No Place Like Home Services Author Interview

Dennis Collins: 00:00:09

Greetings, everyone.

Dennis Collins: 00:00:11

Welcome back to Connect & Convert.

Dennis Collins: 00:00:15

The Sales Accelerator podcast, where we share small business

Dennis Collins: 00:00:20

owner insider secrets.

Dennis Collins: 00:00:24

To grow your sales faster than ever.

Dennis Collins: 00:00:28

I'm Dennis Collins, and I'm joined by my partner today.

Dennis Collins: 00:00:32

Hey, Leah, how are you today?

Leah Bumphrey: 00:00:35

Hey, doing good.

Leah Bumphrey: 00:00:37

I'm very excited about this, uh, about this session, Dennis.

Leah Bumphrey: 00:00:40

This is gonna be fun.

Dennis Collins: 00:00:43

Well, I agree.

Dennis Collins: 00:00:44

We love to have guests.

Dennis Collins: 00:00:46

And today we have some very, very special guests who are near and dear to us.

Dennis Collins: 00:00:52

And they have just co authored a book, which I think our

Dennis Collins: 00:00:57

viewers and our listeners are going to find very interesting.

Dennis Collins: 00:01:00

No Place Like Home Services.

Dennis Collins: 00:01:03

No place like home services.

Dennis Collins: 00:01:05

How a wizard of ads and his crack cracker deck copywriter helped

Dennis Collins: 00:01:09

America's best companies sell 2 billion.

Dennis Collins: 00:01:12

Our first guest today is, is Ray Segrin.

Dennis Collins: 00:01:16

I think I met Ray about 20 years ago when he was starting his company.

Dennis Collins: 00:01:21

Brand guy, right?

Dennis Collins: 00:01:22

Team heads up.

Dennis Collins: 00:01:24

God, it's been a long time, Ray.

Dennis Collins: 00:01:26

Uh, but your superpower.

Dennis Collins: 00:01:28

I love your superpower.

Dennis Collins: 00:01:30

Your superpower is getting to know a business owner quickly and

Dennis Collins: 00:01:36

getting to know their issues very quickly so that you can prescribe.

Dennis Collins: 00:01:42

Correctly, a methodology for their, for their growth and for their dominance.

Dennis Collins: 00:01:49

I love the word dominance.

Dennis Collins: 00:01:51

That's your superpower.

Dennis Collins: 00:01:53

That's your superpower.

Dennis Collins: 00:01:55

Well, thanks man.

Dennis Collins: 00:01:56

I appreciate you saying that.

Dennis Collins: 00:01:56

We want to know more about that.

Dennis Collins: 00:01:58

I'm sure the book details that.

Dennis Collins: 00:02:00

Can I also introduce the co author who is here with us today?

Dennis Collins: 00:02:05

She is Monica Ballard.

Dennis Collins: 00:02:07

Hi, Monica.

Dennis Collins: 00:02:08

Hey, Monica.

Dennis Collins: 00:02:10

Uh, I have not known Monica as, I have not known her as long as I've known Mr.

Dennis Collins: 00:02:15

Ray, but I do know something that Monica is the consummate storyteller.

Dennis Collins: 00:02:21

She, in fact, one description of her I read said if words are

Dennis Collins: 00:02:27

involved, Monica is involved.

Dennis Collins: 00:02:30

All different kinds of words are involved.

Dennis Collins: 00:02:33

Words, be it a song, be it content, be it a speech, uh, I think you're a

Dennis Collins: 00:02:38

playwright, you're an author, you've authored books, you've co authored books.

Dennis Collins: 00:02:43

Words are pretty much your life.

Dennis Collins: 00:02:46

You have, as they say, a way with words.

Dennis Collins: 00:02:49

So it's a wordsmith.

Dennis Collins: 00:02:52

So, we're glad to have both of you on today.

Dennis Collins: 00:02:56

As I said, the book is called No Place Like Home Services, so I

Dennis Collins: 00:03:01

like to kind of get an idea of what's inside an author's head.

Dennis Collins: 00:03:06

And since we have co authors, we'll probably have maybe two different ideas.

Dennis Collins: 00:03:10

What was the inspiration for this book?

Dennis Collins: 00:03:13

What was Ha!

Dennis Collins: 00:03:14

Ha!

Dennis Collins: 00:03:15

What was the inspiration?

Dennis Collins: 00:03:16

What was the reason?

Dennis Collins: 00:03:18

What, what, what, what said?

Dennis Collins: 00:03:20

Yeah, we got to do this book.

Dennis Collins: 00:03:22

What, what was that?

Dennis Collins: 00:03:23

Right.

Ray Seggern: 00:03:26

Sure.

Ray Seggern: 00:03:26

I'll, I'll jump in on that, Dennis, for starters.

Ray Seggern: 00:03:28

Thanks, Dennis.

Ray Seggern: 00:03:29

Thanks Leah for having us today.

Ray Seggern: 00:03:32

We're gonna have a lot of fun.

Ray Seggern: 00:03:33

I'm sure.

Ray Seggern: 00:03:34

So the idea for no place like home services came from our considerable

Ray Seggern: 00:03:40

experience inside the home services vertical, um, going all the way back to.

Ray Seggern: 00:03:47

It is 20 years ago and changed, and just a little bit of change.

Ray Seggern: 00:03:50

It was Good Friday 2004 when I went into the, into the wacky world of The

Ray Seggern: 00:03:55

Wizard of Ads when Roy Williams, founder, hired me to be one of his writers.

Ray Seggern: 00:04:00

And, uh, there's, when I went to work for him, he said, there's this partner network

Ray Seggern: 00:04:05

that I'm building, and I'm not going to pay you probably what you're going

Ray Seggern: 00:04:07

to discover your worth, but I've got a, I've already planned your exit strategy.

Ray Seggern: 00:04:12

Even when I was writing for Roy back at the home office,

Ray Seggern: 00:04:16

uh, home services was a thing.

Ray Seggern: 00:04:17

And I can share that with you.

Ray Seggern: 00:04:19

Like, but the book generally came from Monica and I hitched our wagons

Ray Seggern: 00:04:23

together back in 2012 when I had the opportunity to bring a lot of

Ray Seggern: 00:04:27

clients in, in one fell swoop from a particular trade organization.

Ray Seggern: 00:04:32

10 years, Monica and I collaborated.

Ray Seggern: 00:04:36

On an article for their, their publication, right?

Ray Seggern: 00:04:41

In addition to that, we're, we're working on dozens of clients, uh, uh, week after

Ray Seggern: 00:04:47

week, month after month, year after year.

Ray Seggern: 00:04:49

So the sum total, everything we learned across that decade, um, is, uh, what's

Ray Seggern: 00:04:54

featured in No Place Like Home Services.

Ray Seggern: 00:04:57

It really just became a, uh, uh, at some point it was great.

Ray Seggern: 00:05:00

You know, we've got so many articles we've written.

Ray Seggern: 00:05:02

We could take that idea and write a chapter on it.

Ray Seggern: 00:05:05

And we've got this client, boy, that was a great success story there.

Ray Seggern: 00:05:08

Uh, so it was just with so much material that, uh, it was actually, uh, born of the

Ray Seggern: 00:05:14

pandemic, uh, but took us a little while to get, so that's kind of when we decided

Ray Seggern: 00:05:18

we were going to start, uh, compiling and it took us a minute to sculpt it

Ray Seggern: 00:05:21

into what you've got in your hands today.

Dennis Collins: 00:05:24

That's great.

Dennis Collins: 00:05:25

Monica, you being a writer in so many different disciplines,

Dennis Collins: 00:05:32

I'd love to think of a book as something that's transformative.

Dennis Collins: 00:05:36

For instance, there is a before state and there's an after state.

Dennis Collins: 00:05:41

Okay, so the proposed reader, our reader, Is in a before state that we're

Dennis Collins: 00:05:48

requires them to get to an after state.

Dennis Collins: 00:05:51

How do you see that transformation in this current book in no

Dennis Collins: 00:05:55

place like home services?

Dennis Collins: 00:05:56

How do you see that transformation?

Dennis Collins: 00:05:58

Where can you be transformed from before to after by using?

Monica Ballard: 00:06:05

Yeah, we, um, uh, like, like Ray says, we started out with

Monica Ballard: 00:06:10

these disparate articles, and so we had to kind of go through them and decide

Monica Ballard: 00:06:17

which articles do we want to include?

Monica Ballard: 00:06:20

Which ones did.

Monica Ballard: 00:06:21

Because of the word count, we really didn't say enough, and we can expand and

Monica Ballard: 00:06:27

expound on, uh, and increase the word count there to, to say what it was we

Monica Ballard: 00:06:32

really meant to say in the first place.

Monica Ballard: 00:06:35

But, uh, because of the amount of column space, just didn't have the

Monica Ballard: 00:06:39

opportunity to say, and then, um.

Monica Ballard: 00:06:43

How do we want to couch all of this, package it in, in a way that is sort

Monica Ballard: 00:06:50

of a theme and the Wizard of Oz theme came about because we're wizards of ads.

Monica Ballard: 00:06:58

And, uh, so the whole point is that a lot of business owners have the

Monica Ballard: 00:07:04

brains, the heart, and the soul.

Monica Ballard: 00:07:06

And the courage that they already have, they, they just need a map, essentially,

Monica Ballard: 00:07:14

they need a yellow brick road to follow to get from point A to point B to

Monica Ballard: 00:07:19

follow that, uh, that that dream to get those answers that when they get

Monica Ballard: 00:07:24

there, they find out they already had.

Monica Ballard: 00:07:26

What it was that they needed all along, so we found that thematically,

Monica Ballard: 00:07:30

um, it sort of matched the goal that we wanted them to have.

Ray Seggern: 00:07:36

No place like home services.

Ray Seggern: 00:07:38

You know what?

Ray Seggern: 00:07:40

I had Eureka moment on that.

Ray Seggern: 00:07:41

It's kind of cool.

Ray Seggern: 00:07:42

Yeah.

Ray Seggern: 00:07:42

And then, you know, the more we talked about it, it was just there was so

Ray Seggern: 00:07:45

much to explore there that it was.

Ray Seggern: 00:07:47

It was just a fun, a fun thing to sort of leave everything through.

Dennis Collins: 00:07:53

Well, it worked for me.

Dennis Collins: 00:07:55

I've pretty much devoured it and enjoyed it.

Dennis Collins: 00:07:58

But I want to highlight one particular chapter, chapter 7.

Dennis Collins: 00:08:03

Okay, uh, story, culture and experience story, culture and

Dennis Collins: 00:08:08

experience that rings my chime.

Dennis Collins: 00:08:11

You know, a lot of the stuff that the practice that Leah and I are in basically

Dennis Collins: 00:08:16

is about that is about storytelling and what's your, your culture.

Dennis Collins: 00:08:21

Determines the level of flight, how high are you going to fly this airplane?

Dennis Collins: 00:08:26

Your culture has a lot to do with it and certainly your customer experience.

Dennis Collins: 00:08:29

But there's one part, I think towards the end of the chapter that I'm going to cite

Dennis Collins: 00:08:35

that I really kind of, kind of hit me.

Dennis Collins: 00:08:37

I think it's an actual quote from one of your clients.

Dennis Collins: 00:08:40

I, uh, I don't know if I want to use his name, but it was one of your clients,

Dennis Collins: 00:08:44

I think called service champions.

Dennis Collins: 00:08:47

Yeah, that's Kevin Comerford.

Dennis Collins: 00:08:48

He says

Dennis Collins: 00:08:52

Kevin Comerford.

Dennis Collins: 00:08:53

Yeah.

Dennis Collins: 00:08:53

He says.

Dennis Collins: 00:08:54

Run the play.

Dennis Collins: 00:08:56

Okay.

Dennis Collins: 00:08:57

Did you come to work with the right mindset?

Dennis Collins: 00:09:01

Did you run the play?

Dennis Collins: 00:09:04

Those are powerful words.

Dennis Collins: 00:09:05

What does Kevin mean by that and why did you include that in the book?

Ray Seggern: 00:09:10

Yeah, Kevin has been a great guy to work with through the

Ray Seggern: 00:09:16

years, and it really, um, you know, it really highlights for me, guys, the

Ray Seggern: 00:09:25

degree to which you stumble across a every now and then who it's super clear

Ray Seggern: 00:09:32

that, uh, uh, that we're, uh, bringing something to the table to help them.

Ray Seggern: 00:09:36

But certainly we're learning a lot from that.

Ray Seggern: 00:09:39

We're always learning all our, the only reason we're any good in these

Ray Seggern: 00:09:41

industries is because the clients taught us about the business.

Ray Seggern: 00:09:45

And then we brought value with what we learned, uh, about ad.

Ray Seggern: 00:09:50

Who is a good combination, right?

Ray Seggern: 00:09:52

But yeah, run the play is something that was so powerful.

Ray Seggern: 00:09:54

That's out of Kevin's book, which is called champion mindset.

Ray Seggern: 00:09:58

And, uh, the idea that the experience component of story, culture, and

Ray Seggern: 00:10:03

experience, uh, uh, we think about how do we deliver an experience?

Ray Seggern: 00:10:07

I can go on and on about this, by the way, my whole next book that I'm writing is

Ray Seggern: 00:10:10

called story and culture and experience.

Ray Seggern: 00:10:12

So, um, The, the idea of running the play means if we think of it like

Ray Seggern: 00:10:17

we're Vince Lombardi or Tom Landry and the play says this is how you score a

Ray Seggern: 00:10:21

touchdown and you, and you diagram it on a chalkboard and everybody knows

Ray Seggern: 00:10:27

what their role in the play is to, to achieve success, then, uh, uh, that's

Ray Seggern: 00:10:33

what the metaphor works on there.

Ray Seggern: 00:10:35

And yeah, Dennis, like you, I like it a lot.

Leah Bumphrey: 00:10:37

Yeah, I was very impressed with.

Leah Bumphrey: 00:10:39

the amount of questions you give to the reader to take some time.

Leah Bumphrey: 00:10:44

I mean, this is not a tome.

Leah Bumphrey: 00:10:46

This isn't going to take you, you know, a few months to go through,

Leah Bumphrey: 00:10:49

but every chapter you ask some very reflective questions that any of

Leah Bumphrey: 00:10:54

my clients, I would want them to sit and be thinking about that.

Leah Bumphrey: 00:10:58

Now that comes from both of you guys and is.

Leah Bumphrey: 00:11:01

I would imagine that's what you do with your clients.

Leah Bumphrey: 00:11:03

Delve into those questions to make sure that that story comes out.

Monica Ballard: 00:11:07

Yeah.

Monica Ballard: 00:11:08

And I think one of the things that, that, um, that we excel at as consultants is

Monica Ballard: 00:11:16

in those monthly meetings to ask for some good news, always at the top, give us

Monica Ballard: 00:11:22

some good news, what good news happened.

Monica Ballard: 00:11:24

And that puts them certainly in the right mindset.

Monica Ballard: 00:11:27

Uh, in, in order to, if they came into the meeting ready to, to kind of, or

Monica Ballard: 00:11:34

something like that, when we ask for good news, it's kind of like, oh, it's,

Monica Ballard: 00:11:39

it's really a transformation for them, uh, to, to kind of flip things and,

Monica Ballard: 00:11:44

and, uh, and look for those good stories to tell us and then, uh, What we try

Monica Ballard: 00:11:53

to help them with is look, we're here.

Monica Ballard: 00:11:55

We're here in the foxhole with you.

Monica Ballard: 00:11:57

All right.

Monica Ballard: 00:11:58

We're here to help you along with your advertising and your business.

Monica Ballard: 00:12:03

We don't have all the answers.

Monica Ballard: 00:12:05

There's no silver bullets or certainly one, one thing, one, one

Monica Ballard: 00:12:12

cure all, but as far as advertising is concerned, let's help you.

Monica Ballard: 00:12:17

Tell that story.

Monica Ballard: 00:12:18

Let's help you with your culture and improve your experience.

Monica Ballard: 00:12:23

Because the stories that we tell in their advertising have to ring

Monica Ballard: 00:12:27

true by the time the experience comes along and the technician

Monica Ballard: 00:12:31

is in their home doing whatever.

Leah Bumphrey: 00:12:35

Home services, that's the theme.

Leah Bumphrey: 00:12:37

And I know that you guys do tons of business with home services.

Leah Bumphrey: 00:12:41

But when I was reading this, I mean, there's a lot of, a lot of wisdom

Leah Bumphrey: 00:12:45

that can be pulled out for us.

Leah Bumphrey: 00:12:46

Other businesses, the way I'm looking at it, what are your thoughts?

Ray Seggern: 00:12:51

Yeah.

Ray Seggern: 00:12:51

So, I mean, if you look in the second section, the great things come

Ray Seggern: 00:12:54

in threes, which obviously Monica referenced earlier, you know, we we've

Ray Seggern: 00:12:58

connected that to, uh, uh, you know, the, the three tag alongs in, in wizard

Ray Seggern: 00:13:04

of Oz, right, but really the first.

Ray Seggern: 00:13:08

You know, Golden Trinity was strategy, message and budget

Ray Seggern: 00:13:12

because Monica and I just developed a very, uh, organic shorthand for

Ray Seggern: 00:13:16

describing what is it y'all do?

Ray Seggern: 00:13:18

Well, we help you with strategy.

Ray Seggern: 00:13:20

We help you with messaging and we have to do with budget, right?

Ray Seggern: 00:13:23

And then along the way, um, I came up with this idea of air, land and

Ray Seggern: 00:13:27

sea, which is air is the airwaves and sea is where the surfing happens.

Ray Seggern: 00:13:32

And then land is boots on the ground.

Ray Seggern: 00:13:33

And a lot of the A lot of the contractor types can tap into

Ray Seggern: 00:13:37

the military analogy there.

Ray Seggern: 00:13:39

And then we've already talked about experience.

Ray Seggern: 00:13:41

So all, but all of that applies whether you're in home services or not.

Ray Seggern: 00:13:45

Right.

Ray Seggern: 00:13:45

I mean, the fact that you have a strategy that informs message is.

Ray Seggern: 00:13:51

And that we always want to get the highest and best use of that

Ray Seggern: 00:13:54

marketing, precious marketing resource through budget planning.

Ray Seggern: 00:13:58

Now, you know, we're not reconciling invoices and keeping a spreadsheet week

Ray Seggern: 00:14:02

to week, but what we do is once a year, we help our clients plan their budget, right?

Ray Seggern: 00:14:06

How much should go to this?

Ray Seggern: 00:14:07

How much should go to that?

Ray Seggern: 00:14:08

And the other.

Ray Seggern: 00:14:08

So, yeah, all of those are universal, Leah.

Ray Seggern: 00:14:11

And I think that, Whether you're a jeweler, a furniture store, a car

Ray Seggern: 00:14:15

dealer, cosmetic dentist, whatever that those same principles would apply.

Leah Bumphrey: 00:14:19

Monica How about what for you?

Leah Bumphrey: 00:14:21

I mean when I was reading this book thinking of both of you as authors I

Leah Bumphrey: 00:14:25

know you're not trying to stop being consultants But somebody could use this as

Leah Bumphrey: 00:14:29

a template for developing their own their own strategy their own marketing You guys

Leah Bumphrey: 00:14:34

bring something a little bit more to it.

Monica Ballard: 00:14:37

Absolutely.

Monica Ballard: 00:14:39

And, uh, as the message developer, and that is certainly, I went from being a

Monica Ballard: 00:14:46

copywriter for a massive amount of radio stations, too many, to being a message

Monica Ballard: 00:14:52

developer for Roy in Roy's home shop.

Monica Ballard: 00:14:58

And I learned the difference between uh, Writing copy banging out copy as I used

Monica Ballard: 00:15:03

to do, um, to being a message developer and messaging is different than copy in

Monica Ballard: 00:15:11

that, uh, you, you help the, the client develop the message, which is the story

Monica Ballard: 00:15:18

of their company and it's more about.

Monica Ballard: 00:15:22

bonding than it is What the sale of a week is or something like that So that's

Monica Ballard: 00:15:28

the difference between message and copy and that's what I try to to stress in the

Monica Ballard: 00:15:33

book as well Is um that you need sort of a long story arc to take people From here

Monica Ballard: 00:15:40

to there you got to pull people in and take them along on this journey uh through

Monica Ballard: 00:15:45

through messaging rather than just copy

Dennis Collins: 00:15:51

I I I think that's That's great that you guys are messaging experts.

Dennis Collins: 00:15:57

I don't think there's any question, uh, if it has to do with a message, you

Dennis Collins: 00:16:01

will find the message, but I want to turn my attention and your attention

Dennis Collins: 00:16:06

now to chapter 11, which is recruiting.

Dennis Collins: 00:16:13

And retain.

Ray Seggern: 00:16:15

Yeah, I think the trades have it really hard right now in terms

Ray Seggern: 00:16:18

of attracting, uh, technicians, but it's really something that I learned,

Ray Seggern: 00:16:25

uh, very early on that the only way any business owner can grow is to attract,

Ray Seggern: 00:16:32

train, motivate, and retain team members.

Ray Seggern: 00:16:36

And it goes back to in the Holy Trinity of story, culture, and

Ray Seggern: 00:16:39

experience is that culture.

Ray Seggern: 00:16:41

Any organization that is.

Ray Seggern: 00:16:44

Subject to high turnover is going to have a hard time maintaining culture.

Ray Seggern: 00:16:50

So in the relationship of story and culture and experience, you could

Ray Seggern: 00:16:53

see how a deficiency in culture undermines your ability to deliver the

Ray Seggern: 00:17:00

experience ultimately and translate everything to happy customers, right?

Ray Seggern: 00:17:06

So, yeah, really, uh, uh, uh, you're right to hone in on that, Dennis.

Ray Seggern: 00:17:10

It's a, it's an important part of the equation, and we knew it needed to be in

Ray Seggern: 00:17:16

the book, uh, for that particular reason.

Ray Seggern: 00:17:20

And I think it's a really good chapter.

Ray Seggern: 00:17:22

Um, it, I think it highlights.

Ray Seggern: 00:17:25

It's, um, uh, Monica and I's, uh, our, uh, um, our working relationship

Ray Seggern: 00:17:32

because while I get credit for a lot of, uh, The Big Rise, this is

Ray Seggern: 00:17:39

a chapter really that, uh, is a lot of Monica in this chapter for sure.

Leah Bumphrey: 00:17:45

This chapter talks about finding the organization's rhythm

Leah Bumphrey: 00:17:49

and that did make me think of Monica.

Monica Ballard: 00:17:52

Interesting.

Monica Ballard: 00:17:53

Uh, yeah, this, um, I won't say that this was an easy chapter, right?

Monica Ballard: 00:18:00

Uh, but, uh, it was, it was lessons that we learned from a lot of feedback

Monica Ballard: 00:18:06

from our clients about what they do to, I mean, a lot of them were, were just

Monica Ballard: 00:18:12

like, Oh, we just can't keep people.

Monica Ballard: 00:18:14

And, and so we asked them a lot of hard questions about their

Monica Ballard: 00:18:17

culture and how they were.

Monica Ballard: 00:18:20

Rewarding and attracting new talent and what that new talent had to

Monica Ballard: 00:18:25

say about where they came from and why they left the previous company.

Monica Ballard: 00:18:31

And so we were, we were taking all those nuggets and helping our clients with a

Monica Ballard: 00:18:36

plan in order to retain the good talent that they had weed out the bad talent.

Monica Ballard: 00:18:43

And, and how to look for those guys and, uh, reward them, you know, not everybody

Monica Ballard: 00:18:49

is all that excited about free pizza Fridays or, uh, they, they prefer time

Monica Ballard: 00:18:57

off or they prefer a monetary reward.

Monica Ballard: 00:19:01

Or everybody is, is sort of wired a little bit differently.

Monica Ballard: 00:19:05

And I, I think through the years we've helped clients.

Monica Ballard: 00:19:09

See that so that they can retain the best talent that they have and, uh,

Monica Ballard: 00:19:14

have them really be true to the company and, and the people who employ them.

Monica Ballard: 00:19:20

And we've talked to a number of homeowners, not, not homeowners,

Monica Ballard: 00:19:24

but, um, business owners, particularly when the pandemic hit.

Monica Ballard: 00:19:29

And it was amazing how many of them were like, I got to look after these guys.

Monica Ballard: 00:19:36

You know, these guys and their families and their mortgage payments.

Monica Ballard: 00:19:41

And it was really, it was really heartening to know how much

Monica Ballard: 00:19:50

they were invested in their employees and their lives.

Monica Ballard: 00:19:56

They didn't just look at them as a number on the bottom line.

Monica Ballard: 00:19:59

And so that was, that was a relational aspect of our consulting business that I

Monica Ballard: 00:20:05

think was, was really brought to light.

Monica Ballard: 00:20:08

Particularly during the pandemic.

Ray Seggern: 00:20:09

One of the things that, uh, um, that that we've realized along

Ray Seggern: 00:20:13

the way is the tables have turned.

Ray Seggern: 00:20:16

We don't live in the world of the 80s where the business owners have

Ray Seggern: 00:20:23

the good jobs, the precious jobs that, uh, everybody fights for.

Ray Seggern: 00:20:27

Therefore, do it my way or the highway more and more.

Ray Seggern: 00:20:30

You're interviewing employees so they can interview you.

Ray Seggern: 00:20:33

You to decide if they're going to hire you to be their next

Ray Seggern: 00:20:36

boss, because great resignation.

Ray Seggern: 00:20:37

There's so many side hustles and entrepreneurial opportunities.

Ray Seggern: 00:20:41

It's just a very interesting reflection of the time that we live.

Leah Bumphrey: 00:20:44

I was really struck with both of you, the heart that you guys

Leah Bumphrey: 00:20:47

put in, especially in the beginning, when you're talking about the why,

Leah Bumphrey: 00:20:50

why you got into this Ray, your story of literally, you know, going to the

Leah Bumphrey: 00:20:55

little stores when you were a kid and how that impacted you and small town.

Leah Bumphrey: 00:20:59

That's, that's huge.

Leah Bumphrey: 00:21:01

Because I think we all heart.

Leah Bumphrey: 00:21:03

And that's that difference between working with local businesses.

Leah Bumphrey: 00:21:07

I don't care how big they are, but the local business that you're trying to

Leah Bumphrey: 00:21:10

help and kind of getting to the nut.

Leah Bumphrey: 00:21:12

I think it showed both of your parts.

Ray Seggern: 00:21:15

Yeah, I'm glad you enjoyed that, that part of the book, Leah.

Ray Seggern: 00:21:18

Um, it was fun for me to write.

Ray Seggern: 00:21:20

Um, because it took me back sort of in the Sherman and Peabody way

Ray Seggern: 00:21:25

back machine to, I got to revisit time with my granddad when I was in

Ray Seggern: 00:21:31

third and fourth grade going around.

Ray Seggern: 00:21:32

He was a CPA in a small town here in central Texas.

Ray Seggern: 00:21:35

And, uh, um, we'd actually, my mom had relocated our family

Ray Seggern: 00:21:38

there when my grandma died.

Ray Seggern: 00:21:39

So, but then my mom's going to work, dad going to work, they

Ray Seggern: 00:21:42

were doing their own things.

Ray Seggern: 00:21:43

I spent a lot of time with granddad.

Ray Seggern: 00:21:44

So, so, yeah, running around.

Ray Seggern: 00:21:46

To all those businesses along Main Street and 2nd Street in Taylor,

Ray Seggern: 00:21:50

Texas of the 1970s, it was special for me to be able to share that.

Ray Seggern: 00:21:56

And I think we've all all of us, you know, have however we got here.

Ray Seggern: 00:22:01

You know, that's that was our yellow brick road.

Ray Seggern: 00:22:03

Right?

Ray Seggern: 00:22:03

And that was certainly a big part of it for me.

Ray Seggern: 00:22:06

And, you know, my dad.

Ray Seggern: 00:22:08

Dump truck driver who's, you know, his professional trajectory was to go from

Ray Seggern: 00:22:12

one dump truck to six and to own a plot of land that the business was staged on.

Ray Seggern: 00:22:18

Uh, my granddad was a CPA, so I got to experience how he was with his clients.

Ray Seggern: 00:22:23

And then my mom was an English teacher.

Ray Seggern: 00:22:25

So, you know, she, uh, she has a role to play in all of this.

Ray Seggern: 00:22:33

I'll often say, um, Monica's heard me say a few times through the

Ray Seggern: 00:22:36

years that my English teacher mom may be rolling over in her grave.

Ray Seggern: 00:22:40

Would be sometimes we'll go in and we'll see the competitor ads, right?

Ray Seggern: 00:22:45

The abominations of the English language.

Ray Seggern: 00:22:47

And then also, but really, it's just by extension, you know, so.

Ray Seggern: 00:22:50

Just the fact that so many ads don't really do anything compelling in them,

Ray Seggern: 00:22:54

you know, um, that really the baseline still still Dennis Leah, how is it?

Ray Seggern: 00:23:00

We're this deep into the human experience and there can still

Ray Seggern: 00:23:03

be that bad of cliche ads on my TV for car dealers every morning.

Ray Seggern: 00:23:09

I just don't understand.

Dennis Collins: 00:23:11

Uh, lucky for, that, that's, that's where you come in.

Dennis Collins: 00:23:15

You are the anti cliché.

Dennis Collins: 00:23:18

You are the ones we go to for the new ideas.

Dennis Collins: 00:23:22

So, you know, I can't help Ray, you were just telling a story.

Dennis Collins: 00:23:25

I also enjoyed your, kind of your origin story that, that you shared.

Dennis Collins: 00:23:30

Thanks.

Dennis Collins: 00:23:30

Here's a question that I struggle with.

Dennis Collins: 00:23:33

Lea, Lea and I both Hand, uh, work with some HVAC, uh, companies.

Dennis Collins: 00:23:39

Okay.

Dennis Collins: 00:23:40

Yeah.

Dennis Collins: 00:23:41

And we, and I, as you and Monica, both believe in

Dennis Collins: 00:23:44

stories, but here's the problem.

Dennis Collins: 00:23:47

I have a devil of a time getting some of the outside people,

Dennis Collins: 00:23:52

the techs, the salespeople.

Dennis Collins: 00:23:54

I have a heck of a time.

Dennis Collins: 00:23:57

Getting them to remember stories, to bring us stories, to give

Dennis Collins: 00:24:02

us stories that can work.

Dennis Collins: 00:24:04

Have you had that?

Dennis Collins: 00:24:05

And if so, have you been able to tackle that?

Ray Seggern: 00:24:09

Yeah, it's a good question.

Ray Seggern: 00:24:10

Um, and what we're talking about here is something that I, um, um, I write

Ray Seggern: 00:24:15

about a lot in the book I'm working on.

Ray Seggern: 00:24:17

I've really honed in on this idea.

Ray Seggern: 00:24:19

That story in the continuum of story culture and experience story as we

Ray Seggern: 00:24:24

as we like to tell it and weave it into the marketing pieces, right?

Ray Seggern: 00:24:28

Um, it's either a mirror or it's a fairy tale, meaning we either are holding a

Ray Seggern: 00:24:35

mirror up to something that's good in.

Ray Seggern: 00:24:37

an organization.

Ray Seggern: 00:24:39

Maybe it's their culture.

Ray Seggern: 00:24:40

Maybe it's how they deliver the experience, right?

Ray Seggern: 00:24:43

Maybe it's the core values of the owner, whatever it is.

Ray Seggern: 00:24:45

But specifics trump generalities.

Ray Seggern: 00:24:47

We know, right?

Ray Seggern: 00:24:48

So any time you can get specific stories, um, where, uh, you know, this

Ray Seggern: 00:24:55

is a challenge that the team faced.

Ray Seggern: 00:24:57

And here's how we solved it.

Ray Seggern: 00:24:59

Or here's an example of us going above and beyond or anything like that.

Ray Seggern: 00:25:04

You know, um, uh, we love to weave that into the ads.

Ray Seggern: 00:25:09

So how do you do it?

Ray Seggern: 00:25:10

Man, I don't know that I have any, any magic beans in my pocket because

Ray Seggern: 00:25:14

that would be the Beanstalk book.

Ray Seggern: 00:25:15

And this isn't the Beanstalk book.

Ray Seggern: 00:25:16

This is the Yellow Brick Road book.

Ray Seggern: 00:25:19

But, uh, the only way to improve something is through train,

Ray Seggern: 00:25:24

measure, and reward, right?

Ray Seggern: 00:25:25

So, Ben Franklin coming out unannounced at a staff meeting is very powerful.

Ray Seggern: 00:25:32

So I've often counseled our clients, Hey, If somebody brings you a

Ray Seggern: 00:25:36

good story, let everybody else on the team see them get 100 bill.

Ray Seggern: 00:25:40

It's not a silent bonus on the paycheck that we tell them about.

Ray Seggern: 00:25:43

It is a hundred dollar bill coming out of your wallet that you hand

Ray Seggern: 00:25:46

them in front of the rest of the team that gets everybody's attention.

Ray Seggern: 00:25:48

Maybe I should come back and bring some stories.

Ray Seggern: 00:25:50

Maybe I'll get a hundred dollars.

Ray Seggern: 00:25:51

So if you train, measure and reward, they have to know what to do.

Ray Seggern: 00:25:54

They have to know you're watching and then they have to know that there's

Ray Seggern: 00:25:57

something in it that they're incentivized to do the thing you want them to do.

Leah Bumphrey: 00:26:00

Monica, what's the one thing you had to leave out of the book

Leah Bumphrey: 00:26:03

when you were writing that killed you?

Leah Bumphrey: 00:26:05

Because I know you, you always have stories, you always have these things,

Leah Bumphrey: 00:26:09

and as you're editing Or that you had to make smaller than what you wanted to.

Monica Ballard: 00:26:14

Oh boy, I'm, this was, this book was so much about

Monica Ballard: 00:26:18

expanding, expanding, expanding.

Monica Ballard: 00:26:20

That, um, I, that I don't, I don't think I was tasked with, uh, carving

Monica Ballard: 00:26:27

something out and leaving it behind.

Monica Ballard: 00:26:29

If anything, I would, I would constantly come back and post, post the new version.

Monica Ballard: 00:26:35

And Ray would come back and say, no, no, no, it needs to be

Monica Ballard: 00:26:37

bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger.

Monica Ballard: 00:26:39

So any, we had 504 words on that and so, uh, beautiful.

Monica Ballard: 00:26:46

Yeah.

Monica Ballard: 00:26:47

Yeah, it was, uh, and I think I, in writing the afterward, um, that was

Monica Ballard: 00:26:55

something I was really, really proud of.

Monica Ballard: 00:26:57

You know, Ray got the origin story in the forward and so I kind of, uh, arm

Monica Ballard: 00:27:02

wrestled to get the afterward and, um.

Monica Ballard: 00:27:07

It was, it was really just a story that went back to when I started

Monica Ballard: 00:27:13

at, uh, at Roy's shop and we had someone who wanted to come in

Monica Ballard: 00:27:20

and, and teach an academy class.

Monica Ballard: 00:27:23

And one of the questions that he asked was, why does

Monica Ballard: 00:27:28

someone want to own a business?

Monica Ballard: 00:27:30

And.

Monica Ballard: 00:27:31

All of us being the consultants that we were had all of these.

Monica Ballard: 00:27:37

Oh, well, you know, it's to fill fulfill your dream of entrepreneurship and

Monica Ballard: 00:27:42

to right a wrong in the marketplace.

Monica Ballard: 00:27:44

And we had all of these lofty ideals.

Monica Ballard: 00:27:48

Right?

Monica Ballard: 00:27:49

And he was like, no, it's to.

Monica Ballard: 00:27:51

It's to sell it and make a lot of money.

Monica Ballard: 00:27:53

And that seems so foreign to all of us that we knew we did not

Monica Ballard: 00:27:59

want him teaching at the academy.

Monica Ballard: 00:28:01

It was kind of like, okay, this is the wrong fit.

Monica Ballard: 00:28:03

We don't want him near our tribe.

Monica Ballard: 00:28:05

We don't want him near our people.

Monica Ballard: 00:28:07

And we, we pretty much sent him packing.

Monica Ballard: 00:28:09

And that I feel like was an important story to tell was we know why

Monica Ballard: 00:28:16

you wanted to go into business.

Monica Ballard: 00:28:18

It was to do this and that.

Monica Ballard: 00:28:20

It wasn't just to make a lot of money so you could sell it and make a

Monica Ballard: 00:28:25

profit and go and do something else.

Monica Ballard: 00:28:27

This, this book is for the relational business owners who feel

Monica Ballard: 00:28:32

passionate about their businesses.

Monica Ballard: 00:28:35

And that is who we wanted to talk to no matter what industry.

Monica Ballard: 00:28:38

They're in.

Dennis Collins: 00:28:39

Well that, that, that in itself is a great story

Dennis Collins: 00:28:42

that really defines your book.

Dennis Collins: 00:28:45

It also defines, uh, our, uh, the Wizard Academy, you know, we all

Dennis Collins: 00:28:49

are devotees, uh, frequent flyers.

Dennis Collins: 00:28:52

We, uh, still revere what the Wizard Academy stands stands for.

Dennis Collins: 00:28:58

And, uh, and that's what it stands for.

Dennis Collins: 00:29:01

Something different.

Dennis Collins: 00:29:03

Not, uh, the, the, you know, grab the money and run.

Dennis Collins: 00:29:07

And I think that's a, that's a great way to emphasize that.

Dennis Collins: 00:29:11

What, what questions have we not asked that we should have asked?

Ray Seggern: 00:29:15

Yeah.

Ray Seggern: 00:29:16

You, you, you know, um, what separates the clients that achieve

Ray Seggern: 00:29:22

success from those that don't.

Ray Seggern: 00:29:27

That's the first thing that's popping into my head.

Ray Seggern: 00:29:29

Um, one of the side jokes.

Ray Seggern: 00:29:34

That everybody in my shop has heard plenty of times.

Ray Seggern: 00:29:37

It's not.

Ray Seggern: 00:29:38

Everybody's gonna be an astronaut when they grow up.

Ray Seggern: 00:29:40

Um, and, uh, I would just say that if you talk about brains, heart and

Ray Seggern: 00:29:49

courage, right, they imply for me, what is the knowledge that we need?

Ray Seggern: 00:30:00

Heart says We, there's a difference between platitudes and genuinely

Ray Seggern: 00:30:07

investing in how to care for not just customers, but for one another, right?

Ray Seggern: 00:30:12

And then courage says, will you take the little bit of leap of face?

Ray Seggern: 00:30:18

Uh, and not chicken out before the miracle happens.

Ray Seggern: 00:30:22

So if we come back to those three things, you know, it's one thing to put the

Ray Seggern: 00:30:29

ideas of here's how we did it in a book.

Ray Seggern: 00:30:33

The, the thing that, uh, That's couldn't be clearer to me right now.

Ray Seggern: 00:30:38

And it's super important to me when I choose clients to work with,

Ray Seggern: 00:30:42

we're both blessed to be in a place in our professional careers where

Ray Seggern: 00:30:45

we don't need the next client.

Ray Seggern: 00:30:47

So I think we, we, because there have been plenty of times in the 20 years I've been

Ray Seggern: 00:30:51

doing this, Dennis, where, you know, our founding partner, Roy Williams told me

Ray Seggern: 00:30:56

early on, he said, whatever puts food on the table with honor and dignity, right?

Ray Seggern: 00:30:59

So great.

Ray Seggern: 00:31:00

So, but sometimes that's being, Hey, you know what?

Ray Seggern: 00:31:03

I did it for the money, you know, I saw, I was skeptical that this person was maybe

Ray Seggern: 00:31:08

not going to be an astronaut when they, when they, when they will discover this

Ray Seggern: 00:31:12

along the way, but I like them enough and, you know, they've got employees and.

Ray Seggern: 00:31:19

Those employees have families.

Ray Seggern: 00:31:21

There's a lot of dreams tied up in a business owner, even if they're

Ray Seggern: 00:31:26

not made of the right stuff, right?

Ray Seggern: 00:31:29

Or all the best stuff, right?

Ray Seggern: 00:31:31

Cover books has helped America's best companies, right?

Ray Seggern: 00:31:34

But we helped America's.

Ray Seggern: 00:31:35

good, better, kind of okay, and best companies along the way.

Ray Seggern: 00:31:42

And, um, you know, it makes it very easy for me.

Ray Seggern: 00:31:47

And I'll be honest with you straight up.

Ray Seggern: 00:31:49

Uh, I did a gut check on some clients that I've been working with for a long

Ray Seggern: 00:31:55

time that maybe haven't grown as much as I thought they would or they wanted to.

Ray Seggern: 00:31:59

I look at it and my side of the street feels pretty clean to me.

Ray Seggern: 00:32:03

And so I make a choice.

Ray Seggern: 00:32:05

Do I cut them loose because they're not growing and making me enough money?

Ray Seggern: 00:32:08

Well, maybe, but there's just as many where I've said, you know what I, you

Ray Seggern: 00:32:15

know, I did everything short of spitting in my hand and taking a blood oath that I

Ray Seggern: 00:32:19

will help you get to where you want to go.

Ray Seggern: 00:32:21

So it doesn't feel good.

Ray Seggern: 00:32:22

To walk away from them just because we haven't multiplied their income

Ray Seggern: 00:32:26

enough to where they're one of my more desirable clients financially.

Dennis Collins: 00:32:31

Sure.

Dennis Collins: 00:32:31

What, Monica, how, how about you?

Dennis Collins: 00:32:36

What, what, um, uh, what questions have we not asked?

Dennis Collins: 00:32:39

That was, Ray, was, uh, quite a heartfelt answer.

Dennis Collins: 00:32:44

Yeah.

Monica Ballard: 00:32:46

You didn't ask when the movie is coming out.

Leah Bumphrey: 00:32:53

I want to star as Monica.

Leah Bumphrey: 00:32:54

I want to be Monica.

Monica Ballard: 00:32:56

We've done a gut check on this and we really feel that with the

Monica Ballard: 00:33:02

Wiz Reappearing on Broadway right now and Wicked coming out in theaters, uh,

Monica Ballard: 00:33:09

that there's really, this is going to be overshadowed and, and so we, we, we

Monica Ballard: 00:33:16

really feel like, uh, we would be letting people down if, if we went ahead and,

Monica Ballard: 00:33:21

uh, with the, with the movie project.

Monica Ballard: 00:33:23

Uh, plus Ray, Ray doesn't want to be a movie producer.

Leah Bumphrey: 00:33:28

Okay, but I, this, this brings up something

Leah Bumphrey: 00:33:31

for me that I wasn't going to be critical of, but now I have to.

Leah Bumphrey: 00:33:34

And Ray, I don't really blame you, but Monica, I, I have a

Leah Bumphrey: 00:33:38

little bone to pick with you.

Leah Bumphrey: 00:33:39

Reading through the book, I'm thrilled.

Leah Bumphrey: 00:33:41

I love The Wizard of Ads.

Leah Bumphrey: 00:33:43

I love what you've done thematically.

Leah Bumphrey: 00:33:45

And then you got to talking about the slippers and you called them ruby

Leah Bumphrey: 00:33:48

red slippers and we all know if we've read that book They were not ruby red.

Leah Bumphrey: 00:33:53

They were silver.

Leah Bumphrey: 00:33:54

So that was a little heartbreaking for me So if and when that movie comes

Leah Bumphrey: 00:33:59

out i'm gonna introduce But only if we stick with the silver slippers.

Leah Bumphrey: 00:34:03

None of this ruby crap.

Monica Ballard: 00:34:06

You, so you're, you're a, you're a purist, you're an orator.

Monica Ballard: 00:34:09

I am a purist.

Leah Bumphrey: 00:34:10

Oh, and you know that, we've roomed together, you know that.

Leah Bumphrey: 00:34:17

We need to direct our listeners and our viewers, Amazon, anywhere Fine Books are

Leah Bumphrey: 00:34:23

sold, this is what they want to be, uh, ordering, this is what they need to know.

Leah Bumphrey: 00:34:26

Yeah, you gotta put it the right way up.

Leah Bumphrey: 00:34:28

Yes, this is that.

Leah Bumphrey: 00:34:30

This is a template.

Leah Bumphrey: 00:34:31

This is a template.

Leah Bumphrey: 00:34:32

Absolutely.

Leah Bumphrey: 00:34:33

There it is.

Leah Bumphrey: 00:34:34

Am I doing this right?

Leah Bumphrey: 00:34:36

Not quite.

Leah Bumphrey: 00:34:37

It's falling out of the shoes.

Ray Seggern: 00:34:39

Yeah, so, you know, we have we have soft launched this so so far.

Ray Seggern: 00:34:47

Um, we're, uh, six weeks from now.

Ray Seggern: 00:34:50

Everybody's gonna be annoyed that, uh, they can't get So we really just want

Ray Seggern: 00:34:57

to thank you guys for having us on and sharing the book with your audience.

Ray Seggern: 00:35:01

Uh, it is available on Amazon for sure.

Ray Seggern: 00:35:03

And, uh, and obviously, uh, you know, a big part of this is, uh, um, you

Ray Seggern: 00:35:09

know, to, to mix my metaphors here.

Ray Seggern: 00:35:12

You know, uh, the road goes on forever, but the party never ends.

Ray Seggern: 00:35:15

Right.

Ray Seggern: 00:35:15

So we're, we're on this journey.

Ray Seggern: 00:35:19

And really the book exists for us.

Ray Seggern: 00:35:20

Hopefully that people will read the book.

Ray Seggern: 00:35:22

Um, and, and the value for, for me, and I think I speak for Monica here,

Ray Seggern: 00:35:29

is not that we become gazillionaires as bestselling authors, although, Not

Ray Seggern: 00:35:33

opposed to it, but really, it's that if somebody, if the book speaks to you,

Ray Seggern: 00:35:40

if the book really, if the concepts in there resonate with the business

Ray Seggern: 00:35:44

owner, that's the right kind of business owner that we would want to work with.

Ray Seggern: 00:35:47

So hopefully they would read the book and go, yeah, these guys get it.

Ray Seggern: 00:35:50

They're my kind of crazy.

Ray Seggern: 00:35:52

Sign me up.

Ray Seggern: 00:35:53

Where, where do I?

Leah Bumphrey: 00:35:56

Perfect.

Leah Bumphrey: 00:35:56

Perfect.

Leah Bumphrey: 00:35:57

Well, thank you guys.

Leah Bumphrey: 00:35:58

Thank you so much, and we're looking forward to the next book,

Leah Bumphrey: 00:36:01

but we'll let you get this one solidly in everyone's hands first.

Dennis Collins: 00:36:06

Yeah, our, our guests today have been Monica Ballard,

Dennis Collins: 00:36:10

Wizard of Oz partner and author, and Ray Segrin, Wizard of Oz partner

Dennis Collins: 00:36:15

and author, head of the Brand Guys.

Dennis Collins: 00:36:18

No place like home services.

Dennis Collins: 00:36:20

Do yourself a favor and And get your copy today.

Dennis Collins: 00:36:25

Okay, that's all for this episode of Connect & Convert.

Dennis Collins: 00:36:30

Leah and I will be back next week.

Dennis Collins: 00:36:32

Stay tuned.