usually get worse. So, speed was incredibly important, and that was a very obvious way in which I thought we could help. Unfortunately, it's not quite that easy, and I've learned that over the years. But it's always been a real focus of us, is to be really responsive and really proactive about things. Also, technology. Technology has been so fundamental to us, and it's, dare I say it, probably a little bit underutilized in our industry.
Al ElliottYeah.
Harry CramerWe're quite a paper and signing things and filing cabinets type industry. And that just seemed completely unnecessary and probably not the most fruitful way of running a business, in my view. So, we completely disposed of all of that from day one, built our own system, built our own database. We've always had developers working on our systems, which gives you the opportunity to both use technology to your advantage, which Helps to keep things fast and keep things efficient. It also gives you total control over the user experience because we're not buying off-the-shelf software where we're reliant on some other company and how they view things. We can make things exactly how we want. We can— if we decided we wanted to change the color, we could press a button and our entire system would change color overnight. And that's a really luxurious position to be in, but it's also been a real opportunity for where we've been able to—
Al ElliottYeah.
Harry CramerI hope improve on the occupational health industry and try and give clients a slightly nicer, slightly prettier, slightly sexier solution. You don't get many people describing occupational health as sexy, but we do our best. I've got a real interest in the Monzo-Starling story. If you're familiar with that, it was effectively sort of 2 founders fell out and went to go and both set up challenger banks. which is how Monzo and Starling started. Um, and I'm so honored to say that we actually now work with Monzo. They're a client of ours, um, which is brilliant because, you know, I watched that journey right from day one, and in our own tiny little way, we're now part of that journey as well.
Al ElliottSo, Leah, just to reiterate, the difference between occupational psychology, which is what you're an expert in, and occupational health, which is what Harry's an expert in, is what?
Leanne ElliottSo occupational health, very generally, broadly speaking, focuses on physical safety and wellbeing at work, while occupational psychology generally addresses the organisational structure, leadership behaviours, and how this all feeds into culture and performance within a workplace.
Al ElliottSo why might an organisation need an occupational health service? Is it just for the larger organisations, or do smaller ones need it too? Harry has, of course, a great answer to this.
Harry CramerIn terms of who needs us, um, Anybody who employs a member of staff at some point or another will likely need some form of involvement in occupational health. And you could employ just one member of staff, as long as that member of staff has health, which of course they do because they're humans, um, most of the time at least, then at some point or another that person's health will suffer. That's just the way that humans work. We're all fallible. And when somebody's health suffers, that might mean that their ability to work somehow is impacted. Perhaps that could be as basic as they need 2 days off sick, right the way through to something much more complicated, like there's fundamentally a part of their role that they're never going to be able to perform again. Um, obviously you can get some quite sad scenarios and quite sad situations like that. So that's the type of work we do. And as an employee, unfortunately, quite a lot of the time, if you found yourself, um, engaging with SmartClinic somehow, it's usually because you're going through a difficult time in your life. It could be that you're having mental health difficulties, it could be that you're having physical health difficulties, there could be some sort of challenge at work that means that you're struggling to actually achieve, um, your job or your work for medical reasons. Usually that's where we get involved, which means from our point of view we've got huge responsibility because we're working with people Often when they're having a bad day, often when they're at their most vulnerable, and often when they're at their most distressed. These days, mental health is much better understood than it once was, um, which is great, really good. And we've taken huge steps forward in, in this country and in the world generally, in particular in the last sort of 25 years or so, um, in terms of understanding mental health. And of course, what that means is that when somebody's mental health is suffering a bit. They're generally a little bit more forthcoming in terms of being open to the fact that they're struggling. What that means is that their employer can be a little bit more proactive in terms of helping them and supporting them. But that employer, the person that we will take instruction from, it's called a referral in our world. The person that we would take a referral from is usually some form of HR person. Could be a, you know, or people team, they often call them these days.
Al ElliottYeah.
Harry CramerCould be employee relations, could be some— someone in the HR world. Because that's their background, because that's their qualification. They're not a medical professional, they're not a psychologist, they're not a doctor, they're not a nurse. They're an HR professional, which means when it comes to managing employees with medical issues, they're unlikely to have that skill set or that set of qualifications in order to make decisions on what to do, how to help people, how to make decisions based on people's medical abilities, and that's where we come in. So to answer your question, if you as an employee are engaging with any occupational health provider, but us in particular, it's usually because you've got something going on that you need a little bit of help with. Might not necessarily be that your manager has referred you. It might also be that you've self-referred yourself to occupational health for some reason. Perhaps you've taken that brave step to engage in some sort of mental health support, for instance. Um, but yeah, that's, that's when you'll see us, or not, as the case may be.
Leanne ElliottSo in terms of— just, I want to make, make sure I really understand how, how Spark Clinic works, Harry. So if I was an employee in a business, and my business, do they engage you on kind of a retainer basis, a contract basis? Are you then the kind of the signpost for occupational health referrals?
Harry CramerWe give people that option to not have retainers with us and to not have ongoing costs and to not have ongoing fees because we want to make it really easy for anyone to access occupational health. Things like, we're a small business, should never be a reason to say I can't possibly use occupational health because that would mean that our services aren't being made available to the people who arguably need them most. Um, so no, no retainers. You can just Contact SmartClinic, go to our website, set up an account, and we're there in your pocket whenever you need us. And it's somewhere that we try to be really flexible with clients, because if you need occupational health support, we want to make sure that you can get it.
Leanne ElliottIn your experience, is that, is that something that managers, um, that they recognize? Could a manager say, I think, I think you're, you know, I've seen changing behaviors, everything okay, this person is actually going through a bit of a hard time, the manager said, okay, would you feel comfortable, you know, making that referral to occupational health? And at that point, do you work directly with the individual?
Harry CramerYes, yes, and we'll work directly with the individual, um, but we'll also produce a report for that management to help them manage the employee as well. So that, that report will contain things like suggestions on some adjustments that they could make, hopefully temporarily, It will include things like possible support options available for that employee. It will include things like advice on whether somebody is currently able to be at work, and if so, in what capacity. So can they do all of their job? Can they just do some of their job, but they might need help with other elements of their job? But giving the advice and the report to the management team— often it will be the HR team— is absolutely fundamental because it's giving them the skills to manage that employee effectively. And just know what to do next. You know, as we said, that they're not a medical professional, so if someone comes to them and gives them a complicated diagnosis or a very long-winded medication name, they're not going to know what to do with that information, nor should they. It's not their expertise. So we want to make sure that it's really clear for them in terms of what they need to do next to make sure that employee is also getting, getting the support they need.
Al ElliottAfter this short break, we're going to find out if a background in psychology makes a better leader, how to help employees who have to deal with emotionally charged situations, and why Harry thinks that loneliness is an unavoidable part of being a leader. See you in a second.
Leanne ElliottDid you know that the UK's number 1 management podcast, that's us, by the way, and the UK's number 1 marketing podcast are both on the same podcast network?
Al ElliottWe actually have a lot in common. We both use behavioural science to help people do better at work.
Leanne ElliottAnd we both had to wrangle Rory Sutherland on an episode.
Al ElliottAnd 2 out of 3 of us are devilishly good-looking. And you're not going to say which. Phil, host of Nudge, UK's number 1 marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in 3s—
Leanne Elliottthe HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.
Harry CramerSeamless.
Al ElliottSeamless. Tell us about your latest episode, Phil. We've just done an episode on fake fandom and how New York indie bands are paying agencies to create fake TikTok videos about how much they like their work. And we talk about the behavioural science behind fandom and how that encourages people to enjoy the music and all of that good stuff and do some big things about how this affects the world of politics, business, and brands as well.
Leanne ElliottIt is. It's such, it's such a good show. Of course, you'll hear all the stuff you want to hear about how to grow your business by using behavioural science in your marketing. But there's also just some really interesting episodes that'll be right up your street. Personally, I enjoyed Can Balsamic Vinegar Make Beer Taste Better?
Al ElliottIt can.
Leanne ElliottAnd Are We All Just Status-Seeking Monkeys?
Al ElliottI am. Go and listen to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts.
Leanne ElliottBut come back.
Al ElliottYeah, come back. Definitely come back, because Nudge isn't as good as this, so come back. I'll cut that out. Keep that in.
Leanne ElliottWelcome back. As we just heard, Harry does have a background in psychology. I wanted to know if that helped make him a better manager.
Al ElliottSo let's rejoin the interview with Leanne and Harry, where Harry talks about good management styles, working with his wife, and this loneliness.
Leanne ElliottSo let's move on to your business and your experiences. I mean, in, in terms that you say you've got a psychology background, you mentioned there that your DNA is, is within the, the organization. Tell us about that. Tell us about your your culture? How do you manage it? How do you manage your people? What are the values that, that shape your approach?
Harry CramerI think probably the first thing to say is you and I have something in common, which is that we're both fortunate enough to work with our partners. Um, so it isn't just me, it's, it's, uh, my wife as well, who has so much involvement in the business and has been absolute bedrock as well. So That's something I'm very lucky in, and it does give all of us the opportunity, I think, to perhaps question ourselves, perhaps make sure that we're making the right decisions, because it is lonely. You know, you had a really, really interesting podcast called— I think it was called The Lonely Manager, The Lonely Worker, something like that. It's episode 104 or 105. I'm sure you'll link to it.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Harry CramerReally interesting, and it describes the journey of being self-employed absolutely magnificently. It's really articulate. So copy and paste from that episode, I think, in terms of what it's like and some of the challenges that you can have running a business. Of course, what's brilliant, and again, you, I imagine, and Al as well, will be able to empathize with this. What's brilliant is you can also feed some of your own values into it and, and try and craft a business into being something that you can legitimately be proud of. And I love that. I absolutely love that. And I am proud of it. There's not a day that goes by where I'm not so proud of everything that all of our wonderful team achieve, because we do some really good work and we get some lovely feedback for it. And Interestingly, actually, every induction that we have, so every new member of staff, I have about an hour and a half session with them where we go through what some of our values are. And one of them is about being proud, because I think it's so important. I think you should really feel proud in what you do. You should be engaged in the mission. You should feel— you should just feel like you've done a good job, because if you've done your job well, you've helped somebody phenomenally well. So it's funny you mentioned about values. That specifically is one of the values that we try to, that we try to sort of encourage and try to promote.
Leanne ElliottWhat's the hardest thing about working with your partner?
Harry CramerThe logistics. I think a question I get asked a lot actually is, oh, isn't it really difficult because you just go home and end up talking about work? And I didn't find that difficult at all because I love work. I find it really interesting. It's my favourite topic. I'm really boring like that. And I think to a certain extent, Chloe, my partner, is probably a little bit the same. So that's not a challenge at all. I think what is a challenge is the logistics of it because, really obvious example, if we go on holiday, obviously we're probably both going on holiday together. That's both of us out of the business for a week.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Harry CramerAnd even an hour out of the business can be quite challenging sometimes. So us both being away for a week comes with its own logistical challenges because neither of us are there. So that becomes, that becomes a little bit more difficult. But yeah, other than that, to be perfectly honest with you, no complaints. It's, it's really helpful and it's really nice. And as I said, running an organization, can be lonely because nobody else gets it. Why would they? It's not their job to get it, but they don't necessarily understand what goes on behind the scenes. They might not necessarily understand the pressures that it can include. They might not necessarily understand the feeling that you get when you get an unhappy client, for example. You know, that really, that really bothers me and it really worries me. Or if you've had a bad day at work or something like that. So having your partner in the business helps that no end because she gets it. And it means that that sort of isolation that you feel at work is almost entirely negated. Because Chloe hasn't worked for the business for all of time. She joined us— she's obviously always been involved because she's my partner, but there was sort of a moment where she sort of officially fully moved.
Al ElliottYeah.
Harry Cramerto work for the company. And ever since that day, that feeling has got an awful lot better. So, as long as you can manage things appropriately and make sure that you are sort of having some degree of boundaries in terms of home and work life, I would really advocate for it. I think it's made everything better. And like anything in life, relationships that are complementary tend to probably, particularly in a business context, relationships that are complementary tend to be much more successful than relationships where both people are good at the same thing. Because if you've got 2 people who are good at the same thing, then, then they'll kind of be vying for what is the right way to do something or how to make a particular decision. Meanwhile, something else could get totally forgotten about. So you need to have complementary skill sets and complementary attitudes rather than, I think, the same skill set and the same attitude. So sounds like you and Al have achieved that really well.
Al ElliottSo let's find out a little bit more about the culture at SmartClinic. It's grown to 42 people in a very short period of time. In most high-growth companies, particularly when they're tech-led, culture often feels like it's an afterthought, but not in Harry's case. So I want to rejoin the interview where Leanne gets down to business with the culture at SmartClinic.
Leanne ElliottTell us about the growth journey of SmartClinic then. So you start in 2015, how quickly did it grow? How big is it now?
Harry CramerInitially, not very quickly, deliberately so. We wanted to make sure we got everything right. We spent about probably 3, 4 years really perfecting things. Building the system that I've told you about, building the app that I've told you about, just getting all of the structure in place, getting the right people in the right place. Of course, we started in 2015. Really, it was late 2015 by the time we'd actually hired people and got stuff going. So it took us sort of roughly 4 years to get to a stage where we kind of felt like, okay, we're good now, we can really start growing. That takes us to the end of 2019. Of course, the pandemic happened. So All of a sudden things looked very different. But from that point onwards, we've grown quite quickly and we've been really, really lucky. And I'm so grateful to every single client who's ever put their faith in working with us, because it does take faith. You know, you're potentially going to spend money on a service, you're potentially going to get— put a bit of trust in an organization to actually look after your staff properly, engage with your staff properly, have appropriate conversations with with your staff. So it does take a real leap of faith engaging an occupational health provider, and I do recognize that. And we feel really privileged every time a client chooses us. Fortunately, more recently, that is quite frequent. You know, we, we are growing quite quickly. Um, we try not to grow ridiculously quickly. We don't want to grow to a point where things are so unmanageable. I would never like to get to a stage where the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. But similarly, some growth is great because with growth comes more opportunity to reinvest in the company, reinvest in the technology, for example, hire more and better qualified people, implement things that just make you better, make you better as a company. And in that sense, growing a business is hard because The bigger it is, the more challenges there are. But it's also easier because the bigger it is, the more opportunities there are and the more resources there are. Again, talking about that episode that you're talking— that we referenced earlier, you— and I've heard you talk about this before, actually— you talk about how the 13th hire is the most difficult one, don't you?
Al ElliottSo true.
Harry CramerWhether it's exactly the 13 number, I don't know, but it is so true. Around about that number, that's the stage where you're Um, big enough to have a proper business and you've got proper clients who have quite high expectations of you, but still quite small without much structure and without much resource, I would probably say from that day onwards it does get a bit easier.
Leanne ElliottSo what was the biggest learning curve for you, do you think, from a people and culture perspective, going, as you said, from that tricky 12, 13, 14 up to, up to 42?
Harry CramerCommon question people would say is, what, you know, What's your biggest mistake you made, or what would you do differently, and stuff like that? And I think it's really difficult to answer what would I do differently, because every mistake you ever make, you learn from, and it sort of makes you a little bit better in a way. Sounds a bit corny, that, doesn't it? But, but it's true. It also gives you opportunity to actually— if you made a mistake, there's a hole somewhere, you know. You might— if you've accidentally done something wrong, then it was probably too easy to have got that thing wrong. So there's a hole there that you could fix. So until you make that mistake, sometimes you don't know there's a hole there and you can, you can plug it. Data protection is a very common example of that, and you'd never really want anything to get to a stage where there's been a data breach or anything like that. So you have to try and preempt what those risks are, what those holes are. How could I accidentally make a data breach or those sorts of things? Um, But yeah, I mean, I think that's probably been one of the more significant learnings. I've learned a lot in terms of working with people as well. You have a very grandiose idea of how you're going to be as a manager before you are one. When you become one, it changes. It's a lot harder than you expect it to be. Easy conversations are easy.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Harry CramerBut hard conversations are really hard. You get better at that with time, but I don't think you ever get fully used to it. I certainly don't feel like I've got fully used to it. But, you know, if a member of staff, for example, perhaps a member of staff's underperforming, or perhaps a member of staff has made a mistake, I think it's a very difficult thing for a manager to do to approach that particular conversation fairly.
Leanne ElliottHow do you think your team would describe you as a leader, as a manager?
Harry CramerHopefully, I would like to think that they would consider me to lead by example. I would hope. I would like to think they would say I'm fairly hardworking. I've always really believed in the power of working quite hard. I'm certainly not into the, you know, the 4-hour working week type mentality. It's not to say we should burn ourselves out or anything like that. That's, that's Obviously very detrimental too. I'm not suggesting we work ourselves to the core, um, but I do like to pride myself in giving something my all. I feel like I kind of have that duty actually to the company, um, and to every, every single person who works for it. Because when some— when you take a job somewhere, you're putting a lot of faith in that organization. You're trusting them to pay you, you're trusting them to look after you, you're trusting them to give you a nice working environment.
Al ElliottYeah.
Harry Cramerto, you know, to, to manage your psychological integrity as, as time goes on. And I want to try and repay that, and I want to try and repay that loyalty to everybody who's ever put faith in the next step of their career by, by joining SmartClinics.
Leanne ElliottWhat I'm curious about is you said, you know, you've got a background in psychology. Has that had any influence on your approach to leadership, to people, to building culture, building your business?
Harry CramerYes, I think so. I think so. I think naturally studying psychology gives you a better understanding of mental health anyway, and at a time where mental health is becoming better understood and more talked about, I think it's given me a little bit of an advantage over someone that might not have studied psychology in terms of knowing a bit more about the subject matter and perhaps hopefully being able to recognize and spot the symptoms of poor mental health. Um, so I think there's all sorts of different ways, probably subconsciously, that psychology can help. Um, I never really thought about it though. It's a good question.
Leanne ElliottIt sounds so sincere, and I'm sure that goes a long way in terms of the culture of your business, the fulfillment of, of your people. I mean, describe the culture to me. Is it quite a mission-driven culture? How does, how does everyone interact?
Harry CramerI think you've probably described it quite well there, actually. Um, I, I go, culture, you've always got to be a little bit careful, haven't you? Because you can't just decide what the culture is. You can't just say the culture of our business is this, so this is what it is. You know, it doesn't work like that. You know probably better than anyone, especially doing the podcast that you guys do. So The culture of the business is something that probably gets fostered over time, and it probably migrates over time. Probably, you know, some sort of cultural metamorphosis, I think, that goes on where, I mean, the culture on day one is certainly not the culture now. Some ways it probably was better on day one, some ways it's probably better now. It's just different. So I think probably at any given stage in our journey, if you'd have asked us that question, the answer probably would have been different. I think it goes back to that, you know, your 13th hire, Point that we made earlier. Right now, yes, I think it's very mission-driven. I'm quite proud of that. I think that's a good thing. I think people have to care. It's so much more pleasant to come to work every day if the thing that you're doing is something that you care about and enjoy, but naturally you probably will enjoy it if you care about it. So working for an organization that does something that you believe in is its own motivation. Um, so I hope that that would probably be a fairly significant factor of our culture, but in honesty, it's probably a question that our staff would maybe answer better than I can because they're the ones who work for it every day. All I can really kind of share is what I would like to think the culture is. Um, we also try to foster quite an empathetic culture. You know, in occupational health, sometimes we have to be Perhaps the bearer of bad news, or perhaps we just have to be quite robust in our opinions and our advice. But it's really difficult to do that and also remain empathetic at any given time. So when we're hiring, for example, we always try to identify people that seem to have good emotional intelligence and good empathy skills, because as we were talking about earlier, any given day that you talk to someone, the probability is that probably having a bad day. They're probably going through a difficult time in their life. So I think we try to foster a culture of empathy and understanding and probably being non-judgmental of the people that we work with as well. Obviously, that can be quite challenging when we have— we deal with people with some quite extreme views from time to time. But obviously, you have to remain understanding and non-judgmental of those views as well. But that's certainly— I hope that that's something that resonates within our culture. It's certainly something that personally I try to promote wherever possible.
Leanne ElliottI really like that. I think that's something that businesses can struggle with, can't they? That evolution of their culture.
Harry CramerYeah, yeah. It's really interesting you say that. I bet there is some sort of— I bet if you were ever to do research on it, I bet there's some sort of grieving for SME owners who once were a one-person business, because the feel is different and you could miss that sometimes. Um, I'd be interested to do research on that. There's— maybe that's a job for you one day, Leanne.
Leanne ElliottOn this theme, you know, you said that, you know, the nature of the work that, that your team does, the, um, the challenges that they support the people with, some of the views that some people have There's a lot of emotional labor there. How do you support people with their well-being, particularly as an occupational health business? How do you make sure the health of your own team is, is managed and taken care of?
Harry CramerWell, I mean, we try to be supportive of each other is, is probably the primary thing. You've quite rightly identified that sometimes working with people all day long who are struggling, um, takes its toll. And it does, you know, it, it really does. And it's, it's not unusual to have a difficult consultation and to come away from it and feel a little bit emotional, or just have a difficult call, whether it's a, you know, someone that's had quite, quite triggering trauma in their own life that they've then discussed with one of our team, um, and it's resonated with them. So I think, I think we try to be supportive. To go back to sort of the subject, to make sure you've got the right people in the right place at any given time, that's so important because What that actually looks like in practice is making sure that every member of staff has that layer of support that they need. Um, you know, it's quite fashionable these days, isn't it, to talk about flat management structures where it's sort of everybody's, everybody's equal and there's not really a hierarchy and stuff like that. But one of the inherent downsides, in my view, of that is that when it, when it comes to kind of obtaining support from someone, there's not necessarily an available or obvious go-to person, particularly if it's a person in authority that can give you sort of appropriate advice or support or, or any kind of intervention at all. So having the right management team in the right place, I think, is really important to that. And that's something that— to go back to working with your partner— that's something that my wife has been able to do so well because it's, it's really sort of one of her fortes, that, and ensuring, A, that the right people are in the right place at any given time, but also ensuring that a culture of being supportive and fair and kind to each other is really harnessed as well. So yeah, I think these days I'm less hands-on with it because there's more people. So really all I can do, because there's only so many hours in the day, really all I can do is make sure that everybody's got access to that support that they need whenever they need it, which is both Practical support as well. You know, we've got everything that we practice, we preach as well. Everything that we preach, we practice. We have our own employee assistance type options. You know, we offer health services and in particular mental health services to all of our own team as well. But yeah, I think it's more— I think probably the more beneficial and the more significant thing that we're able to do internally is make sure that the the management team are where they need to be, um, when they need to be there, and also have the skill set in which to kind of support the, the team members that they need to.
Al ElliottLeah, tell me, what other kinds of companies might need to consider this emotional labour?
Leanne ElliottWell, let's just remind ourselves what emotional labour is. So emotional labour is when employees manage their emotions to meet job expectations, even if it goes against how they truly feel. This happens in a lot of jobs. So customer service often deal with angry customers, but they must stay friendly and patient to maintain the company image. Nurses, other healthcare workers might face stressful or emotional situations daily, but they need to stay calm and reassuring no matter how overwhelming their work becomes. Teachers also have to maintain positive energy in a classroom even when they're really tired, frustrated, and probably underpaid. A growing example is also social media moderation, and this has been over the news, especially given the Elon Musk takeover of Twitter, now X. Moderators often have to handle disturbing or harmful content, removing inappropriate posts while maintaining neutral and professional despite how the content may affect them emotionally. So why should business owners care? Well, emotional labor, when not managed properly, can lead to burnout, stress, and emotional exhaustion, which affects employee productivity and well-being. For example, research shows that constant emotional dissonance, which is the gap between what is felt and displayed in terms of emotion, can take a serious toll on mental health. And over time, this can lead to higher turnover rates and lower job satisfaction, which is why creating a supportive work environment like Harry is doing at Smart Clinic is so important, both for employee wellbeing and business performance.
Al ElliottLet's get on to my favourite bit, the lessons learned when building an organisation from the ground up. We'll get back into the interview where Leanne did a great job of finding out what went well and what didn't go so well when building SmartClinic. And we're going to learn what really drives Harry to build the best organisation he possibly can.
Leanne ElliottWhat advice would you give to 25-year-old Harry who's about to embark on, on this incredible growth journey?
Harry CramerBuckle up, it's gonna get fun. I think, I think to anyone starting a business, You can overthink it a little bit. And I think one of the real beauties of being young is you don't overthink things quite as much as you do when you're older because the risks are lower. You know, you don't, you don't have a family, you don't have a mortgage, you don't have all of those things to worry about. So there's less to lose. So you're a little bit more gung-ho with stuff. You know, I can say with Absolute conviction. For example, if I were to go and start another business now, I would be far more cautious now than I would have been 10 years ago. And to be honest, probably rightly so. I'd probably just go back to myself and just say, oh, just get on with it. Also, I think a few words of warning, you know, that at that age you don't know what you don't know, particularly when you've got relatively limited experience of management.
Al ElliottYeah.
Harry CramerAnd business ownership and stuff. And when you don't know what you don't know, you probably don't know about some of the challenges that lie ahead, and therefore you're, well, not fairly unprepared. I was woefully unprepared for some of the challenges that we ended up facing. So, um, there's certain things I perhaps would have liked to have read up about a little bit more, uh, to negate some of the very silly mistakes we might have made. That might include making sure that the right people are in the right place at any given time as well in terms of staffing. But yeah, I think make sure you're prepared and then just get on with it would probably be a good bit of advice. I was always a little bit unusual. I was always a little bit odd. And I always— I was never really one for convention. If, you know, if someone said everyone needs to stand on the left, I'd probably go and stand on the right just to be a little bit awkward, which naturally doesn't lend itself particularly well to being a good employee. At this point, I need to apologize to anyone who has ever been my manager in the past because I definitely wasn't easy. And I mean, I've heard that story a lot before and I resonate with it. You know, you hear lots of Lots of founders say, I was a dreadful employee, so I only really ever had the option to be self-employed because I was just far too difficult to be an employee. So definitely that. I always had had a real desire to sort of build things, not physically, you know, not Lego or anything like that, but build things in terms of creating. And, you know, I'm not creative insofar as I don't play musical instruments or paint or anything like that, So my sort of creativity comes out, I think, in the corporate world. And I always felt that sort of ambition and motivation to actually build something and exercise a bit of corporate creativity. I don't know if that's an expression or not, but that's kind of how it felt to me. To give you another example, I started a business when I was 18, I think I was. Selling and racing go-karts. Didn't do terribly well, but as an 18-year-old, it was quite good fun. And, you know, I made enough to pay my way through university and things like that. Um, and I think that probably demonstrated to myself from a fairly early age, A, that I could do it, and B, that I wanted to do it. You know, that's the life that I wanted. I wanted to be, um, self-employed and building something. That I think is beautiful. It's almost like having a child, really, having a business. You're building something, you're nurturing it, you're feeding it, you're letting it grow. Eventually it starts walking all by itself. And I always sort of had that hunger and that drive to do that, I think, which it turns out was a bit odd and a bit unusual at the time. But I feel quite fortunate to have that as a personality trait. I'm very proud to To give 42 people jobs. You know, I don't think you should ever underestimate how significant it is to be able to give people that opportunity and that career, and hopefully a job that they like. I hope— I imagine most people quite like their jobs. They hopefully— they wouldn't be here if they didn't.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Harry CramerAnd we have very good tenure with our staff and we have very low staff turnover. So I think people quite like their roles here. And I'm quite proud of that. You know, I'm proud that when someone works for you, if they're working a 40-hour week, that's 40 hours of their week that they're dedicating towards something that you have created. And that's a phenomenal time commitment. You know, it's—
Al ElliottYeah.
Harry CramerYou add that up over the years and people spend thousands and thousands and thousands of hours working with you. So I feel very proud that they've entrusted an element of their career with us and that they are so willingly working with us and engaging with us and being part of the cause, you know, being part of our mission and sort of hopefully sharing some of the same values and—
Al ElliottYeah.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Harry CramerAnd just working with us. I'm very, very proud of that as well. And I take it very seriously as well. You know, when it comes to decision-making, we talked about risk a little bit earlier. When it comes to decision-making, I'm much more risk-averse now than I once was because there's so much more on the line. And that's 42 people's jobs. That's 42 mortgages, 42 pensions, 42 families, 42 mouths to feed. At least. So it's something that you've got to take very seriously, but it's also something I'm really, really proud of.
Leanne ElliottWhat do you want people to really take away from this, Harry? If a business leader, an HR listener, an HR leader, an employee is listening, what's the, what's the one message you want them to take away from this conversation?
Harry CramerI think to anybody who's got any sort of entrepreneurial flair who's listening to this conversation, go for it, have fun, be aware of what the challenges are going to be. But go for it because honestly, it's such a rewarding and interesting journey. I think more in terms of bringing it back to kind of Smart Clinic and what I actually do on a day-to-day basis, I think probably one of the significant things that I would like people to sort of take away and understand is that actually there is another way. If ever you've had a bad experience of occupational health, which many, many of your listeners Or viewers will have done. Um, there is another way. Go and try it. If you don't like it, then at least you tried it. But, um, but there are better options out there.
Al ElliottSo that is the story of SmartClinic and a masterclass in building company culture, even when the work is tough.
Leanne ElliottA really great story, entrepreneurial story, I think brings in a very different perspective of how actually to be a great manager, to be a great founder, you don't even have to have experience in in the people doing the job with your people that you're, you're managing and building a business in. So I think it, it really does push that argument in terms of, of, um, hiring managers for people skills to a whole new level. I'm, I'm siding Branson on this one, I must admit.
Al ElliottBrilliant. We are back on Tuesday with another This Week in Work episode, but before we go, here's how to find a bit more about Harry and Smart Clinic.
Harry CramerOh, you don't want to know any more about me. I'm not that interesting. But the company, um, so our website smartclinic.com, uh, there's all sorts of information on there. If ever you want to get in touch with us, drop us an email on hello@smartclinic.com. It's nice and easy to remember that one, and one of our team, quite possibly me, will get back to you. And you know what, we'll get back to you really quickly because we'd really love to help.
Leanne ElliottA reminder, if you like to hear stories of how organizations big and small have built amazing workplace cultures, then every Thursday we bring you an amazing guest with a great story.
Al ElliottAnd if you like to keep abreast of the latest news and love a good Agony Aunt segment, then you're gonna love next Tuesday, as I said, where we're bringing you more of our weekly news roundup, our September segment called Fresh Voices, and of course our world-famous Weekly Workplace Surgery, where I put your questions to Leanne. Oh, and by the way, there is a brand new middle segment. I don't know if it's next week or the week after, which we're really excited about, called Hot Takes. I think you're gonna love it.
Leanne ElliottYou are gonna absolutely love it. Until then, don't forget to subscribe, Follow, however it is you stay up with the show on whatever platform you listen on. Leave a review if it's positive and you've got 5 minutes. If it's negative and you've got 5 minutes, do the washing up or something. Um, but yeah, it's the best way to support the show, best way to help us keep bringing you more and more content, hopefully better and better content, um, and keep doing what we love. So yeah, if you wouldn't mind just clicking those buttons, that'd be marvelous.
Al ElliottWe'll see See you next week. Bye-bye.
Leanne ElliottLove you. Love you.
Al ElliottSo let's go and meet Harry Cramer. Is his name Harry Cramer? Got that right?
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Al ElliottSorry, Harry.
Leanne ElliottWarren Buffett, famously a specialist occupational health provider. Sorry, that intonation was wrong.