Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 19:47 — 36.2MB) | Embed
Subscribe Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | Email | RSS | More
Jake and Rob reflect on how they were first made aware of each other in the mid 2000s – Tom Johnson and Google.
For more information about Funeral Results Marketing, check out the website or contact Rob at robin@funeralresults.com or at 1-800-810-3595. For more information about the Johnson Consulting Group, check out the website or contact Jake at jjohnson@johnsonconsulting.com or at 1-888-250-7747.
See the complete transcript here:
Rob Heppell:
Welcome back to the Funeral X Podcast. I am Rob Heppell and I’m joined with my Funeral Results Marketing business partner, Jake Johnson. Hey there, Jake, how are you today?
Jake Johnson:
Hey there. Good.
Rob Heppell:
Good stuff. Hey, that was a great first episode, just reliving the last 18 months of our journey working quite closely to get other more so. But I think I thought in this one and we did talk about it a little bit, but I think there’s some great stories about how we first got to know each other, and also too, from our different perspectives too. And basically, what’s happened in the last, I guess, 15 years or so of getting to know each other and kind of bringing us up to the point of working with each other a year ago, starting a year ago.
Jake Johnson:
Right.
Rob Heppell:
So now to jump right in, I think this… I knew of you and your dad back there in say the mid 2000s. And I was in San Francisco, so this is 2006 and I had been writing some articles for… At that time I was just trying to get exposure. So I was writing some articles for RON HAST. And so Ron used to have the mortuary management magazine and he was hosting a little conference and this still happens today, but there was the CANA event going on in San Francisco so that it’s in the summer. And so he decided and since he’s from San Francisco to have his own two-day event ahead of that to kind of capitalize on all the funeral folks coming into town. And he had Tom Johnson speaking at this event.
Rob Heppell:
So I wasn’t speaking, I was just attending. But I did have a couple of other goals by attending this event. And then I was actually speaking at CANA a few days later. But what I remember is your dad’s at the front of the little conference room that we were at, we’re at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel, I believe in San Francisco. And so Yes, your dad is presenting and he’s having technical issues and everyone, he’s looking at Ron and Ron was older than your dad. And so he didn’t have the answer so I kind of volunteered. And this has happened. It doesn’t happen as much anymore. I think it’s because technology’s a bit more reliable than it was. So I came up and got him figured out and got on his way.
Rob Heppell:
And I still… And I remember part of his presentation and I’ve spoken with you since about this, but where he was talking, and Jake’s, were with our business evaluation and he’s it’s not just simple math and so many calls these times. So many dollars is what we’re going to pay you for your business. And he was talking about your little upticks here and there. And since that time, you’ve shown me to the degree of these things that are just minor, but they can sway evaluation up or down. But it’s just kind of neat and I’ve always remembered that part. And with that, the neat thing about that event was Ron, he had a social time up top of the Drake and he… And I met some folks there.
Rob Heppell:
I met Mark Matthews and Sean Douglass. And then also then when that wrapped up, right before I left, I interviewed Ron because I was doing my little Funeral Gurus video. And so I interviewed him about Jessica Mitford because Jessica Mitford wrote The American Way of Death, kind of a negative take on funeral service. And so I just wanted to get his take on it because I knew that, and this is kind of a funny thing I said, now Ron, I do know that you had a bit of a relationship with Jessica Mitford. And he said, Rob, I wouldn’t call it a relationship the way you’re calling it. But he just kind of joked about that. And he went in and went into the detail about how he instead of pushing her away, he gave her a bit of a voice.
Rob Heppell:
And I think the funeral service overall we’re becoming more aware of how other people think than just us. And then as I transitioned to the right before CANA, actually, I went out and went to mountain view and Google, and visited the Google campus there. And that was pretty cool. I think that was back when they were still really living in the Do no evil part. And Larry Stewart Jr was on the CANA board. I was allowed to speak at that. And I actually embedded Ron’s interview that I had done a couple days before into my presentation. So it was quite fresh and just a couple other people of interest that I met at that event was John Heal from at that time tributes.com, but now of legacy.
Rob Heppell:
And John’s a friend of both of ours and also Lacey Robinson was there was as well. And Lacey’s providing consulting services for the Johnson consulting team. So it was a very… I made a lot of great contacts and friends from that 2006 event. And then, I’ll kind of pass things over to you, because I think over the next year or two you had said that your dad had mentioned meeting me and I’ll let you take it from here.
Jake Johnson:
No, I remember that story because I remember it was really just dad and I, and I think maybe my sister, maybe one other employee came back. I asked him how his presentation went. He said it went well. He said, hey, I met this guy. His name’s Rob Heppell. You need to talk to this guy on top of him. Make sure you thank him for helping me with my technology issues that I had. But I really liked what he had to say. I had to talk to him. And that’s of course, I think subsequently either set up a call, or somehow we got in touch and I liked it. I liked our conversation. I think that the thing about it to me was, as I’ve mentioned in our last podcast is that I’ve always been in technology. In 1996 when I started, I was setting up connectivity through, at that point it was called PC any, or I think it was Norton PC anywhere. So like connecting to computers and downloading files for accounting systems.
Jake Johnson:
And obviously, there’s been a big improvement in that since then. But between that and just programming in general, and building computers myself. I always thought that somehow this is going to make its way into funeral service. And so when you and I talked, I was energized by that. And your take on the direction, and with your background in funeral service, it just complimented well. So that goes back a long time, I think.
Rob Heppell:
Yes.
Jake Johnson:
And I hate to say it, but when was that? I want to say 2007, 2008.
Rob Heppell:
Yes. I believe so. I looked up in my email this kind of the first communications. Yes. So it was, I think around the beginning of 2008 from as far back as that email goes. So Yes, but I think what’s… And I still remember. I’m in the same area right now as I was then, but when you had, although my office has changed a little bit, but I remember getting this phone call from you and about outranking Johnson Consulting. So just little…
Jake Johnson:
That’s right.
Rob Heppell:
Heppell Funeral Solutions. And at that time, and Google had only been… They weren’t even around for a decade at that time. So they were obviously getting bigger, but this was not too far off when you could go to the different search engines and you would just submit your URL. And there was certain things that you could do to help boost your rankings in Google. But it is far more sophisticated now.
Jake Johnson:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Rob Heppell:
But I appreciated your bold. I guess, you just picked up the phone and said to me like, Rob, how come you’re outranking me and I don’t really like it? I know that we’re a lot bigger than you. And at that time too, from trying to rank for funeral consulting, I knew that wasn’t really… That was the term that I was ranking for, but I was only a small sliver that mainly the marketing part of that, marketing and strategy, and being in the… I’m from a very competitive market so that was my experience.
Rob Heppell:
And then starting to work with you. And I actually started to any, like really not… Anything that was trying to like for evaluations, or financials, or accounting, we would make link or links away from my website to yours. And I remember then, and I believe you were in the process of getting a new website built, and I think, Jake, part of the reason why I’m, I’m outranking you is I’m using WordPress. And you’ve got this like, this is still back when there’s Flash and the Search Engines, and still can’t really crawl that for the information. And had a great relationship with Bill Bischoff. So Mike and Will’s dad, and Mike was working with you at the time.
Rob Heppell:
But Bill in, in his role really kind of coached me along. He, okay, Rob, now here’s what you’re going to need to say to Jake and things like that. And anytime, for the times that I was down in Phoenix there, any times that I could spend with Bill, I remember him taking me out to, I don’t know if it was like the Gulf and Country club, and just hearing his great stories about the big beginning of Preneed and saying it was like the Pure Wild West and that. But just seeing and the one last point, and I’ll pass it back to you, this was, Johnson Consulting, the building was on the corner of the Whitney & Murphy Funeral Home parking lot. And again, just this core, little group of you bigger than my company, but that’s where you were working out of at that time.
Jake Johnson:
Yes. We were what, four or five employees and you were two or whatever, three.
Rob Heppell:
Yes.
Jake Johnson:
But we were small and Yes, it was back in the day. I hate to say it that way, but for me too, being able to work with Bill Bischoff. And also at that time, Dave Hieatt, just these fantastic individuals that so influential and just really put their mark on our profession during their time. It was a lot of fun and it was… And Bill, he was a big help in putting principles together that we still use today. We have in our consulting for four-legged stool of success, which I tried to just mention the presentation last week. For a funeral business, you can barely bunch everything together of what you do in four areas. It’s marketplace, workplace, financial and customer service. So marketplace, workplace, financial and customer service. And if you’re excelling well at all those, then you’ll sell well in your business. And the irony is, and it’s no wonder you and Bill spoke a lot too, is how much the web business and technology in our space is supplying the success in those that four-legged stool, quite frankly.
Rob Heppell:
For sure. We built the website and we actually used the… I think I did mention previously Corey Miller from iThemes. And we used this iThemes, WordPress theme for the… It was blue and kind of silvery gray. One had a little bit of 3D look to it and picture of you and your dad on the front. And you built that. We built that out and it was working well. And then we took over the websites for both because at this time, your dad had, you and your dad had Whitney Murphy, the funeral home and the Mackey Funeral Home. So we built the websites for those as well. And it was funny at that time you could get like with Google workspace now or whatever, and you have to pay $5 or $10 a month per email, you could get an account for email for free up to 100 users.
Rob Heppell:
And I still think Whitney Murphy is on that legacy plan, but you don’t get those anymore. There’s nothing. You don’t get a lot of free from Google anymore.
Jake Johnson:
Yes.
Rob Heppell:
But it was, Yes, those were good. And we kind of built those up. And then Jake, I get this phone call and you tell me, Rob, we’re making a move here. We’re going to move some of our stuff in-house. And now this was a few years later and you and your dad had sold Whitney Murphy to Sean Murphy and Al Asta.
Jake Johnson:
Right.
Rob Heppell:
But you still had Mackey and obviously, and Johnson Consulting. And so you told me that, we’re going to… We’re just going to manage those websites on our own, Rob. We don’t really need you anymore. So I was, anyway.
Jake Johnson:
I remember that, Yes. That was a mistake, obviously.
Rob Heppell:
That’s okay. We learned, but, hey, Jake. I got to tell you. My wife was hot. She was mad like, how could he do that to you? And I think one thing we need to insert in here, there was a time too that myself, and my wife, and two other couples, we came down to Phoenix to watch the NASCAR race. And so we, I think I spent some time with you at the office and then we went to your brother. And actually, I helped out your brother, Brian, with his website and getting going with the Blue Agave Mexican Cantina Restaurant.
Rob Heppell:
And so had built that up for him. And so we had been there and we’d spent some time at his establishment. But Yes, Cindy wasn’t very happy that you left, that you took your business away. And then when I told her about what we were working on last year, she’s like, really? Do you trust Jake? And I said, Yes, I trust Jake. And she goes, he stopped doing business with you. I said, Yes. But that’s just a business decision and you can never burn bridges. Right?
Jake Johnson:
Right. Look where we ended up?
Rob Heppell:
Yes.
Jake Johnson:
I think the one thing I’ve never been afraid to do, and I hope others know that listen to our podcast is that never be afraid to try something. And if it fails, fail fast and move on.
Rob Heppell:
Yes.
Jake Johnson:
And so that’s exactly what I did.
Rob Heppell:
Yes.
Jake Johnson:
And sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. It was a suggestion to try it and we did, and we’ve moved back. So it’s as we’re working to do that at Mackey as well, and for the other software packages that J-3 Tech has and having you guys do those websites, so it just makes sense. And you guys do a good job, and obviously, we drink from Kool-Aid. So there you go.
Rob Heppell:
Yes. And I thought this would just be a good little… We had a nice conversation last time about how the last couple years of getting to the point where we’re working together officially, but there’s this backstory and with, Yes. Meeting your dad, working with Bill Bischoff and I think it just paints a little bit bigger part of the picture and where we’re going from here.
Jake Johnson:
No, it wasn’t… Certainly wasn’t a relationship that started last year.
Rob Heppell:
No.
Jake Johnson:
It’s been years in the making so.
Rob Heppell:
For sure.
Jake Johnson:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Rob Heppell:
We’ll maybe the next time we chat, we will talk about maybe a bit more about funeral results marketing and the business itself, and what it really does. And then we’ll talk about following that. We’ll talk about Johnson Consulting and the services that you do, because sometimes people know, they know us, they know of us, they’ve seen the website, but they don’t really get the founder’s perspective on why we do what we do, and, and some of those rationales. And maybe why we don’t do other things that we could be doing, but why we don’t? So I think that’d be a good place to look at next time.
Jake Johnson:
Love it.
Rob Heppell:
Great. For those listening, thanks again for spending some time today. I hope you’re enjoying these conversations with Jake and I. And we’ll… It’s going to bounce around back and forth of our experiences, and future thoughts, and different things, but it’s all going to be of our love of funeral service and how it can maybe, yes, some ideas will rub off on you and help you with your business and funeral service. So make sure you check back soon for another episode of the Funeral X Podcast. Until next time. This has been Jake Johnson and Rob Heppell.
Leave a Reply