Listen to the podcast above, watch the video, or read the script below.

 

Dennis Collins: Hello again, and welcome to Connect and Convert, the Sales Accelerator Podcast, where we offer insider secrets to small business owners to grow their sales faster than ever. Today is a very special day. I’m Dennis Collins. Hey, Leah, are you there? My partner in crime. 

Leah Bumphrey: Hey, Dennis, how are you doing?

Dennis Collins: Leah Bumphrey, she keeps coming back. Thank you for coming back.

Leah Bumphrey: You can’t keep me away from a good thing, Dennis.

Dennis Collins: I couldn’t do it without you. Hey, you know something? I think you’re excited. I know I am because we have today a very special guest. This is a gentleman that you and I met not that long ago.

At least for me, it wasn’t that long ago. And when he made his entrance into the room we were in, there was no missing this gentleman. He wore an amazing top hat. I mean, a real honest-to-God top hat. And this man took all the air out of the room. He wore it well, and he happens to be a lovely person.

He is also a Wizard of Ads partner, one of our business partners, so it is our pleasure. And ever since I saw him walk in with that hat, I said, we gotta interview this guy. We got to talk to him. We got to know what’s under that hat. Why don’t you welcome our guest, Leah?

Leah Bumphrey: Jack, come on down. You are the next interviewer on Connect and Convert. We’re ready for you.  

Dennis Collins: Absolutely. Let’s do a little connecting and converting, Jack Heald. How are you, buddy?

Jack Heald: I’m doing really good. It’s good to be with you guys.

Leah Bumphrey: Gotta warn you, we have fun.

Jack Heald: Oh, well, in that case, I’m not interested. I’m not here to have fun. This is very serious business.

Dennis Collins: Let’s sign off then. This gentleman has more irons in the fire and that’s what we want to talk to him about. And we’re going to get around to some of the stuff that he’s currently doing. But before that, Jack, I have got to know, our listeners and viewers have got to know what’s the story behind the hat?

I never heard the story. Maybe you never told it.

Leah Bumphrey: It’s a great story. I love this story. Go, Jack! Go! 

Jack Heald: I was going to say, I thought I told Leah. I met my current wife just a little less than four years ago. And when I finally wore her down and convinced her to marry me, we decided to have a costume wedding.

And you know, we’ve both been married before. We didn’t need to do the normal thing. Neither of us is normal any way, but we decided to do a costume wedding. And I really like the old Gene Wilder Willy Wonka. Gene Wilder, in that particular version of Willy Wonka, it’s the greatest cinematic performance in one of the worst movies of all time.

He’s absolutely extraordinary in a terrible show. But I loved his outfit and I spent way too much time with the remote control going frame by frame, trying to review every aspect of his outfit. And my wife is in garment manufacturing and so she’s got people who make things.

And we had somebody make the purple jacket and the cravat. Have you ever worn a cravat? I had an actual cravat, the vest was almost a perfect replica of the Willy Wonka vest. I got a cane, but because I’m me, I had to do something a little different. So I got a death’s head on my cane and I was looking for a top hat and I saw this hat and it’s not exactly Willy Wonka, but I just loved it.

I said, oh, that is my hat. And because I had the skull on top of the cane, I chose the skulls for the hat band and yes, I wore it in the wedding.  And I just loved it so much. 

Leah Bumphrey: And she said yes. I know it on good authority.

Jack Heald: Oh, well, she was dressed as a fairy. She had wings and this white wedding dress, women know all the details. I don’t know this, but it had a purple ribbon through it and she wore purple leggings and sparkly gold tennis shoes. And then I had a set of wings. It was awesome. 

Dennis Collins: I had not heard that story and now the world knows, Jack. You’ve just told the world a great story, but you are a great storyteller. I’ve heard you in some meetings that we’ve attended together and I’ve talked to you after the meeting or before a meeting and you are a wonderful, magnificent, engaging storyteller. So why don’t you tell us the story about how you got to where you are today? Give us a little bit of background, maybe your origin story as to how Jack got to this point that he’s at right now.

Jack Heald: Well, I always start this story by saying I was born at an early age in a hospital so that I could be close to my mother. Probably, the key elements of this story – I apparently came from the manufacturer equipped with an extraordinarily good musical ear. I was playing the piano and picking out music that I heard on the radio by the time I was five years old.

And if you’d asked me as a child, what am I going to do as a career? I would have said music. Roughly about the time that adolescence kicked in, I fell in love with rock and roll radio and I don’t know how much more has to be said about that. Rock and roll radio, I mean, it’s probably the best thing in the world.

So I imagined that my music would be on the rock and roll radio stations. That’s what I thought would happen. It didn’t quite turn out that way. I have failed my way to where I am today. I don’t know how many careers I’ve had. I don’t think of them as a career.

Leah Bumphrey: Failed brilliantly. 

Jack Heald: I have my own software company. I ran big software implementation projects. I painted houses. I drove an Uber. I have been writing advertising copy for the last, I don’t know, 12 years, I guess. A friend of mine, one of my oldest friends in the world, is a novelist.

And after my last corporate gig, I was not cut out to work in corporate America. I tried it for 12 years and that was enough. I just couldn’t make it. It made me miserable. 

Leah Bumphrey: I don’t think they’d let you wear the hat. 

Jack Heald: Yeah, well, that was part of the problem. In fact, literally a true story.

I had an annual review one time and I remember this clearly because it was a year the company was down in sales. I, personally, wasn’t in sales. I was in project management, but I was running one of the big implementation projects and my team was responsible for one-quarter, of the company’s profit.

And this was a company of, I don’t know, several hundred people. My team was responsible for one-quarter of the company’s profit. You know, if we hadn’t been doing that, 25 percent of the profit would have been gone in a year that it was down. And my annual review, I remember my boss said I was too colorful.

Leah Bumphrey: Not bad for a white guy.

Dennis Collins: Yeah, I don’t know if that’s a racial slur or…

Jack Heald: Said I was too colorful and really what he was saying was this is a terrible fit. That’s really what he was saying.

Dennis Collins: Yes.

Leah Bumphrey: What a blessing that you got out of there and carried on to where you can shine and are appreciated and have the ability to, I was going to say have wings, but that’s DeLawn’s department.

Jack Heald: That’s DeLawn’s job. That’s my wife’s job. Anyway, I quit that job and was talking to this buddy who’s a novelist, Brad Whittington. And I said I know enough about the publishing industry to know your books aren’t selling enough for you to be supporting yourself in the manner to which you are clearly accustomed. What are you doing?

And he said, “Oh, well my day job is I write copy.” He said, “You could do this.” I said, “Oh?” “So, I’m going to send you a book.” He sent me a book called The Well-Fed Writer. And I don’t know, I guess it was just the right thing at the right time. And I took the bit in my teeth and started running with it.

And one thing led to another. 

I don’t know how to explain it. I literally just have kind of failed my way to where I am today. But I’m having a ball, you know, the reason I said I fell in love with radio is because I never lost that love and I love writing radio ads. I have so much fun with it and I’m getting to write jingles.

So my jingles are also on the radio now. It’s not rock and roll, but you know.

Leah Bumphrey: But they’re on the rock station, so you didn’t miss that. 

Dennis Collins: But it’s your music. That’s what’s important.

Jack Heald: Yeah, that’s remarkably gratifying to know that I’m getting to do that.

Not in a way I ever imagined, but it’s a blast. It’s so much fun. The client will ask me, “Hey, I need a jingle.”  And I find out about them and what’s the vibe of the company. What’s the way you like to present yourself and how are we going to make this happen?

And then working inside the constraints of a radio commercial in terms of time; I love the constraints of radio. It really drives creativity. And I know you guys understand that.

Leah Bumphrey: It’s those golden handcuffs. Cause you have to accomplish something in a certain amount of time in a certain way, and it has to achieve either branding or something more immediate when it comes to events. But what you’re talking about is The Wizard of Ads way of doing it, getting to know the company and trying to make that difference in their company.

Dennis Collins: Well, let me ask you a question – and I don’t want you to reveal the secret sauce, but just in general for folks who are listening who struggle with writing copy, who struggle writing content for their website, who struggle with radio or TV spots. What is a Jack tip? Again, don’t give away the farm, but tell us a tip – if I were your client, what would you say to me or what would you want from me to write a killer radio spot?

Jack Heald: You’ve got to tell me stories about yourself. It has nothing to do with business. Tell me stories about yourself. What’s something stupid you did that you look back on and you think, “Oh God, I can’t believe I did that, but I learned so much.” What’s something awesome that happened to you that you didn’t realize how awesome it was going to be at the time?

What was the darkest day in your life and how did you recover from it? What was one of the most extraordinary days of your life and how has it affected the rest of, your life? And you know, when you find out, when you hear those stories, you can begin to understand what these people bring to their business.

And that’s what I wanna serve up on a silver platter to their audience. 

Dennis Collins: So it’s about them.

Jack Heald: Yeah, It’s astonishing to me how many people want to take the personality out of their business.  They literally just want to be a commodity and yet want people to want the audience to treat them like a luxury good.

No, the only luxury in most businesses is the personality they deliver. It’s the personality, the culture that is formed from the personality. 

Leah Bumphrey: You know, it’s so interesting what you’re saying, Jack, because it’s so much less about the industries that you’re helping.

So if someone’s a painter, it’s less about what kind of paint they use, what’s the warranty, and how long is it going to stick on the wall. It’s about the actual guy who’s doing the painting. It’s his actual team. It is why he loves working on houses. Why does he love working on the higher ceilings?

What inspired him? Did he help his dad? Did he make a difference painting with his mom in the kitchen? Did he think he was going to be an artist? So what you’re saying is getting down deep, is helping to form those connections. And one thing I know about you, Jack, you are about connections. That struck me the very first time I met you.

And that was at Wizard Academy. And I was able to meet you and you remembered connections with mutual people that I knew, you knew. And it was like, boom. This is a real person who is interested in me. And if I was a business owner you were helping, I know that same interest would translate.

Jack Heald: Well, you know, today, I was just writing this.

Digitalization depersonalizes everything. And with the advent of artificial intelligence, which is very good at mimicking the digital version of anything, whether it’s copy or images or audio or videos. We’ve got machines now that in the digital realm can replicate human output. What they cannot replicate is the reality of knowing another person face to face, skin-to-skin, eye-to-eye, voice-to-voice, the ineffable experience of someone else’s soul that comes in these person-to-person interactions.

And those are the things that make a business extraordinary. 

Leah Bumphrey: And that’s where your color comes in. I mean, that was once said to you as a negative, but that’s a powerful thing to be able to pull the color out of someone because not all businesses are exciting, but all people are exciting. So if you have that ability and I’ve heard some of your ads, Jack, and they just kick because they get you involved.

They get you wishing that you could hire this person or at least meet them.

Jack Heald: Mrs. Bumphrey, you wrote the funniest series of ads I have ever heard. 

I realize this sounds like I’m backscratching, but, oh my God, Dennis. 

Dennis Collins: We have a nerd alert. I’ve never heard them. Leah, you’re holding out on me. I know you’re a great writer.

Leah Bumphrey: I’m, well, this will be a bottle of wine episode. I wanna make sure you laugh ’cause now Jack has set me up. So if you don’t find them funny…

Jack Heald: I assure you, you’ll howl when you hear these.

Dennis Collins: Okay. You have done a great vamp job for Leah.

Jack Heald: I know this because I’m the producer on these ads. 

Dennis Collins: Speaking of producing. I want to change lanes a little bit here. I know that podcasting is something that you’re very, very interested in and good at.

And I know of two podcasts that you’re affiliated with. One big daddy and another one on an occasion, but the big daddy is very interesting to me. You’ve mentioned this to me in person a couple of times, and I just refreshed my memory earlier – “Stay off my operating table.” 

I would love to hear the backstory about that. That title is just provoking. Obviously very provoking.

Jack Heald: I’m the co-host of the show. The host is a cardiac surgeon by the name of Dr. Philip Ovadia. He and I were both in the same men’s group together. That’s how he and I got connected.

His story was that he was morbidly obese his whole life. If you could imagine a morbidly obese heart surgeon, but he was on his by his own admission. And he lost a patient, I think he said a 39-year-old mother of two, on the operating table through a health condition that was entirely preventable. And it was a pivotal moment in his life and he decided if he didn’t do something about his health, he’d end up being on some cardiac surgeon’s operating table someday.

And he finally cracked the code on why he was obese and how to get it fixed. And he is on a mission because he discovered that as a medical doctor, as an MD, a lot of what he was told was wrong and he wasn’t told a whole lot of things that he should have been told about metabolism and health and the role of how various kinds of carbohydrates affect the body.

So he wrote a book called Stay Off My Operating Table and decided he needed to support that with a podcast. He asked me if I would produce it for him and I was producing another set of podcasts at the time in an entirely different industry. I said, sure, because I’d been producing podcasts for quite some time.

And I didn’t think I’d be on air with Phil, but it turned out that it was better with two of us because he’s super medical sciency, and I’m pretty good at realizing that you’re saying stuff that most people don’t understand. Let’s speak English.

Leah Bumphrey: Sounds a little bit like our relationship, Dennis.

Jack Heald: So yeah, we just recorded episode 150 this last year.

Leah Bumphrey: Bravo!

Jack Heald: Depending on how you measure it, we’re in the top one and a half percent of podcasts in the world. So it’s pretty fun. It’s pretty cool.

Dennis Collins: Not only that, I mean, you’re obviously doing some great work uncovering things that people need to know that they don’t know. That’s outstanding. I got a tune that in for sure. 

Leah Bumphrey: Well, this is where I get to be the mean one, you guys, because we’re gonna have to wait till the next episode to talk about other podcasts and these are the ones that I’m really excited about because somebody that both of you gentlemen know was once a guest on it.

So we’re going to have to leave that till next time though.

Dennis Collins: There we go. We have to have a cliffhanger, right? There’s a number of other things that we want to talk about, Jack, but as you know, time is flying. We need to sign off this time. A million thank yous for taking the time.

What an interesting story. What an interesting guy you are. We already knew that, but now the world knows. The world knows, and they know the story.

Leah Bumphrey: When you come back, you gotta bring the hat. 

Jack Heald: The hat goes with me wherever I go.

Dennis Collins: I know. I saw you a couple of times without it, and honest to God, I said, who is that guy?

He said, oh my God, that’s Jack! Trademark! That’ll do it for this episode of Connect and Convert. Jack Heald has been our guest. What a fascinating story he has to tell. And hopefully, we’ll do this again and get more. In the meantime, Stay tuned every week. Connect and Convert. We’ll be back at you next week with another episode of Connect and Convert.

Bye for now.

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