Greetings, everyone.

Welcome back to Connect & Convert.

The Sales Accelerator podcast, where we share small business

owner insider secrets.

To grow your sales faster than ever.

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

Hey, Leah, how are you today?

Hey, doing good.

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

This is gonna be fun.

Well, I agree.

We love to have guests.

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

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

viewers and our listeners are going to find very interesting.

No Place Like Home Services.

No place like home services.

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

America's best companies sell 2 billion.

Our first guest today is, is Ray Segrin.

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

Brand guy, right?

Team heads up.

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

Uh, but your superpower.

I love your superpower.

Your superpower is getting to know a business owner quickly and

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

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

I love the word dominance.

That's your superpower.

That's your superpower.

Well, thanks man.

I appreciate you saying that.

We want to know more about that.

I'm sure the book details that.

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

She is Monica Ballard.

Hi, Monica.

Hey, Monica.

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

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

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

involved, Monica is involved.

All different kinds of words are involved.

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

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

Words are pretty much your life.

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

So it's a wordsmith.

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

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

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

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

What was the inspiration for this book?

What was Ha!

Ha!

What was the inspiration?

What was the reason?

What, what, what, what said?

Yeah, we got to do this book.

What, what was that?

Right.

Sure.

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

Thanks, Dennis.

Thanks Leah for having us today.

We're gonna have a lot of fun.

I'm sure.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

uh, home services was a thing.

And I can share that with you.

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

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

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

10 years, Monica and I collaborated.

On an article for their, their publication, right?

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

week, month after month, year after year.

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

featured in No Place Like Home Services.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

into what you've got in your hands today.

That's great.

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

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

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

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

requires them to get to an after state.

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

place like home services?

How do you see that transformation?

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

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

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

which articles do we want to include?

Which ones did.

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

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

really meant to say in the first place.

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

opportunity to say, and then, um.

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

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

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

brains, the heart, and the soul.

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

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

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

there, they find out they already had.

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

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

No place like home services.

You know what?

I had Eureka moment on that.

It's kind of cool.

Yeah.

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

much to explore there that it was.

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

Well, it worked for me.

I've pretty much devoured it and enjoyed it.

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

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

experience that rings my chime.

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

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

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

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

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

that I really kind of, kind of hit me.

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

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

I think called service champions.

Yeah, that's Kevin Comerford.

He says

Kevin Comerford.

Yeah.

He says.

Run the play.

Okay.

Did you come to work with the right mindset?

Did you run the play?

Those are powerful words.

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

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

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

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

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

But certainly we're learning a lot from that.

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

industries is because the clients taught us about the business.

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

Who is a good combination, right?

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

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

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

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

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

called story and culture and experience.

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

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

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

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

what the metaphor works on there.

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

Yeah, I was very impressed with.

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

I mean, this is not a tome.

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

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

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

Now that comes from both of you guys and is.

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

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

Yeah.

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

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

some good news, what good news happened.

And that puts them certainly in the right mindset.

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

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

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

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

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

We're here in the foxhole with you.

All right.

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

We don't have all the answers.

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

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

Tell that story.

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

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

true by the time the experience comes along and the technician

is in their home doing whatever.

Home services, that's the theme.

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

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

that can be pulled out for us.

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

Yeah.

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

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

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

of Oz, right, but really the first.

You know, Golden Trinity was strategy, message and budget

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

describing what is it y'all do?

Well, we help you with strategy.

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

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

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

And then land is boots on the ground.

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

the military analogy there.

And then we've already talked about experience.

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

Right.

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

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

marketing, precious marketing resource through budget planning.

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

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

How much should go to this?

How much should go to that?

And the other.

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

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

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

Monica How about what for you?

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

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

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

bring something a little bit more to it.

Absolutely.

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

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

developer for Roy in Roy's home shop.

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

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

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

of their company and it's more about.

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

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

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

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

through messaging rather than just copy

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

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

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

now to chapter 11, which is recruiting.

And retain.

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

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

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

train, motivate, and retain team members.

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

experience is that culture.

Any organization that is.

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

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

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

experience ultimately and translate everything to happy customers, right?

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

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

the book, uh, for that particular reason.

And I think it's a really good chapter.

Um, it, I think it highlights.

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

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

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

This chapter talks about finding the organization's rhythm

and that did make me think of Monica.

Interesting.

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

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

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

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

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

culture and how they were.

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

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

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

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

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

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

off or they prefer a monetary reward.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

they were invested in their employees and their lives.

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

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

think was, was really brought to light.

Particularly during the pandemic.

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

the way is the tables have turned.

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

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

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

You're interviewing employees so they can interview you.

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

boss, because great resignation.

There's so many side hustles and entrepreneurial opportunities.

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

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

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

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

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

That's, that's huge.

Because I think we all heart.

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

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

help and kind of getting to the nut.

I think it showed both of your parts.

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

Um, it was fun for me to write.

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

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

third and fourth grade going around.

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

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

there when my grandma died.

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

were doing their own things.

I spent a lot of time with granddad.

So, so, yeah, running around.

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

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

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

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

Right?

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

And, you know, my dad.

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

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

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

And then my mom was an English teacher.

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

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

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

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

The abominations of the English language.

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

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

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

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

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

I just don't understand.

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

You are the anti cliché.

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

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

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

Thanks.

Here's a question that I struggle with.

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

Okay.

Yeah.

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

stories, but here's the problem.

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

the techs, the salespeople.

I have a heck of a time.

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

us stories that can work.

Have you had that?

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

Yeah, it's a good question.

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

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

I've really honed in on this idea.

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

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

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

mirror up to something that's good in.

an organization.

Maybe it's their culture.

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

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

But specifics trump generalities.

We know, right?

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

is a challenge that the team faced.

And here's how we solved it.

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

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

So how do you do it?

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

that would be the Beanstalk book.

And this isn't the Beanstalk book.

This is the Yellow Brick Road book.

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

measure, and reward, right?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe I should come back and bring some stories.

Maybe I'll get a hundred dollars.

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

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

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

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

when you were writing that killed you?

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

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

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

expanding, expanding, expanding.

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

something out and leaving it behind.

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

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

bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger.

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

Yeah.

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

something I was really, really proud of.

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

wrestled to get the afterward and, um.

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

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

and, and teach an academy class.

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

someone want to own a business?

And.

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

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

to right a wrong in the marketplace.

And we had all of these lofty ideals.

Right?

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

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

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

want him teaching at the academy.

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

We don't want him near our tribe.

We don't want him near our people.

And we, we pretty much sent him packing.

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

you wanted to go into business.

It was to do this and that.

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

profit and go and do something else.

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

passionate about their businesses.

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

They're in.

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

that really defines your book.

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

are devotees, uh, frequent flyers.

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

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

Something different.

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

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

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

Yeah.

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

success from those that don't.

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

Um, one of the side jokes.

That everybody in my shop has heard plenty of times.

It's not.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Uh, and not chicken out before the miracle happens.

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

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

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

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

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

we don't need the next client.

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

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

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

So great.

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

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

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

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

Those employees have families.

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

not made of the right stuff, right?

Or all the best stuff, right?

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

But we helped America's.

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

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

And I'll be honest with you straight up.

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

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

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

And so I make a choice.

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

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

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

will help you get to where you want to go.

So it doesn't feel good.

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

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

Sure.

What, Monica, how, how about you?

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

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

Yeah.

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

I want to star as Monica.

I want to be Monica.

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

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

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

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

uh, with the, with the movie project.

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

Okay, but I, this, this brings up something

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

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

little bone to pick with you.

Reading through the book, I'm thrilled.

I love The Wizard of Ads.

I love what you've done thematically.

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

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

They were silver.

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

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

None of this ruby crap.

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

I am a purist.

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

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

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

Yeah, you gotta put it the right way up.

Yes, this is that.

This is a template.

This is a template.

Absolutely.

There it is.

Am I doing this right?

Not quite.

It's falling out of the shoes.

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

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

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

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

Uh, it is available on Amazon for sure.

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

know, to, to mix my metaphors here.

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

Right.

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

And really the book exists for us.

Hopefully that people will read the book.

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

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

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

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

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

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

They're my kind of crazy.

Sign me up.

Where, where do I?

Perfect.

Perfect.

Well, thank you guys.

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

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

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

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

and author, head of the Brand Guys.

No place like home services.

Do yourself a favor and And get your copy today.

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

Leah and I will be back next week.

Stay tuned.