Read below or watch the video above.

Dennis Collins:
Hello again. It’s Dennis Collins back with another episode of Connect and Convert, the Sales Accelerator podcast. Where small business owners come to hear about the insider secrets. The insider secrets to grow sales faster than ever. Hey, Leah Bumphrey, my partner in crime.

Leah Bumphrey:
Hello, Dennis Collins.

Dennis Collins:
So today, Leah, in one of our last episodes, I put it all out there. I related a tale of a career that almost derailed before it ever got started. Remember that?

Leah Bumphrey:
I do. You were very open and honest and teaching coaching mode with that,

Dennis Collins:
But you were very supportive in saying, you know, that incident wasn’t your fault. It was the other guy’s fault. And I’m not going to tell our listeners any of the details. You got to go back and listen to that one.

Leah Bumphrey:
Yes, it’s a good one, you guys.

Dennis Collins:
You got to go back and listen. But I’m going to challenge Leah today.

Leah Bumphrey:
My own challenge.

Dennis Collins:
I’m going to challenge her to do her story. Do you have a story on maybe not your best day or maybe something that didn’t go well for you or a big fail, or do you have one of those? I can’t imagine you even have one, but I’ll ask you, do you have one?

Leah Bumphrey:
Oh, this is why I love working with you, Dennis, because you always make me feel so good about all the stuff that I can just have a ticker tape going through my mind of all those things that I should have done better. But when we were talking about it, and it’s not a total surprise to me that you were going to ask, but I did give it some thought because there’s some neat stuff that I think would really help our small business owners and our sales pros. And if you can learn to not do stuff because of what other people do, I think that’s a pretty high form of learning, and it’s a pretty high form of sharing. And you and I are all about sharing.

Dennis Collins:
Isn’t that why we’re here? We’re trying to help our viewers, our listeners, from making the same mistakes we made by sharing those mistakes and saying, “Hey, do this, do that. Try this, try that.” And you may not have to suffer that like we did.

Leah Bumphrey:
Yeah, that’s true. I love being in sales, and I love the opportunity that Wizard of Ads has brought to me to do sales in the industry that I am, which is radio sales. That’s the same industry that you came from to do it properly. That’s why you and I are so thrilled that WizardOfAds.org sponsors us because it speaks to the how, and it speaks to the why. You’re wanting to do things for the right reason, in the right way, and the focus is always on growth. So that’s why you and I do this. But my story had a lot of ebbs and flows to it before I was able to find my niche working with people like you, Dennis, and with Paul and with our clients and with the potential for other clients to call us and us to help them. I wouldn’t call it a tale of woe, but picture this, I’m just teasing.

Oh, it’s very, very dramatic. I speak a little bit to my early history in sales in one of my initial blog posts was Wizard of Ads, and that was the volunteer work I did. Some of my earliest memories are with my parents going door to door and I can still recite the script. And I grew up doing that and it was with the purpose of helping people. And I have never had a fear of talking to people. And those cold calls, I mean, that’s the ultimate in cold calls when you’re three, four years old, handing people a pamphlet and telling them why they should take it and why they have to pay you 10 cents.

Dennis Collins:
4 years old? I thought I started early. Wow.

Leah Bumphrey:
And technically, if you were talking to my parents, they would say it’s not sales. But really there’s a lot of the same skillset. Both my parents came from backgrounds where they were, and we’ve talked a little bit about it where they have great sales skills. So I was blessed with that. When my dad seriously got into sales as a career, I would’ve been in my early teens, and he knew I was a huge reader. So he handed me books like Napoleon Hills Think and Grow Rich. He handed me the Dale Carnegie and he said, Leah, read this. I think this is good. And it really got my mind thinking, really got me realizing the opportunity that was there.

All of this, I ended up, like a lot of people in their late teens, early twenties, lots of stuff going on. Going to university, pursuing an actual career wasn’t really something that I was able to do at that time. But you’ll get a kick out of this. I actually spent a very small stint about 15 minutes in a telemarketing room. I was hired for, and I mean minimum wage back then would’ve been about three bucks an hour in Saskatchewan. And I was 18 bucks plus commission. And I sat in this room with about, oh, I dunno, probably 20 other people. And that building is now gone. It was in downtown Saskatoon.

And I walked out after 15 minutes. I went, this is not me. I can’t follow this script and do this. But I was hired. And then I also spent my last 10 bucks getting a dress dry cleaned. I again had another interview. It turned out it was for selling Kirby vacuum cleaners. And the reason why they wanted to hire me was because I had worked a little bit with my dad who sold Electrolux vacuum cleaners, and I’d made 400 bucks one summer as a student working.

Dennis Collins:
They provide excellent training. I mean, I’ve never gone through that, but I heard that they did.

Leah Bumphrey:
No, they did. But again, I didn’t believe in the product. And so I walked out and said, no, I’m not doing this.

Dennis Collins:
So what was the matter? It didn’t work?

Leah Bumphrey:
It worked. But you know what? My heart was with what my dad had sold. So you know what? I was sold on what he was selling.

Dennis Collins:
I understand.

Leah Bumphrey:
But I didn’t want to do that. I ended up working in a parts department of a computer conglomerate, huge. It’s now HP Compact. Those names, digital equipment was the original. And so I was hired by them to work. They needed someone who was able to answer the phones. I was not quite 19. They needed someone that would be okay unwrapping parts. So I did that, and I was in the parts department doing my thing. I’m not a technical person. I know that’s going to make Paul laugh, but I did learn guts of a computer. I had an email account before most people did. So I was doing that.

And then as I was sitting there and realizing this is not what I want to do. I want to be doing something where there’s more opportunity. I was taken to Regina, which is a city a couple of hours from here with the group of us. And they were doing quality matters. You remember the the quality theme for all businesses. It would’ve been back in the late eighties, mid to late eighties. Everything was quality.

Dennis Collins:
We were having these, wasn’t there a guy, Deming or Dening or something like that?

Leah Bumphrey:
Yes, yes.

Dennis Collins:
But he was kind of the godfather of that movement. And everybody adopted it. It was like, you got to do this.

Leah Bumphrey:
This is what you’re doing. And every once in a while, our business owners will have seen these kind of thrusts. Well, it was the quality movement. And we were in a room and there were salespeople and hardware people and software people and people like me that were more support people. And they called for individual breakout groups, and then they wanted presentations. And I just decided I’d had enough of being the gal in the back. So I said, I’ll do it. So I went to the front of the room and I put a, not to be offensive, but I put a little paper towel so that I looked like the pastor and I went up and Yes, yes, yes, yes. I was preaching quality.

Dennis Collins:
Really?

Leah Bumphrey:
And I loved it. I had so much fun group.

Dennis Collins:
Can you give us an example?

Leah Bumphrey:
Maybe not today.

Dennis Collins:
You got to give us that speech someday.

Leah Bumphrey:
Oh, I don’t even know if I could remember it. But jaws dropped because nobody could believe that this 20-year-old mouse from the back room who was fine answering phone calls and friendly with everyone, actually knew how to project and talk and get to the meat of it. So then I’m thinking, this is fantastic. So I had a sales manager that wanted to talk to me. I had another sales manager that wanted to talk to me thinking, how could they move me into a position where, Hey, this is something we should be talking to her about. And you know what, Dennis? I was so excited.

Dennis Collins:
I bet.

Leah Bumphrey:
But then I was sitting there and being interviewed, and my lack of education came up. And I’ll never forget this one woman, Linda broke my heart. She closed the book and she said, you have no education. There’s nothing we can do with you. And I said, but I’ve done this and I’ve done this, and I’ve read this and I know this. And she just closed the book and walked away. And I went, okay, I guess there’s nothing we can do. And fast forward a couple of years, I continued reading and I continued pursuing other things. I ended up having a friend at that business, give me a lead to be interviewed by another company. And I was all excited. It was wine, a California wine. Well, I knew nothing about wine, but I went to the interview and they loved me.

Dennis Collins:
You know you like wine.

Leah Bumphrey:
But you know what? I nailed the interview. They loved me. They just said, oh, you are exactly who we are looking for, except you don’t have any education. We can’t hire you. You don’t have a commerce degree. Alright? So not long after that, the position that I had in this nice, safe environment in the warehouse ended. I was given the choice, and Sean worked with me at the same place. They gave us actually both the choice to move out to Calgary and to hang on to our jobs.

We talked and no, we’re not going to do that because this was the opportunity. So then I had to find a job, I had to find something. And I only applied for positions that were sales positions that were growth positions. I didn’t let myself be afraid of commission only positions. I went, no, I’ve been hired by a couple of these before. I’ve been turned down by some of these bigger places. I’m going for it. And when I did that, and I went to the interviews and the place actually that hired me, and I will give them a shout out, Pitney Bowes mailing equipment.

You want to talk about an unbelievable training opportunity there for somebody who is interested in sales. I went for the interviews and I just decided I’m going to get this job. So I did the follow-up. Dennis, you’d have been so proud of me. 10 days after the interview, I phoned and I said, you know what? I have two other positions and I’m going to have to make a decision by Monday. So if you guys want me, let me know. I didn’t have two other positions.

Dennis Collins:
Of course you didn’t.

Leah Bumphrey:
I’m pretty sure they knew I didn’t have two other positions.

Dennis Collins:
Yeah, sure.

Leah Bumphrey:
But I went for it.

Dennis Collins:
Did it work?

Leah Bumphrey:
Yeah. They hired me. As a matter of fact, I was planning to buy a motorcycle and instead I had to buy a little car because in sales you have to have a car.

Dennis Collins:
A motorcycle?

Leah Bumphrey:
I was going to be driving a motorcycle.

Dennis Collins:
Are you a cycle chick?

Leah Bumphrey:
Aspired to be. But then I ended up with my little Sunbird. And you know what, Dennis, it was exactly the perfect thing that I got this position. They looked around the room when we were in an initial training day, there were six of us. And they said, there’s going to be two of you standing in four months. And I went, it’s going to be me. It’s going to be me.

Dennis Collins:
Wow.

Leah Bumphrey:
And it was a numbers game, and it was hard slugging and tons to learn. At the end of my career, I had gone as high as I could. The next step was going to be sales manager. They weren’t going to interview me to become the sales manager. And I demanded an interview, and actually the guy that interviewed me out of Winnipeg ended up interviewing me while I was sitting in my car because he realized that I’m pushing. You have to interview me. He ended up hiring a buddy of his. You’ll be happy to know it didn’t work out for him.

Dennis Collins:
Karma.

Leah Bumphrey:
That meant it meant that I had to move on from Pitney Bowes. So I was going to another position and it carried on from there. But you know what? When I made the decision, no, I’m going to do this. When I was forced to make the decision to go into sales, that’s when it happened. Then I started thinking, just because I was forced. What about goal setting? What about where it comes from inside of me? What about my own intuition? I knew I didn’t belong in a warehouse, but it was safe and it was right.

And I look back on that, and I even think about other opportunities, even within media where I ended up working. When I did not listen to that voice inside of me that told me it was the right thing to do. I’ll give you this example that one of first sales managers, after a year of just killing it on the sales floor, every month I had exceeded. Now not exceeded in dollars, but you know how you track percentages. I was killing the percentage of my budget.

Dennis Collins:
Closing percentages.

Leah Bumphrey:
Yeah, absolutely. It was the second month of being there, I was killing it. Third month again, fourth month again, I finally went to the sales manager. I said, you know what? You got to take me out of the running. You made my targets too small.

Dennis Collins:
No one has ever said.

Leah Bumphrey:
Yeah, I know. And that was actually one of the stupidest things I ever did, because I expected that somehow I would still get noticed, but I ended up not getting noticed. I was trying to do things to be like, okay, I’m feeling a little shy. I don’t want my name announced all the time. I should have. I should have been excited about it. Why not?

Dennis Collins:
Hey, I get it. There’s points in my life where I felt that same way. I overcame that though.

Leah Bumphrey:
Oh, yes. The other thing, you’ll get a kick out of this. As a former radio guy, after about a year, I went and I said, you know what? Where I was working for Pitney Bowes, I was putting together deals that were in the tens of thousands of dollars, in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. We’re talking huge pieces of equipment. And I said, I’m not used to these little deals because really, you’re looking at that time, we were not following a structure where it would be longer terms, a $1,000 sale, or a $2,000 sale. I’d go home and tell Sean, and he would say, is that good? That’s a lot less than what you used to sell. But I was told, yeah, no, you’re thinking wrong. You don’t put big deals together. Well, my intuition said, why can’t you? And I followed it.

When I followed what I felt to be true. And that’s not based on just because I’m so smart, but the things that I have read, the people that I’ve talked to, even with writing weekly reports, when I didn’t follow doing it the way Leah writes. When I’m trying to write the way someone else would do it, it doesn’t work for me. And anytime I’ve had a stall in my career or had a moment where, okay, this isn’t working, it’s because I forgot to tune into who I really am and what my long-term goal is, and the people around me that I support right now.

If I was looking at doing something different, Dennis, how many times have I called you for advice or Paul for advice or the myriad of other people that we have in our lives that really know this stuff? So I know I’m going to do it again. I know I will fail to listen to that voice inside of my head. But whenever I delayed and really wanted something and waited for the universe to force it, it still happened. But wouldn’t it be better if I just listened the first time? Because you get that two by four and keep stalking you.

Dennis Collins:
That’s a great question, though. That’s a real philosophical kind of turning point that when do you listen to that intuition? When do you listen to it? And hindsight is always 20/20. So I mean, you could sit here today and say, geez, I could have would’ve should have. But I bet Leah, you had some pretty good reasons for not listening to it. Do you recall why you didn’t listen to it?

Leah Bumphrey:
Yeah. And often it was about family and about finances. So you’re right. Maybe it was just the wrong time, but maybe, and that’s why I think it’s important to have the right way of balancing any decisions you make. Because I’m not going to go back and lament, I wouldn’t be here doing this podcast with you. If I’d have done everything differently, I’d be selling wine somewhere in Italy, maybe I’d rather be here doing the podcast.

Dennis Collins:
That doesn’t sound too bad to me.

Leah Bumphrey:
We would’ve met there, right?

Dennis Collins:
No doubts in some vineyard, half drunk.

Leah Bumphrey:
I love it. And I wouldn’t say half, anyway.

Dennis Collins:
Okay. Yeah, half.

Leah Bumphrey:
But I do reflect on the fact that we, even talking about not going to university, I was talking with one of my sisters once, and university was not something that was promulgated by our parents. There was a financial issue. And you can get a little pooky about the fact that, okay, I wasn’t supported in doing this yet, as my sister said, you know what? There are people that do it anyway. There are people in the world that I know who just did it anyway. Why was that not in my head? And as you said, you can argue that, okay, there’s reasons why, and you know what, you end up where you are and that’s your new starting point.

But I really challenge our listeners to think about why you’re not doing something. If you’re looking at hiring someone new for your business, is it because you’re unsure of being able to pay them? Or is it because of another reason? If you’re looking about at growing your business or changing your business, really understand why you are making the decision and that there are options. Because most of the time in my life when I went, I can’t, that’s something I absolutely can’t. And then it changed, and I could, it was like a weight coming off of your shoulder.

Dennis Collins:
Can we pause on that? I love that. So you said when it changed, what changed it or how, I think it would be informative for us to know who are listening to this magnificent story. What’s the process of changing that? How does that happen? Is it organic or is it something you decide on? Or how does that work?

Leah Bumphrey:
Ultimately, the change happens with a decision, but you cannot make a decision without information. If you just do it on emotion, that’s not going to help you. If you just do it on logic, that’s not going to help you.

Dennis Collins:
Not to interrupt, but it sounds to me like some of the stuff you decided was on emotion. It was on emotion. It was that you had the desire to succeed. You were determined, which to me, determination is 100% emotional. It’s a passion. And it sounds to me like you didn’t have all the facts and figures lined up. Did I mishear you? Maybe?

Leah Bumphrey:
Oh, no, you’re right. Didn’t when I had nothing but the facts and figures that actually prevented me because it prevented me from making a decision. Or I felt like this was the only path, because that’s the one that’s nicely paved. But when there was emotion in there, and with the emotion, you have to have some logic. You have to have somewhere to go. I mean, I’m glad I didn’t end up in a telemarketing pit somewhere.

Dennis Collins:
Leah, think of this, maybe you probably own the damn telemarketing center, right?

Leah Bumphrey:
See, that’s it.

Dennis Collins:
What I’m hearing you say is that take the hand that you’re dealt and make it happen anyway. You don’t have three aces and two kings. You don’t have that hand.

Leah Bumphrey:
Very true.

Dennis Collins:
That’s the hand you were dealt, but you still can make something happen. That’s what I’m hearing. Am I hearing that right?

Leah Bumphrey:
Yeah. No, you’re exactly right. It makes me think of the quote that there is no difference between someone who doesn’t read and someone who can’t read. Think about that. There’s no difference between someone who can’t. So someone who’s totally illiterate was never taught, never given the opportunity. And someone who doesn’t.

Dennis Collins:
Someone who won’t read.

Leah Bumphrey:
And you can apply that to reading. You can apply that to learning.

Dennis Collins:
Let me ask you this. I know where the point you are at now in your life. You are a reader. You are a learner. You are a gifted writer. I mean, you have a whole list of skills. How important was reading to developing these skills?

Leah Bumphrey:
Oh, critical. I can remember books that I read as a kid that still influenced me now because they taught you the ability to think critically that maybe there’s another way of looking at things. I was thinking about this morning, Dennis, right now, as you and I are speaking, there’s not unusual to the world, but unusual to this point in time. There’s issues happening in the Middle East. That’s happened my whole life.

Dennis Collins:
And we’ll continue, I think,

Leah Bumphrey:
And it will continue.

Dennis Collins:
Unfortunately.

Leah Bumphrey:
As a teenager, I read Leon Uris, who’s a prolific, fantastic writer of historical fiction, and he wrote Exodus, which went on to be a great movie. The book is always the case, 10 times better, but he really made the case for the formation of the Nation of Israel. You really made that case. But this same man wrote The Haj. I hope I’m pronouncing that right, Haj. And he showed the other side of it. He showed what was happening to the people that were, now, we call it Gaza, but the Palestinians.

Dennis Collins:
The Palestinians, yeah. He looked at the other side as well.

Leah Bumphrey:
He was able to present both sides in a way that made me go, are you kidding me? These are people. If I wouldn’t have read those books and reread them, I might gravitate solely towards this or solely towards that instead of realizing we are all people.

Dennis Collins:
So it opened your mind. I’m not sure who said this, but I’ll paraphrase what I think. It says that the true mark of a really intelligent person is that person who can not only speak and defend their position, but can speak and defend the position of their opponent. Is that what you’re saying? This man understood both sides and articulated them equally as well. From what I hear you saying.

Leah Bumphrey:
And by reading all kinds of things, it gives us the opportunity to hold a thought in our mind. And that’s what we try and do with our podcast, Dennis. We’re talking about thoughts and ideals and possibilities and stories, because stories are all the basis, and yes, we also have science and facts and information. But it’s that combination and taking the time out to ponder them, to let them float around in our heads a little bit. It makes all the difference to what’s possible. And in business, there are things that are possible and good things.

Dennis Collins:
Let me harp on what you just said. Please repeat what you just said. The last line is the billboard. That’s the billboard for today’s session,

Leah Bumphrey:
That possibilities are there, and they’re good possibilities in business if we allow ourselves the time to see them.

Dennis Collins:
And I want you to talk, give me a billboard statement on determination. These stories were, within these stories, there were several common factors, but one that I heard was determination. Give me a billboard for our business owners, what’s your billboard about determination?

Leah Bumphrey:
If you know it, if you sense it, if you smell it, you can do it.

Dennis Collins:
I like that. So if you feel it.

Leah Bumphrey:
A lot of times we know, we already know, and we’re looking for someone else to do it. That doesn’t work. You can’t do anything for me, Dennis. But man, you can do stuff with me, which is why we have this fantastic opportunity to talk to so many people and make a difference.

Dennis Collins:
This has been great story. We could probably go on for hours on this, couldn’t we? I love how you wove it. You wove it beautifully. Kind of your origin story and how you got started and to where you ended up, and the role that certain factors played in where you sit right now. And it had nothing to do with education, I kid about it.

But how many people waste their so-called education? They don’t end up anywhere near the field that they were trained allegedly to do, and the relationship between what they’re doing today and how they got educated. There’s no relationship there. And come on. I mean, that as a knockout factor for you, of course, was a big mistake. Luckily, there were people who said, “Uhuh, I see something. I see something.”

Leah Bumphrey:
Yep. Now, this brings us to, I mean, we love the opportunity that we give our listeners to ask us specific questions. Part of what we want to do is also have them inquire about our 60 minute discovery call. That’s when you and I get into it, and we have a Zoom call where we’re able to talk about broader questions. Please, our email addresses LeahBumphrey@wizardofads.com and DennisCollins@wizardofads.com. Call us about that. But we did have one question that we can share with everybody. So I like throwing these to you, Dennis.

Dennis Collins:
I know you do. Ask us anything. Good. Don’t ask us anything. Maybe we have to have some boundaries on that.

Leah Bumphrey:
Oh, yeah. There’s a few boundaries in there.

This one is a good one. There are so many YouTube gurus out there, why should we call you guys?

Dennis Collins:
There are so many YouTube gurus out there. Why should they call Leah and Dennis, right?

Leah Bumphrey:
That’s right.

Dennis Collins:
That’s a good question.

Leah Bumphrey:
I have a thought on that.

Dennis Collins:
Tell me. I want yours.

Leah Bumphrey:
I want yours first. I’ve been talking a lot.

Dennis Collins:
Mine first, my impression is that anybody who has a camera and a computer can put anything they so desire on a YouTube channel. I mean, just go on YouTube today if you haven’t recently, and look at what’s on there. I don’t care what your topic, I don’t care what you’re interested in, what you want to learn how to do, it’s on YouTube.

But here’s the deal. How can somebody on YouTube write you a prescription? I.E. give you a script a doctor would do without hearing your story. I’m not casting a shadow on any of the people who are on YouTube. Some of them are very good, but what the heck, Leah? What we do is custom. We sit and listen. In fact, before we even take an assignment for a client, we do a very deep dive in person with the owners, the key people, and we listen and we write a report.

I call it a prescription. We write a prescription, say, here’s what we think the illnesses are. We’ve identified five or six different problems. Here’s our solution. So we’re not a YouTube channel. We actually come into your world, live in your world for a few days, figure out what’s going on in your world, and feed it back to you with our solutions. Do the YouTube channels do that?

Leah Bumphrey:
I love it. And you know what? We’re on YouTube.

Dennis Collins:
Yeah. And no problem with YouTube. I just would say this to you. If that’s your source, if that’s your only source of information for if you need to know how to fix a bicycle or fix your plumbing or something, great. But we’re talking about transformational training here. What we do is transformational training. It’s not transactional. It’s not, okay, put the screw in this hole and tighten it three times. No, we’re doing transformational training, skill building. You are not going to build skills watching a YouTube video.

Leah Bumphrey:
Nope. You’re right. And the only thing I would add to what you’re saying, Dennis, is when people are listening to us, they’re either feeling a connection, what we’re saying resonates with them or not.

Dennis Collins:
Or it doesn’t, yeah.

Leah Bumphrey:
It’s the beginning. This is what we’re doing because we love what we do.

Dennis Collins:
And so sometimes these kind of questions, sometimes we actually walk away when we don’t believe the engagement is going to serve both of us. It has to be a two way street for me. I will not take on any engagement that I don’t believe where I can help. And if I don’t feel that I’m a good fit, I’ll turn it over to somebody else in a heartbeat, because that’s going to end disaster for both of us.

Leah Bumphrey:
So before we say goodbye to everybody, the challenge is if you have one of those moments in the next week where you’re going, I’m tempted. I think I should. I don’t know why, give yourself a chance to look at the logic and the emotion behind why you’re leaning one way or the other. It’s going to give you some valuable insights into what you should do.

Dennis Collins:
What a great story. Thank you for being so vulnerable with us, for telling us your pathway. I can learn from your pathway. I already have, and I think our listeners and viewers can too. So kudos to you, Leah, for sharing. I appreciate you. I appreciate your sharing, and I welcome all of our viewers, our listeners, to join us every week. Yes, every week we have a new episode of Connect and Convert. That’s all for today. See you next time.

Latest posts by Connect and Convert (see all)