Hi, this is Michael Senoff with HardtoFindSeminars.com. Here is a 34 minute interview I did with a gentleman named Curtis. Curtis contacted me about several issues. One regarding my invisible ink marking pen business, and two, wanted some advice on an idea on developing an information product. I give him my best advice, and we come up with a great strategy and a very fun project to create an information product around. I think you’ll find this interesting. Enjoy!

Michael: Hey, Curtis. Mike Senoff here. How are you?

Curtis: Hey, I’m good. How are you doing?

Michael: Good. Do you have some time to talk?

Curtis: Sure.

Michael: Good. Nice to meet you.

Curtis: Nice to meet you.

Michael: You’re with Tyson Foods, huh?

Curtis: Yes.

Michael: All right, and you’re in accounting?

Curtis: Correct.

Michael: Great. How long have you been there?

Curtis: A little bit over a month. I was at J.B. Hunt Transportation.

Michael: Let me start this off. I’m just going to read over the email you sent, and then we’ll just handle one thing at a time, and then if you have more questions, I’m all for it, okay?

Curtis: Okay.

Michael: So, I got an email from you a couple of days ago. “Mr. Senoff, I’ll start by thanking you for the outstanding information you provide on your site. I’ve been obsessed with consuming as much information from the audio clips as I can ever since I ran across it a couple weeks ago. I’m a 27 year old accountant with Tyson Foods Incorporated. I’m married with two five year old daughters. My goal is to eventually work from home and still provide my family a very comfortable lifestyle. The reason I’m contacting you is because I have a couple questions I was hoping you could help me with. I’ll try and take as little of your time as possible. One – your interview with the guy named Allan Miller who is making a great living buying and selling old trailer homes. Did he ever put together a product outlining this? Do you know how I can get in touch with him? Two – I am fascinated with information products. I am currently working on the research to develop an information product of my own. I am still trying to decide on a topic that would sell and I could get enough information together and provide a quality product. About five years ago, my father and I put together an info product on how to get government grants. We sold it for about $30, and did fairly well. The only way we were marketing it was bulk emailing. So, when we started having problems with AOL, we shut down the whole thing. I was wondering if you thought that there may still be a market for this info or if it has already been repeated too many times. If so, do you think direct mail will be the best way to go? And, to what group should I mail? And, three – I’m also interested in your pen manufacturing business. How has it worked out for you? And, how successful are the people who you sold your license to?

Okay, let’s take it one at a time. That Allan Miller – I really enjoyed interviewing that guy. This guy really did, but we could never come to an agreement on putting something together. I have a lot of people who inquire, but I have something that’s pretty damn close. It’s a product on how to do exactly what he was doing.

You see, Allan Miller isn’t the only guy in the world buying and selling trailer homes. There’s always someone else doing the same thing because we’ve got a big country out there. I found a product that a guy put together, and I went out and searched for it because I could never get something going with him. He would never agree to do it.

So, I found a product, and it’s an entire course on how to do what he’s doing. It’s very thorough, lots of resources, and I have that available on a CD. So, if that’s something you’re interested in, I stand behind it. It will really give you everything you need to know, and Allan Miller’s interview is just as a bonus.

Curtis: Did you put it together yourself?

Michael: I did not put it together. It’s not my product, but I sourced it.

Curtis: Okay.

Michael: So, once I couldn’t do anything with Allan, I get people like yourself inquiring about his stuff all the time, and I wanted to offer something on the subject to people who were interested. That’s number one.

Your information product – now, you say you’re currently working on the research to develop an information product of your own. Are you working on something right now?

Curtis: Well, actually I was trying to come up with a topic. I have a few ideas, but none that I have really decided on. I’m a personal trainer.

Michael: Okay, weightlifting and stuff?

Curtis: Right. So, I do that on the side, and I was thinking of coming up with a fitness product for that. I know there’s tons of them out there, but then again, there’s people out there. And, another one that I thought about not too long ago, less than a year ago, we were about to buy a new vehicle. I was going to buy my wife a new vehicle. So, I started researching that, and I came up with a lot of information, and ended up coming across a couple of sites. I can’t think of the sites, but they’re at home on my computer, but that helped me save about $10,000.

Michael: On your car?

Curtis: Right. I thought about putting together an information product on how to buy a new car and save money that way.

Michael: Those are both great ideas, and they have a mass appeal, and I know people have tried to make car buying secrets work. Here’s the thing with a product like that that appeal to the masses. It’s too general, and you’re going to have a hard time making that work. You’re better off finding a very niche oriented product.

Now, have you had some unique success in your weight training? Do you do heavy free weights or what?

Curtis: Yes, I do, but I train just about anybody in general population, but most of the people that I train are corporate individuals because I come across a lot of corporate individuals.

Michael: Do you have a unique training method that differs from what you’ve seen out there?

Curtis: I do. I came up with my own training method, and I’m actually testing it out on myself right now. It seems to be working pretty well.

Michael: What would you say is unique about it? Why have you done it your way? I’m sure you’ve seen a lot of other training methods.

Curtis: Well, what’s different about mine is the majority of your trainers concentrate on volume. They want you to work out two or three hours a day, five to six days a week. I pretty much condensed mine down to, instead of just so much the volume, I concentrate on the intensity which is the actual lifting part of the program. If your workout is intense enough, you’re stretching your body enough, you don’t have to work out three hours at a time.

Mine is 45 minutes, but for the normal person that just wants to lose weight, I can cut it down to 30 minutes a day, three days a week, and have them reach their goal depending on how hard they work.

Michael: Right, okay, and this would be an information product that they can buy on your special method?

Curtis: Right.

Michael: That’s an idea. There are a lot of weight loss systems, and the reason there is because 50 percent of the population is trying to lose weight at all times. So, it is a huge, hungry market. But, you really do have to have something special and something different that’s going to catch the attention of the potential prospect, and if you put together your system, you have lots and lots of great marketing out there to emulate and duplicate from infomercials you see on Saturday morning.

I’m not saying steal their copy, but the stuff you see on TV with the secrets with the big exercise ball and the Bowflex infomercials. Get yourself a tape recorder and just tape those while the infomercials going, and then just have that all written out. Look at the words and look how they start the infomercial out and you can come up with a pretty good promotion and just modify it to your little training routine. So, that’s doable if that’s what you’re in to.

What do you think you can sell something like that for?

Curtis: I don’t know. I’m not really sure.

Michael: You can get this stuff all over TV for $29. It’s just become such a mass marketed item, and there’s so many people doing it. It almost is becoming like a commodity unless you have something really, really specialized that no one has that you control a method that’s protected. You can’t get the profits. That’s why I tell people over and over again, if you’re looking for an information product or creating an information product, you need to create one for a market that has money and that’s used to spending a lot of money.

Creating an information product that teaches people how to make money allows you to charge up to ten times more than a product that actually provides a service. So, if I was to sell you an exercise program that’s going to show you how to lose weight and build muscle, three days a week, 30 minutes a day, I may be able to sell that to you for $25-$30-$40-$50, something like that.

If I showed you an offered you a business opportunity that could show you how to make $500 a day selling a product like that to others so it becomes a money making opportunity for you, and the product is the opportunity to sell, I could charge you $500 for that. Do you know what I’m saying?

Curtis: Yes.

Michael: I would tell you if you’re going to create an information product, only because if you’re going to show them a business opportunity that’s going to show them how to make money, you’re going to get a lot more money for your information product, and it’s going to take you the same amount of time in developing a product anyway. That’s why I sell and market a product that teaches people how to make money as a marketing consultant. I sell a product that teaches people how to buy a multi-million dollar business or how to buy a small mom and pop business.

That’s a business opportunity that once they learn how to do these things, puts money in their pocket. They’re money making opportunities. I sell people an information product that teaches people how to set up and establish joint venture deals, joint venture deal making. That’s a money making opportunity. That’s knowledge and information to show people how to put money in their pocket and provide for their family.

Because I sell these products, and it’s a lot of work putting them together, but I promise you the work and the effort in putting it together is worth it. Once it’s done, like all these products, and when I get sales and check my email and PayPal comes in and I have a subscription payment, and this is an all digital product. I just send them to the link, and I’m done, unless they return it. If they return it, I just cancel their order, and that’s it.

The same thing for my Art Hamel Project – I have an offer that I take all the risk away. So, I make it as juicy of an offer as possible where they risk nothing, and you’ve got to do that with your product. I would suggest you do that once you create something.

My offer on that particular product is all you’re going to do is pay for the shipping. I’ll mail it to you. You have 30 days to review the product. If you don’t like the product, you can return it and you’re card is not even billed. If I don’t hear from you, I charge your card. That’s taking all the risk away.

Now, you may get a higher percentage of returns, but you still would have never had the chance to get that product in people’s hands. Do you know what I mean?

Curtis: Yes.

Michael: So, number one, I would suggest definitely create and control meaning control the intellectual property, the copyright to your information product whether you interview people on subjects. Look at what I’m doing. You can talk on the phone. We’re talking right now, right?

Curtis: Right.

Michael: You can go get a digital tape recorder like I have, and you can create an information product so easy you wouldn’t even believe it. I’m creating one right now as we’re talking. Everytime I talk and do consulting with somebody, I’m on my best behavior. I want to give you my best effort, but once I turn the tape recorder off, I’ve got another product to sell. Over time, I’ll have 40 or 50 or 60 of these consultations, and I’ll package them up and I’ve got a great product, don’t I?

Curtis: Yes.

Michael: So, you can do the same thing, and you know I’m so into audio, and I think you like my audios. You probably listened to quite a bit of them.

Curtis: Yes.

Michael: People like audio. You can multitask. You can pop it into your CD player in your car, at home. It’s just easier to get the information delivered to somebody.

What I would recommend, if you create an information product, no matter what it is, get yourself a Sony Digital Recorder, and create your information product by just interviewing people. It’s so easy. You hire someone to do the transcripts. You’ve got the audio recording. You put them on CDs, put them in a little CD package, get all the audio, all the transcripts of the audio transcribed, put them in a three ring binder, and you’ve got a great product.

You can do this on anything. I was talking about the Food Channel, and I’ve got another information product I really want to put together. It has nothing to do with money making opportunities, and it goes a little bit against what I was telling you, but this is more for a fun project. I love barbequing, and on the Food Channel, they feature all the barbeque sauce contests and stuff.

Curtis: I watched one yesterday.

Michael: The one with KC Masterpiece?

Curtis: Yeah.

Michael: You can get the guide to all the people who entered in that contest. You have all their websites, all their names, you call them and you say, “I want to do an interview. I’m creating an information product on the world’s greatest barbeque sauce and how you do it and your secrets.” And, you interview these guys, interview 20 of the best ones. Tell them they can feature their restaurants or websites, all that, and barbeque nuts, man, wouldn’t you love to hear the secrets of all these barbeque owners?

Curtis: Yes, absolutely.

Michael: You could put this thing together, and if you want to do it, do it. It would be a fun product.

Curtis: That would be, and that’s a good product. That’s a good niche that you’re specializing in, people who barbeque.

Michael: Why don’t you do that? That would be fantastic. Just go search on Google and find barbeque cook-off. Type in “Barbeque Cook-off” and look for some of the contests because these guys travel all over the country competing. Or look on “Kansas City Barbeque Contest”. You’ll find all kinds of stuff, and then you call the people who run the contest, and then they’ll probably have a website, and you’ll probably have some of the exhibitors, people who are exhibiting.

When they run a contest or tradeshow for barbeque sauce or barbeque food, you can get the program guides from the previous years. In the program guides are all the exhibitors with their names, websites, phone numbers and everything. There’s you list, and then you just start calling them and you tell them you’re putting together a product called “World’s Greatest Barbeque Sauce”. “Would you like to be featured as one of the audio interviews for the product?”

You don’t pay them anything. When you get them on the phone, just like what I did, you just get a disclosure saying, “We’re going to be using this for an information product. You’ll be able to feature your website. You give us the rights to use your name in this audio recording and our product.” If you want to get more formal, which is more of a pain, you can get an agreement where they sign off on it. But, generally if you get their agreement over the phone you have it on recording, it’s good enough.

Curtis: Right, and they’re getting free publicity.

Michael: Yeah, that’s exactly right. I mean, do you think when I approach anybody to do an interview, once they go see my site, they’re going to turn me down?

Curtis: No.

Michael: No, it’s good for them. It’s good for everybody. Am I making it sound easy?

Curtis: Yes.

Michael: Then, it is easy. You said about five years ago your dad put together an information product on how to get government grants.

Curtis: Right.

Michael: I don’t know much about it. The first thing I think about that stuff is it’s a bunch of bull.

Curtis: It’s all stuff you can get from the government.

Michael: I’d stay away from that. You can do it. I think there are a lot of people, and I think it does have a little bit of a bad taste with it.

Curtis: That’s what I was thinking too, because it’s hard to get it over. We had a lot of information in there, but the information doesn’t do any good if it takes you fifteen years.

Michael: Yeah, it is. I would stay away from that. Do the barbeque thing. If you do the barbeque thing, and you do it right, I’ll consult with you as you do it. If you want to put this thing together, I’ll help you out the best I can. If you say, “Okay, what do I do?” I’ll walk you through the whole process on how to do it and what to do. If you put that together, maybe you can let me sell it as well. I mean, there could be twenty people selling the thing. I’d be willing to co-venture on something like that.

Curtis: Okay.

Michael: If you line up the interviews, I’ll do the interviews.

Curtis: Really?

Michael: They’re not going to be hour long interviews, but we could probably do 15-20 minutes on each guy. If you line it up, I’ll do that.

Curtis: Okay.

Michael: So, if you want to joint venture on something like that, here’s what I would do. You handle all the details. All I’m willing to do is offer my expertise, my consulting, and I will do the audio interviews with the owners. You have to line it up and set it up, get their okay, and say, “Mike, this guy’s ready to go.” We set the time. I call him. I do the interview. I’ll take care of the editing of the audio recording, and the final part of that.

You have to do all the detail, contacting the people, making the calls, inviting them to do the interview, lining it all up. If you do all that, I’ll do all the interviews. Once we have all the collection of interviews done, I’ll provide you masters of it, and just you and I will have the rights to that product. You can do what you want with, and I can do what I want with it. That’s getting the physical product together.

Now, as far as creating a promotion and stuff for it, we’ll just have to both do our own thing, but I wouldn’t mind sharing what I would do if I were you.

Curtis: Okay.

Michael: I’m just throwing ideas at you. Okay, let’s go to number three. You’re also interested in the pen manufacturing business, and I’m telling you, and I still tell people, this pen business is a hell of a business. It really is. Did you listen to the calls I was doing with that guy?

Curtis: Yes.

Michael: Okay, so you heard how I did that. That was pretty hard core, and that’s as hard as it gets if you’re doing direct selling. But, that 30 minutes or 40 minutes of calls with that guy brought him in initial orders of $400. You heard him calling back, saying, “Mike, remember that guy? They ordered 200. Then another guy ordered 200.” I haven’t talked to him in a while, but that’s just the first order.

I have accounts that are still ordering pens from me, almost nine, ten years later. I’ll tell you something else. I just had, and this was when I was making the red eye pens. That’s a dead business right now because of digital photography, and I don’t work it anymore because digital has just killed that business. I had a company who called me and ordered 7,000 red eye pens from me.

Curtis: Really?

Michael: Yes, 7,000 red eye pens. I make about 50 cents profit on each one, and I just finished that order. It just shipped out Friday. But, you just never know when the orders are going to come, but being able to control the manufacturing is the real asset in that, and you probably would’ve thought that you have to rely on a big old pen manufacturer. Until I figured out how to do it myself, you would, and they jack up the price.

The real value in this pen business is being able to manufacture these pens all from your home or your apartment right out back. You saw my little factory. It’s my backyard. So, we made 7,000 pens. It only took a couple of days of my nanny, and it’s a new nanny other than in the picture, who made these. Anyone can make these pens. It is very, very easy. All you’ve got to do is have all the supplies. No one can undercut you because you are the source, 17 cents a pen to make these things.

I just giving you the idea on the invisible ink pen because that’s a humongous market there. If you could think of a juice to put inside that pen, you’ve got a new product.

I’ve got a fingerprint pen. I’ve got the red eye pen. I’ve got the vanishing ink pen. I used to do a counterfeit money detector pen. I’ve had a pH testing pen which is a niche market. I was just at Home Depot. I just seen WD-40 came out with a pen.

I have on my other site, a scratch a zapper pen. It’s not one that I make, but you can make and there’s solutions that you can put inside that pen that eliminate or help improve the appearance of scratches in your sunglasses. You could do a furniture cover up pen. You know when people scratch their furniture? You could put a brown magic marker type ink to fill in scratches in dark oak furniture. It’s endless.

Curtis: Where do you come up with all the inks?

Michael: You’ll have a source of one of the largest ink manufacturers in the world, and the ink manufacturers are designed and they are there to do what? To sell inks, right?

Curtis: Yes.

Michael: So, when someone’s looking for stuff to put in their pen, the ink manufacturer has a whole list of all their inks, and you just order them just like you order anything else. If they don’t have it, their formulator, they can make it.

I had them custom make proprietary ink for me for my fingerprint pen which was a combination of a highlighter type ink and a color changing ink. They can make anything for you. All you’ve got to do is tell them what you want. That’s what they’re in business for.

So, you may be able to come up with an idea for a pen I haven’t even thought of, but the real value is being able to make them and control the manufacturing and being able to make them for so inexpensive. That puts you in what’s called a Toll Position. No one can go around you because no one else knows really how to make them except for me and a couple other people.

To answer your questions, how is everyone else doing with it? The damn truth is most people aren’t doing anything with them. It’s just human nature. Most people get excited about something, but they just don’t follow through, and that’s like anything.

The 20/80 rule – in any industry – real estate, insurance – you’ve got 20 percent of the people selling 80 percent of the real estate. Twenty percent of the people selling 80 percent of the insurance. Eight percent of the people selling 20 percent. That’s just the numbers.

So, some of my guys maybe doing something that I don’t know about, but at one time I solicited and looked for testimonials and stories, but I know what the pen business has done for me, and I’ve done very well with it. I’ve barely done anything especially with the invisible ink pen. I’ve done a few promotions, but nothing compared to what I could do with it or what you could do with it.

Curtis: Right. I know you had mentioned before that as soon as I listen to the first part of your interview on that, I had actually thought about the 99 cent store or the Dollar General stores. That was crazy.

Michael: No, you could work the liquidation business, just the business, and you’re talking volume right there. I haven’t done it. I just have too many other things going. Absolutely, you could do it.

So, I would push the invisible ink pen because it is a hard product that you give good volume and there is a lot of potential out there.

Now, I’ll give another tip if you want to do this invisible ink pen. These would be some instant orders. All you have to do is just act on it. Over the years, there’s been one competitor that I’ve had, and it’s a very large pen manufacturing company called Sanford. Have you heard of them?

Curtis: What’s it called?

Michael: Sanford, they’re worldwide. Sanford Pen, they’re a very large pen manufacturer, and they had a security marking pen and I have the name of it. I got this information because I had one of their distributors call me looking for pricing on an invisible ink marking pen because Sanford is pulling the pen. They’re discontinuing that product.

Now, you can go onto Google, and you could type Sanford Security Marker, and you’ll come up with pages of people who sell that invisible ink pen, and you know now, because I know and I’ve heard it right from one of their large distributors that Sanford will longer be carrying that product. You can introduce yourself, and let them know that you’re aware that Sanford is no longer carrying the invisible ink product and you’d like to introduce yourself because are a manufacturer of an invisible ink pen security mark, and are you going to be looking for another source for this product. You could be that source right there. That will be thousands of dollars worth of business for you, ongoing.

All these businesses who are buying Sanford markers have probably been buying them for a long time. All their customers are in place. You could solve a problem by them not having to go outside and look for this thing themselves. There’s an opportunity for you right there.

Now, I’ve talked enough. Do you have any other thoughts or any other questions?

Curtis: You’ve given me some good ideas especially that barbeque sauce.

Michael: That’d be fun.

Curtis: I think I might end up taking that on. I think I was watching because I was about to barbeque some chicken. I was the only person home yesterday. I had the house to myself. So, I was going to do a little barbeque.

Michael: Did you see on my site that smoker that I have? This thing’s awesome. If you read my bio up on my site, you’ll hear the whole story of how I got into this whole business. It had to do with this big blue barbeque smoker called a Kamado. You’ll see a picture of it if you go that section. Go to “My Bio”. You’ll see a big picture of this gorgeous smoker called a Kamado. It was when I was looking for a barbeque grill.

I had just moved into this house, and I was going to buy a traditional grill, and I went up to Barbeques Galore. I had all my money in my pocket, and I just wanted free delivery. They wouldn’t do it. I had picked out this nice stainless steel one. It was probably $1,700. I was ready to do it and they wouldn’t give me free delivery.

I walked out, and I did some more research and I found this Kamado. It’s kind of like that green egg. Have you ever seen these? You watch those barbeque shows and you see all the smoking contests. You may have seen them. They look like a big genie bottle, and they’re beautiful tile. So, that’s what I bought. It’s a smoker, and it’s awesome. I’ve had that thing for years.

I had the kids around. I didn’t see the whole thing because I had a lot of interruptions, but one thing I was interested in they were interviewing one guy who smokes the sauce. He puts the sauce in the smoker.

Curtis: Right.

Michael: That’s a hell of an idea.

Curtis: He put the pan in there, and as it would rotate around he was cooking the pork roast and the drippings went right down into the sauce.

Michael: I’m telling you. You call it “Barbeque Sauce Secrets”. You could private label it once you have all your recordings because I’m going to be interviewing the guys, I’m going to be talking to them about all kinds of stuff. Then, you private label the product.

Let’s say you have 25 recordings. In each recording you’re hearing from a real pit master. You tell them you’ll put the website on there or whatever, and when I do the interview, we design the interview where we’re talking about all the different subjects so we can niche it down.

I may talk about barbeque sauce. I may talk about smoking. I may talk about rubs. I may talk about chicken, pork, beef. I may talk about cole slaw. So, all these questions on all the subjects, once you’ve got the questionnaire, it can be the same thing for everybody.

So, then, when you have your masters, all 20 CDs, and you have the transcripts of each one, when you’re ready to package and market this thing, you’ve got fanatics on all these different issues – on the slaw, on the pork, on the chicken. These are all niches within the barbeque industry, right?

Curtis: Right.

Michael: So, you call it “Cole Slaw Secrets” “Pork Secrets” “Dry Rub Secrets” “Barbeque Sauce Secrets” “Barbeque Smoking Secrets” “Barbeque Rib Secrets” “Barbeque Chicken Secrets”. Do you know what I’m saying?

Curtis: Right.

Michael: Now, you have ten different products, don’t you?

Curtis: Right.

Michael: This is the same thing. You don’t want to sell how to save money on your car to everyone. It’s too hard, but niche it, and that’s what you’ve done. So, you’ve got the same product, but you can create different niches within the industry. That’s very specialized.

So, in your promotion you can say, “You’re going to hear from 20 of the top pitmasters how to smoke barbeque chicken, how to cook barbeque chicken.” Then, as a bonus, you’re going to learn about their favorite cole slaw recipe, and everything else becomes a bonus.

But, in your marketing, the focus is on that section. It will be a lot of fun. People are fanatics about food. It will be a fun, fun information product. It’s a large market.

Then, what you can do, all the guys you interviewed, what you can do is, you can give the storeowners the rights to the CD, of the audio recording, one of them. And, if you want to handle the duplicating for them you can say, “Okay, we did this great interview. I would like you to listen to it. Here it is. Here’s a great idea. Why don’t you give the CD to your customers? They’d love you for it. You’ll build a relationship with them. You’re telling them some of your secrets. You’re giving them value.”

At the end of the CD, what do you have? You have a promotion. “If you like this recording from Joe’s Barbeque, how would you like to hear from 19 of the other greatest pitmasters in Kansas City or in the United States?” Then, you have an offer to sell the entire set to the customers.

So, then every restaurant that you interviewed is giving out their CD. They love it because they got themselves a CD and you did it all for them, and their ego’s involved and they’re giving some of their secrets, and they’re not worried about their customers stealing their ideas. Then, all their customers can potentially become your customers. You can even make a little money on the CD duplication. You’ve just got to put it all together for them. That will be a lot of fun.

Curtis: Right. I wonder if you could break it down somehow and say do one with just one of your big barbeque capitals. You’ve got Kansas City and Memphis.

Michael: Absolutely. You can do it. So, let’s say you want to break down and do Kansas City. So, some people would just think Kansas City barbeque is the best especially the locals. So, you can call it “Kansas City Barbeque Pitmaster’s Secrets”, and then you niche it even more by location, absolutely.

Once you billed the interviews, you can mix and match them. You can call them “Deep South Barbeque Secrets”, “National United States Barbeque Secrets”, “South of the Border Barbeque Secrets” whatever. As you build your content, it’s just like with all my audio recordings.

I’ve got 150 hours of audio up on the site right now, but I can take all these audio recordings and I can niche them. So, the one we’re talking, can be part of a collection with my other consultations of people called, “Consulting Secrets”. But, at the same time, I’m consulting with you and giving you ideas, but the same recording could be part of a product called, “Information Product Secrets” how to develop an information products.

Curtis: You can even put it in the joint ventures.

Michael: Absolutely, so I’ll relate it. This is also somewhat of an education on how to set up joint venture, your joint venture partners being the people that you’re going to be interviewing or you and I doing it together or what have you. So, it can all be niched under different topics.

I can take my menu of all my audio recordings. I know what they’re about, and I know what subjects are covered, and I can create and package different products from them. With 150 hours of audio, I can get an infinite number of different products and topics. I’ve started segmenting my site doing that. I don’t know if you saw all the recordings on copywriting, or all the recordings on joint venture, or all the recordings on business buying. This recording will be part of one on just me doing consults with people. So, it’s a great way to go.

And, another thing with audio, it’s just now with all the big search engines, all the search engines are going to start to picking up – I think it’s the ICD tags or the mp3. With an mp3 file, and I had guy call me on this, and it was just something I new about and I wasn’t aware of it. With portable mp3 players, you know when you put a CD in your CD Rom, or if you have a car CD player, and you put it in there and you see the little title of what you’re putting in there flash across?

Curtis: Right.

Michael: That’s a tag. There’s code that is embedded in the actual mp3 file, and also when people put their mp3s and they download digital files onto an iPod. You can sort your music. You have the title. You have the artist, and then there’s additional information that when you have an mp3 file up on your website, the search engines start picking it up.

So, imagine if you had twenty or thirty of your audio recordings on barbeque secrets up online, and you’ve got millions of people looking for barbeque secrets. Now, Yahoo and Google when you search barbeque sauce, they’re going to give you the answers to that search, but they’re going to give it to you on their main webpages, but there also is going to be a tab for mp3 audio and video.

By having those tags, keywords within that little ID tag, you’re going to dominate the results for audio searches. Do you see?

Curtis: Sure.

Michael: And, it’s going to be easier to dominate because the websites can’t search the actual audio portion. All they can go by is what’s on the tags on your files. This is the strategy I’m going to with all my audio recordings. I think it’s going to be fantastic.

So, I’ve given you a lot of ideas. You’ve got two kids?

Curtis: Actually, I have my daughter I had before I was married, and then my wife has a daughter. One of them just turned five, and one of them will be five in November.

Michael: You’ve been there a month. How are you liking it? Do you want to get out of there? You’ve got to stick with it for a while.

Curtis: Oh yeah, I’m going to stick with it for a while, but my main goal is to get out of there completely. That’s been my goal along. I just haven’t put anything into action yet. So, that’s what I’m trying to do now. Actually, with my new job, I want to be able to get more free time. I was working six to six at my other job. So, I didn’t have a lot of time to do anything.

Michael: What are your hours now?

Curtis: Nine to five.

Michael: So, you’re going to have to burn the midnight oil when everyone’s sleeping. That’s when I do it. That’s one time I do it. During the day, there’s just too many interruptions and regular day to day stuff. But, everyone’s asleep that’s when you can get it done. It’s not hard to do. You just got to do it. Take it step by step.

I’ll send you this recording. You can relisten to it again and take some notes and put a plan together. But, the barbeque idea is one idea, but the same method can apply for anything. Do you know what I mean?

Curtis: Right.

Michael: Your interviews don’t have to be that great. They don’t have to be as good as mine. Don’t think that you can’t do it, because all you’ve got to do is just ask the questions. I’m talking a lot right now, but when I’m interviewing, you’ve listened to some of my recordings, a lot of it you don’t hear me talking. You just hear my little questions. I edit out a lot of my stuff. When I start trying to add stuff to the interview, I usually end up taking it out.

Curtis: What about when you talk to the people like that who have an ego about what they’re doing and they’re good at what they do?

Michael: They’re not going to let you talk anyway.

Curtis: Right.

Michael: I’ll tell you. People will go into a trance talking about themselves because a guy who owns a barbeque restaurant, I know he may have a good time, but it’s generally a lot of work. But, if someone’s interested really in his business and his secrets and his sauce, that’s his love. He’ll talk to you about that and he’ll tell you all his secrets. He loves this stuff, and there’s probably not too many people in his life who really want to know or who are interested in that, not even his wife or kids or whatever.

So, they’ll tell you all about it. They’re very willing to tell you about it.

Curtis: I appreciate all the information you’re giving me. That’s a good idea about the barbeque sauce. I’ll start looking into that and see if I can get this stuff together.

Michael: You should. Do it. Let me know if you need any help on it.

Curtis: Okay.

Michael: I’ll get you this recording, okay? You can relisten to it, and then, is there anything in here that you wouldn’t want up online?

Curtis: No, not that I can think of. I don’t think anybody’s going to take it and run with it.

Michael: No, that’s the thing. Ideas are a dime a dozen. It’s the people who do it.

Curtis: No, I don’t mind anything being up there. Oh, really quick, I wanted to ask you about this. I have planned on starting this. I’ve seen those videos as far as your training videos like Boot Camp stuff. I’m going to try selling some of those around you in the city around Northwest Arkansas area.

Michael: Okay, some Boot Camp videos for exercise?

Curtis: Well, not so much the videos which that is a way to go, too. I mean just the actual boot camp classes. I have an outdoor camp.

Michael: For exercise?

Curtis: Right, and I also thought that I could record some of those and use those as a product.

Michael: Yeah, if you ran one, would it be an outside thing?

Curtis: Right.

Michael: So, you’re taking people through a boot camp. Yeah, look in the Yellow Pages for wedding videographer and get him to videotape your boot camp, absolutely. Do it once and get it on video. Don’t do anything unless you get it on video or audio, then it becomes a product you can use. You only have to do a couple of them. Then, you can sell the product.

You want to take yourself out of the business. You don’t want to be reliant on your business. You don’t want to have to show up. You want to be able to have your business on a videotape or an audiotape.

Right now, as we’re talking, there’s probably fifty people listening to my recordings all over the world right now. That’s leverage. I’m on the phone with you, but I’m creating a product, too.

So, all your time should be with the plan that you’re building a business that you don’t have to be there. So, you can be with your wife and your kids and 50-80 percent of your time should be free time where you do not have to work. You don’t have to show up.

To run the business, you should be using subcontractors. So, once you have your product finished, your video product, your audio product, it’s all online. You can an assistant to handle all the details – the orders, and sending people to the link, or shipping out the product. It all can be farmed out, and there’s people who are in place to do that. You subcontract it all out.

Then, you just go around, if you want, and just do the promoting. The margins are enormous on information. What does it cost you to put together 20 CDs and a three ring binder with transcripts? $25 for something you can sell for three or four or five hundred.

Curtis: Right.

Michael: It’s all margins. All right?

Curtis: All right.

Michael: All right Curtis, have a great week.

Curtis: All right.

Michael: Talk to you later.



Curtis: This is Curtis.

Michael: Hey, Curtis. Mike Senoff here.

Curtis: How are you?

Michael: Good. I got your emails yesterday. Tell me what you’ve done so far since we talked.

Curtis: Well, yesterday I had a lot to do at work so I didn’t call anybody, but I have emailed Ray Lipke.

Michael: All right. So, you’ve heard of him?

Curtis: Well, I hadn’t until I started.

Michael: So, you searched around.

Curtis: Yeah, he seems to be pretty big. He has a big website, his own products, stuff like that. They call him “Dr. Barbeque”. Have you ever heard of him?

Michael: No, I haven’t.

Curtis: Okay, well, he was one of the bigger guys that I had found. He emailed me back and said that I could call him anytime. He gave me his phone number.

Michael: All right. What did you say in your email?

Curtis: In the email, I just told him that I was – it was attention to contact the top barbeque masters around the country to see if they would be willing to do a short phone interview for a barbeque masters website that I’m thinking about putting together.

Michael: Okay, great. Here’s what you need to do. Here’s your homework. Before I call these guys or before you call these guys, you can do this stuff yourself. You really have the ability to do this. This is not hard.

We need a list of topics and questions that are important to the public out there about barbeque. There’s a couple ideas on how you can put this together. If you go to Amazon.com, and go search “Pitmasters” or “Barbeque Ribs” or books related to barbeque, there’s also a series called Idiot’s Guide. You know, like the Idiot’s Guide to Computer, the Idiot’s Guide to this. They’re yellow books and there’s some orange ones. Do you know what I’m saying?

Curtis: Right.

Michael: Okay, if you go on to Amazon, have you ever looked for books on Amazon?

Curtis: No.

Michael: Okay, well, they allow you to look inside the book. So, you’ll do a search on the subject “barbeque”, look for some good books on barbeque that are done by some real experts or what have you. First check the Idiot’s Guide to Barbeque or Barbeque for Dummies. Then, you’ll see the book, and then you’ll see this little character with his hands wrapped around the book like peaking over the edge, and it will say, “Look inside”. You can click on the book and it allows you to read the front cover, the inside cover, the table of contents.

So, that table of contents has been put together by that publisher and the editor of the most important things that they believe their readers want to hear about barbeque. So, you’re going to have all the topics that I’m going to talk about with these pitmasters.

Now, we’re not going to have time to talk about all of them, but having a nice list in an organized fashion will give me the ability to scan it and be able to have something to talk about.

So, what I want to do is as I’m talking to these guys, and as we talk to additional barbeque pitmasters, we want to find the most important secrets that people want to talk about related to barbeque. But, I need an extensive outline and look at a couple of them, and one that looks like it’s real organized and it really hits on some of the hot buttons of all the people who love barbeque out there like you and I and put that together for me.

So, it’s just a memory jogger in an organized fashion. Then, out of that, when I do the interview, I’ll kind of pick out the best things that I want to talk about with these guys. Do you see?

Curtis: Sure.

Michael: And, then it’s going to be a template for when I do an interview with someone. So, let’s say if we have 20 different interviews, and let’s say we decide to make them 15-20 minutes a piece. We’ll ask these guys the same question, so the listener can compare all the answers with all the different pitmasters. Does that make sense?

Curtis: Sure.

Michael: That’s one way. Another way, we want to appeal to people like us. You’ve got to ask yourself, what do you want to know about barbeques? But, you can also do some more research by going to a forum. So, you’ll see Q&A. Type in Question and Answers, Barbequers. Some of that associations, did you see that site I sent you to with all the associations?

Curtis: Yeah, I seen it and I seen a couple others, and actually found some forums.

Michael: Okay, great. So, find out what are people asking about in forums? What are their main questions? These are the questions we want to ask from the pitmasters for their audio interviews. So, you need to get that outline to me, have it typed up or have someone else type it. It takes time because you won’t be able to copy and paste it out of Amazon.com.

If you find a book on Amazon, you may be able to search it online, and you may find someone else who’s selling it with the whole outline online and you can just copy and paste it, but this is real important.

So, if I have an outline, I have an idea of what questions to ask.

Curtis: Okay, Mark West was another guy I got a hold of, and he’s going to be out of town. He’s part of Natural Born Grillers day one.

Michael: You know what? Do you use Excel?

Curtis: Yes.

Michael: You just need to make a table and put these contacts’ names in there, and some notes, and their phone numbers to contact them with. So, you need to keep an ongoing list of people. You’re not going to have a hard time finding people to talk to you. I’m telling you. That is just not going to be the issue. We can get on the phone one day, and we can have people ready to go.

What would be nice is if you could find an exhibitor list at a contest like at that forum. So, at that forum, you can have all the associations that put on the contests. If you contact one of those associations and find out which one puts on the biggest and the best barbeque contest with all the different categories, and see if they have a program guide, then, we’ll just have a whole catalogue of all the pitmasters who enter these contests. You’ll have restaurants and you’ll have all kinds of experts right there, and then you don’t have to kind of piecemeal it and search all over in all different sites to get somebody.

Getting someone to do the interviews is not going to be your problem. There’s really no problem at all, but if you can get that directory which is just like the telephone book of the best barbeque experts, or if you can get a list of the best barbeque restaurants with their owners. That stuff is out there. You know who to talk to? You talk to your associations.

Call those associations on that site and tell them what you’re looking to do. A list of all the people who enter some of the greatest barbeque contests around – if you can get me that brochure, or that list of those people, I’m good to go.

Curtis: Okay.

Michael: You’ll have the restaurateurs, the owners, just like you see on Roker on the Road when he’s at all the barbeque contests. You have Paul Kevin and the Pink Ladies, and that’s what we want, and then contact information or at least a website, ideally with the phone numbers. This stuff is in there.

Have you ever been to a tradeshow?

Curtis: No.

Michael: You know what a tradeshow is though right?

Curtis: Right.

Michael: It’s like that. I mean, when people go to a tradeshow they pay money to get into the, and when they pay money, they get a brochure of all the exhibitors and where they’re located and the names and the numbers and the contact information. So, these associations or the people who sponsor these tradeshows, they’re an association. They’re the experts on all this stuff. They have all this stuff. All you’ve got to do is call them. All right?

Curtis: All right.

Michael: All right, get back with me. Bye.

Here’s a tip. If you’re listening to these audio recordings in mp3, here’s a way where you can listen through the content twice as fast and still be able to absorb all the information. What you want to do is you want to go to a website and download a free trial of Goldwave.com. Now this is an audio file editor, and one of the features on this editor is it allows you to play the audio recordings at any speed you want. So, you can have it speed up to where it sounds like you’re listening the Chipmunks where they’re voices are real high, but I do a lot of editing of audio recordings, and I find when I’m doing the editing, you’re still able to listen to audio content about twice the speed of normal language. It takes a little bit of practice, but you can fly through audio content. So, if you like to learn by audio, and you want to listen to content, and you don’t mind listening to the different higher pitched voice, it’s a very effective way of getting through content twice as fast.

That’s the end of this interview with Curtis. I hope it’s been helpful. Now, go out and make some barbeque. Enjoy!

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