Meet an enterprising young man named Jamell who happened upon my site while he was researching marketing information on the Internet. Since finding site, www.HardToFindSeminars.com with all of its great, free content, he has been a avid listener and learner of the material that I provide.

Although he started his career in retail sales, Jamell was always drawn to the idea of entrepreneurship. He had been in and out of various businesses for about five years including MLM’s, selling other people’s products, and real estate. You will hear why he abandoned these endeavors when he made the realization that helping people to maximize their own potential was his passion – helping people start their own businesses and make money.

At the time Jamell contacted me, he was looking into the idea of private labeling either a vitamin or weight loss product. He has two partners in this endeavor, both of whom are life long friends of his.

As we discuss his partnership, Jamell confided that neither of his friends were pulling their weight in making this product a reality. Listen to my advice about how to graciously end this partnership while still maintaining the friendship and all of the reasons for doing so.

Back to the product: Jamell had found company that makes a vitamin that he would like to private label. However, you can really get this vitamin anywhere. My advice is not to pursue this venture. Your product must be unique. Additionally, you must think of the overhead you would need in terms of warehousing, shipping, order taking, returns, etc. How much would Jamell really make on every sale?

My ultimate advice was for Jamell to create and market an Information Product that he would totally control. Actually, he had already thought about this. He had several good ideas that you will hear in the audio. However, he was always slowed down by the technical aspects of Information Product development and marketing on the Internet.

It was then that I told Jamell about my newest product entitled How to Turn Your $28 Book into a $3900 Information Product. This new information product is totally risk-free in that the customer pays nothing when he downloads the product and is not charged until after 30 days. Any time during the free trial, if the customer doesn’t like the product, he can contact me and will not be charged. I personally guarantee that with this new system, you will create an Information Product worth from $97 to $497 that is designed to sell like hotcakes!

For those people who have an idea but don’t want to actually create the Information Product themselves, I now offer my Product Creation Package. I will create your Information Product as well as a free Internet Audio Infomercial which will be a hard-hitting recording designed to sell your product and can be put on a web site.

I know that Jamell is thinking about either of these products as ways to make his dreams a reality. If you would like more information on How to Turn Your $28 Book into a $3900 Information Product or the Product Creation Package.

Michael: Off the top of your head, who are some of the most famous TV personalities you can think of? Just name one, the first one that comes into your head.

Jamell: Oprah.

Michael: Anyone else?

Jamell: Doctor Phil.

Michael: Oprah is probably one of the most powerful women in history.

Jamell: Yes.

Michael: What does she do?

Jamell: Interview people.

Michael: What did Johnny Carson do?

Jamell: Interview people.

Michael: What does Ted Kopple do?

Jamell: Interview people.

Michael: What does Heraldo do?

Jamell: Interview people. Larry King.

Michael: What does Larry King do?

Jamell: Interview people.

Michael: Are they experts?



[MUSIC]

Michael: Hi, this is Michael Senoff with www.hardtofindseminars.com. Here is another Flash consult with a gentleman named Jamell. Jamell has a passion to be in the information products business and he also has a passion for teaching others on how to grow their business and how to succeed in life. In this consultation, Jamell asked me a series of questions and my opinion about some of the ideas he has for starting a business selling a nutritional type product. You’ll hear me sway him away from this and to look at the vast opportunities in creating and developing an information product that he controls. This call is 55 minutes and I’m sure if you’ve ever considered controlling and having your own product and want to know how to set it up and how to get going on it, this consultation will be extremely helpful. Let’s get going.

Michael: tell me from the heart, your whole situation and I’ll help you out the best I can. I’ll give you all the best ideas I have.

Jamell: Okay.

Michael: I may not be able to help you out at all, but I’ll try.

Jamell: That’s okay.

Michael: Let’s start from the beginning. Just tell me, how did you hear about www.hardtofindseminars.com . Do you remember?

Jamell: Basically what I was doing was I did some research a while back on marketing, just in general. I knew that entrepreneurship was what I wanted to do, but I also knew that I needed a master marketing. So, I started doing some research on Dan Kennedy and Jay Abraham and some other guys and found your website. I saw all the great stuff and basically totally forgot that I was looking for them and just started listening to a lot of the free audio recordings, which are awesome by the way. It’s taught me a lot. And that’s pretty much how I became familiar with you. I’ve been listening to a lot of your stuff over the last few months. It’s helped me out tremendously.

Michael: Tell me, what do you think is powerful from audio, just from your experience with some of the audio recordings on my site compared to maybe Dan Kennedy books or reading or video, any feedback on that?

Jamell: I enjoy reading, but me personally because I do so much driving, I learned best, or at least maybe because of what I’ve become accustomed to, I love to have everything on audio. Not only that, but because I rewind, fast forward. I can go back to exactly what it is that I need to hear. It’s so much easier. It is for me, anyway, because I’m always in the car.

Michael: Walk me through a process from how you get that audio into your car. So, give me an example, like you go to my site and you’ll search for a recording. Tell me the steps that you go through from the time you’re on the Internet all the way to getting and playing something in your car while you’re driving.

Jamell: Actually I call up a buddy of mine, what I’ll do is download it from the MP3 file to the desktop usually and then what we’ll do is we’ll burn like a few clips onto a disk. What I’ve done is I’ve label and I categorize all the CDs, like if they’re copyright and I have a few copyright clips on there, products, services, consulting; I have them all categorized so I know exactly what I’m listening to when I put them in there.

Michael: How many do you have in there?

Jamell: Probably 10-12 difference CDs right now.

Michael: How often are you in the car?

Jamell: In the morning, probably for about an hour with having to drop my son off and everything. Probably another hour in the evenings and then just everything that I do. Probably over a week’s time, probably anywhere from seven to ten hours.

Michael: So, you can blow through these recordings?

Jamell: I do. I go through a lot of stuff and then what I’ll do a lot of times is I listen to it once and then I’ll go back and then the second time around is when I actually…like when I’m at home after I put my son to bed, I’ll listen to them on my CD player and then I’ll start to actually take notes and see what I can catch the second time around.

Michael: Do you always learn from the second time around?

Jamell: I do. The third, fourth, fifth, sixth time…

Michael: I know. Isn’t it amazing?

Jamell: It is. It really is. I guess it’s basically when you’re ready to capture or receive that next thing, it finally shows up and you say wow I never caught that before and this is like the fifth time I’ve listened to it.

Michael: Where do you work now? Are you at Nordstrom’s?

Jamell: Yes.

Michael: Are you in sales?

Jamell: Yes. How I got here is I worked for GNC retail. For about three years I was a manager there. Things were going okay, but I just wanted to change, so I came here. Initially I was going to go into sales, but came back here and actually I’m working in the security department now. And it works out really good for me because I have three days off a week, so I can spend some time with my son.

Michael: How many kids to you have, one son?

Jamell: I’ve got one son and I’ve actually got a daughter on the way in May.

Michael: Congratulations. How old is your son?

Jamell: He’ll be two on the 23rd.

Michael: Do you have him in daycare?

Jamell: Yes I do. Hate it.

Michael: You hate the daycare?

Jamell: I do.

Michael: Because you’ve got to work. What about the days you’re off? Does he go to daycare five days?

Jamell: No, he’s there four days.

Michael: He’s two. Does he not like it?

Jamell: No, I mean he likes the kids that he’s with. My wife’s best friend’s mother, she has her own daycare business. He’s really close with her kids and everything. I mean yes he enjoys it, but I just can tell that he misses a lot.

Michael: And your wife works?

Jamell: Yes. She does. She actually is getting her degree in nurse practitioner.

Michael: It would be nice, though, to be home and doing a business from home while your daughter’s there.

Jamell: Exactly.

Michael: That’s the one thing. I’ve got two kids. I’ve got a six and a half year old and I’ve got a three and half year old. I mean thankfully I got into the entrepreneur stuff way before I got married and everything, so I had a head start. It could be hard when you go from a job into it because it’s not always easy. Sometimes it takes years, but one of the greatest things is I’m home with the kids.

Jamell: I’ve been in and out of different business entrepreneurship. I did start at 26, so I’ve been doing it for about five years in and out of various different businesses. Some things I’ve made a little money in. Some things I haven’t. So, I’ve been learning the last five years. I just still haven’t gotten it all together as far as the one thing that really takes me to where I want to be.

Michael: Let’s talk about some of these experiences over the last five or six years that you got involved with them. What was the first thing you got involved in?

Jamell: The first thing was probably network marketing.

Michael: Which company where you with?

Jamell: My first company was ACN, the telecommunications company. Did pretty decent with it, but not as well as I wanted to and I moved into something that I was more familiar with that I actually had a little bit more passion about, which was nutrition and all of that. And I moved on to Usauna and that was about four years ago.

Michael: What did you not like about network marketing?

Jamell: The fact that there were very few people like me. In a lot of cases, it was even friends that I was really close with that talked a good game, but when it all came down to getting the work, it was like I was standing in the cold by myself. It was really hard to deal with. I mean I went past that and still do some things in marketing and I do pretty well. But probably that and also just the way the structure of the payment is set up, I didn’t like at all either…at least with that particular company.

Michael: Were you ever able to make really anything significant from it?

Jamell: Nothing significant, no…a couple hundred dollars here, $300 there.

Michael: It’s a tough road to go. It’s like direct sales. You’re either selling, selling, selling to get an opportunity or you’re selling product.

Jamell: Right.

Michael: Now, on that note, network marketing…have you ever heard of a guy named Glenn Turner?

Jamell: I listened to the audio with him.

Michael: What did you think of that?

Jamell: It was very inspirational. I mean it was awesome. I’ve actually recommended quite a few of my friends to listen to it.

Michael: I just got the video a couple of days ago. I ordered some videos from his site. This guy…you should see this video. It’s just a video of him in his prime talking to the crowd. He was a hell of a speaker. The whole thing is was he a conman or was he a saint, but it is really fascinating. I just on and ordered three more audiotapes. One called Dare To Be Great…I forgot what the other two are called, but I can’t wait to get them and I’d love to get some of his content up on my site. I’m going to call him back and see if I can do that. But it’s fantastic. This guy was like Tony Robbins of the 70s and 80s.

Jamell: It truly is fascinating to hear people like that being able to do what they do.

Michael: So, you did multi-level marketing…any other opportunities after that, over those five years?

Jamell: I did a little bit in real estate and started to have some success with it, but basically came to find that a lot of what was going on was my mindset wasn’t in the right place. What I mean by that is I was just chasing the money. I wasn’t really actually evaluating what do I truly, truly have a passion for. It was money that I was chasing. I’m appreciative that I did look into entrepreneurship when I did because over the years that’s the one thing that I finally came to realization with and that I finally learned it so much more than money. And I’ve learned that. Once I did that and once you have that passion, all of those other things come together. It’s starting to come together for me know.

Michael: What do you think you want to do now? What do you think your passion is here now?

Jamell: My main passion honestly is people. And what I mean by that is helping people maximize their potential; whatever that may be. But basically just helping them get to a point to where they reach their highest goals and their achievements. Basically bringing the best out of them because there’s just something that I have…I am truly fascinated with, not only just people, but how the mind works, as well. How some people reach the positions and the statuses they do and others don’t and what separates them; a lot of those things. So, honestly, it’s people. I really love people and I really just want to help people just be the best that they can be. And then, of course, also provide a great awesome living for my family and my friends.

Michael: We were talking a little bit yesterday about you had kind of come to the realization that developing and controlling your own product was something important rather than marketing other’s products.

Jamell: Right.

Michael: Tell me how that all came about.

Jamell: When I really started to look at the network marketing industry and really looking at how much on a retail sale you’re going to make per product and when I actually saw that, it was very small. For instance, I had a guy join up who spent over $100 with me and I only got $2.77 from what he spent. I’m like this is crazy. I could go find a product, private label it…and I got that idea from one of your calls that you did with a guy down in Florida somewhere. And when I saw that I could private label a product for maybe $2 or $3 a bottle…$6, $7…whatever the case will be and if I sold $100, that’s like $80 to $90 for every sale I make. That really just got my…I am losing a lot of money selling these products for someone else and I’m not putting in any more or any less work if I sell my own versus selling there’s, but I’m going to make more money. So, it only made sense to me. Why make $2.77 off a $100 plus sale when I can make $70 to $80 off the same sale just selling my own private label.

Michael: Right. Now, let me ask you this. The nutrition products, you worked with GNC, tell me how that experience influenced you into deciding to get into a nutritional type product. Did that have some influence?

Jamell: Previous to working there, I’d basically got into amateur bodybuilding. A friend of my introduced me and it was just something I did in college…it started in my freshman year at college. I was actually going to school to play football and I got hurt. I just needed to do something to kind of keep that competitive edge and just as a way to pass time. And I got into bodybuilding and from I just really became intrigued with the nutrition and the just the health industry. And I work for GNC for a few years and the main reason why I did it was I had a passion for it, but it was also to get some experience in sales, working with people face-to-face, and all of those things. That had a lot to do with it, but I really looked at the fact that I had a lot of experience and knowledge in it. That played a big role in me deciding to possibly label my own product.

Michael: Did you take any personal supplements when you were doing bodybuilding?

Jamell: Yes. I still do.

Michael: So, you want to private label your own thing. Do you have any idea of what kind of product or more importantly, what’s the most important thing is what market are we going after, weight loss…any idea on the market you want to sell to first because that’s a real important consideration?

Jamell: I’m actually partnered up with another couple of guys and what I’ve explained to them is number one, you can't just develop a product based on what you feel the market needs. You have to pretty much develop a product based on what the market wants. And what I mean by that…now, true enough if you’re a great marketer, they always say if you can market you can sell anything…but I’m a firm believer in being a great marketer also means you know your market. And knowing the market, that’s going to basically help us establish exactly what we should be getting after. And looking at the market right now, it’s going to be something in the weight loss. There’s a company that we’ve been looking at that has a great vitamin…a liquid multiple vitamin…and it’s one of the best I’ve honestly ever seen. But at the same time, there’s also a huge need right now for the weight loss industry and the reason why is because people…we live in a society where they want to see results right now. And I told those guys, I said I understand most cases that’s going to be a higher one as far as a weight loss product over a vitamin because it creates results, it creates something in the market where they can actually see what’s going on right now where a vitamin, in most cases, it really doesn’t do that. A vitamin is just something over time you may notice some of the differences and things like that, but it’s not something where they can say, in most cases, I’ve noticed this change, that change. Every now and then you may get that, but for the most part, it’s just something that you take for maintenance.

Michael: I want to just regress for a second because I heard you say something and I want to definitely talk about it because I think it’s important to talk about before we go back into the market. And you said you’re going to have two partners with this. Tell me why do you want two partners? What do expect the partners to do and do they have your drive or are you going to fall into the same trap you did with the MLM?

Jamell: Well, they’re both very close friends of mine. We’ve grown up together since like seventh grade. It was my idea. Mainly I guess it’s just because…like I said before, I really care about people and I want to see these guys succeed. What I expect out of them is at least to meet me half way. I guess because I realize everyone is different, they may not have…and I’m probably wrong for thinking this way and I probably should actually expect this of people, but I have the same drive that I do. And what I mean by that is…I told you before…I have a son and a daughter on the way, but I still find so much time, but it’s two or three in the morning to do research and I’m looking at all these things. One thing I’ve noticed is I find myself calling these guys, giving them updates on everything that I found through the research, so the communication isn’t both ways. I’m the one that’s getting on these guys and saying hey this is what we need to have done. I don’t want to be sitting here like I’m standing in concrete. I’m ready to get moving. So, I mean I do feel kind of like I’m the one that’s always pushing the envelope. So, I guess in that sense, I kind of feel like when are these guys going to get off the ball and be calling me up and saying this is what I’ve found, this is what we’ve got done. It can get discouraging…

Michael: I’d give that some consideration. I’m sure you want them…you know you’re going to be successful and I’m sure you want to bring them along for the ride. I’ll give you my best advice. I wouldn’t do it. I’d just say, look guys I’ve thought about this; you’re two of my dearest friends. I don’t want to get involved…you guys…it’s not in your heart and I certainly don’t want to do anything to jeopardize our friendship and I thought about this long and hard and I think that our friendship is more important than any crazy business venture I’ve got. And after thinking about that, I think I’m just going to…if I even do this, I’m going to go it alone. Break the ties and just keep your friendship and you can keep them abreast, but I would do your own thing because you’re going to get frustrated. You’re going to be doing all the work. It’s your passion, not theirs. You want to bring them for the ride…and you can keep them abreast. You don’t even have to say anything. If you start making a bunch of money, you may not want to tell them about it because you’re going to feel bad that they’re not and you are and you don’t want to jeopardize it. Just keep it quiet. No one has to know your business. You can do your things at three in the morning and you’re doing it for your family. Why share the profits with two people who don’t have it in their heart when you can share each one of those profits with your son or your daughter for their college education because you’re the guy who is going to be doing it all…I’m telling you.

Jamell: I called my friend up last night. I just got to thinking about other ways to market it and I came up with what I thought was probably a good way to test the market…and we’ll get into that…to see if the product that I was going to initially go with worked and I think it’s a great idea because it basically would be low cost to me. If it didn’t work, I don’t lose my shirt and I came up with it. And I was just feeling like I’m the one that’s doing all the brainstorming and I’m coming up with all these different ideas, but then I’m not getting any feedback like hey we need to get this out there.

Michael: I’m tell you, it’s going to be a very smart move. You need to get out of that commitment about the partnership. And you know what, they’re going to probably be relieved. Do you think it would jeopardize your friendship?

Jamell: I don’t know. It could because I’ve known them so long.

Michael: If you called them and stopped talking about the business ventures and stuff and talked about other stuff, I mean are they going to be saying hey what’s going on with the business.

Jamell: It’s funny. I kind of thought about that last week, like if I didn’t say anything about it, I wonder how long it would go before eventually it would be forgotten.

Michael: Yes, and then when they bring something up just say I’m just a little burned out right now and I don’t know if I’m going to do much with it right now. Just get out of it. I know you made a commitment to them or just tell them up front like what I just told you.

Jamell: Right.

Michael: If they’re really your good friends, I mean they’re going to understand and they’re probably going to be relieved that they don’t have to mess with it. And then quietly do your own thing and you absolutely need to keep control because partnership, especially when you’ve got three, most of them are going to break up. You’ve built a good business and you’ve got fighting in between you guys, it’s going to jeopardize your friendship and it could jeopardize any business that you’ve built up. Plus, once you learn how to do this automatically and you have systems in place, there’s no need for partners. You should keep all the money. That’s my philosophy. I think you really should do that. I really thing you should do that first. Get started where you are in control. Don’t make the mistake of trying to drag someone along because odds are it’s going to dissolve and business and friends, in many aspects, don’t mix. Money and friends don’t mix. You should be paid for your efforts. You’re going to get resentful doing all the work and if you start making money and splitting all that money up to two people who aren’t interested like you are. You’re doing everything. By the time you split it up three ways, there isn’t much left for you or any of you guys. To make this work, if you’re selling a product, there’s only so much margin in a health product that you’ve got to keep all of it to yourself to really survive. That money has got to be poured back into the business. These guys may expect checks going in their pocket, but it’s all got to stay in the business.

Jamell: That makes sense.

Michael: That’s my fatherly advice for that.

Jamell: I appreciate it.

Michael: So, back to the product. You said you had an idea for a product. What specific product was it that you were talking to your buddy about?

Jamell: There’s a company and actually there’s quite a few private label companies that I found. Some didn’t meet what I was looking for, others did. I found one company in particular that makes a vitamin. When compared to a lot of the others I’ve actually used myself as the vitamins of others I’ve seen in the market, it compares to a lot of them and actually is, at least on paper, superior than most. My only concern with it right now is the fact that it is just a vitamin and even though it’s great and it has all of these awesome things in it, you can go just about anywhere to get one.

Michael: When you’re trying to develop a product, it’s very important to come up with something that no one has, that no one can knock off, that no one can start coming in and competing on price. That is the most critical thing when you create or develop a product. Vitamins are a dime a dozen. They’re all over the place. You’re selling also a preventative where it’s ten times harder to sell someone on a preventative than it is a cure. I mean it’s like selling people burglar alarms. The only time people buy burglar alarms are after they’ve been robbed. So, you’re going to fighting a real uphill battle, I think with a vitamin product.

Jamell: That’s what I was thinking. I told a buddy of mine you have a lot of companies that say this is great, mine is better, but I said look at it this way. Honestly, if you took one from the ones up here and I took one from another company, we both eat the same way, exercise pretty much the same, who is to say that you’re better off than me and I’m better off than you taking the different vitamin. You can’t really say. That’s kind of the reason why I was looking into more of like weight loss. There’s a lot of those out there, but once again if you have one that produces results, that’s what people are looking for.

Michael: Another thing to think about is what is the most you’re going to be able to sell…a vitamin product or a weight loss supplement for?

Jamell: Maybe $30 or $40.

Michael: Thirty or forty dollars. So, another really important aspect to look into before you create and develop a product is to decide what are you going to make on every sale. Would you rather have 100 customers who spend $30 with you…that’s $3,000…so you have customers that you have to deal with, customer support, packing and shipping, customer service, returns; all of that. You see it. It’s like a retail business. Like a Nordstrom’s. All the problems. You’ve got 30 customers. Or would you rather have one customer that pays you $3,000 for a product?

Jamell: One customer.

Michael: All you have to do…if you want to make $3,000 a month…is come up with a product that you can sell for $3,000 and if sell one a month, you can make $3,000 a month. I don’t think you’ll be able to do that with any kind of supplement. I know, just from my experience, the greatest products to sell and products that you can sell for this kind of money are information products…intellectual property, audio recordings. Another advantage of that is, is information products, especially audio recordings the way I do it, no one can knock you off. No one can knock Michael Senoff off. They can try and do interviews like me, but they can’t. You can’t get flipped. It’s totally me. It’s my information. It’s my voice on there. It’s my brain asking the same questions. Also, it’s the easiest thing to make.

We’re just sitting here having a talk, a conversation. Now, I’m helping you the best I can. I’m giving you my best advice, but at the same time I’m being selfish and greedy. I’m also keeping in mind that I’m creating a nice little product that maybe down the road I can sell individually, I could have transcribed into transcripts and sold as a report or given away as a free report, which will lead up maybe with a link for more information if someone is listening to this and they want more information. Maybe they want to hire me for my new product creation service where I’ll create an information product with some, a niche product and do all the audio recording and all the editing and put them on CDs. So, I’ll create an individual information product for somebody.

I know you’ve got some experience in the health field and you’re a little bit product focused on nutrition and supplements, but you’re not really sure. Are you open to creating and developing an information product similar to the stuff I have on my site?

Jamell: I am and actually that’s what one of my buddy kind of pulled me away from what I was initially doing, but I was doing a little while back…I was doing some research on how to get mini sites up and how to do recording on a website. I was looking at possibly I could create audio CDs and all of those things because there was a lot of things that I did want to create. And as far as how to products, one of the things I was going to do was I was going to create a product on literally how to…this was just from all the experience I’ve had with network marketing as far as how to chose the right company, things you need to look for; all of those things. That was just going to be one of them. Things you shouldn’t do; all that stuff. And then in addition to that, there’s was also going to be included things that you needed to do and learn and focus on as far as personal development. There were some other things, as well. And I’ve got a friend who is starting a landscape business. I was just going to go interview him and ask him what it took to build this and build that. Basically do the different things that he did, audio record it, and I was going to sell it as a report or something. I had a lot of great ideas, but just for one reason or another, especially with the technical side of it, it’s what kind of slowed me down because I don’t know how to set…I mean I know how to use a computer, I know how to search, I know how to do all those things. I know what HTML is. I mean I’ve read about it. There’s just so much stuff, I don’t know who to trust.

Michael: I agree. I’ll be introducing very shortly…it’s a simple product. It’s called how to turn your $28 book into a $3,900 information product. And it’s a completely free 30-day trial. I don’t charge the credit card for 30 days. I’ll send you the entire course and everything, but this is a system I’ve created that shows you exactly how to create an information product. And I go into all the details of the digital recording device to use, how to get it edited. I give you ideas of all the questions. I give you the actual questions to ask. I show you how to come up with five audio products, five different CDs. I give you the headlines and titles of the CDs. I mean it’s really a complete little course on how to do it. Now, that’s for the people who want to do it themselves.

Then for people who don’t know how to do it and they have a little money to invest, I do it all for them. All you’ve got to be able to do is talk on the phone and have an idea of what we want to create. I understand HTLM and doing the websites. It’s not hard once you know how.

I would tell you to spend those one o’clock in the morning, two o’clock in the morning, three o’clock in the morning and learn how to record an audio recording by phone like I do. I’ll tell you how to get the recorder. I’ll tell you the only software you’ll need is for editing, the software you get when you buy the recorder. That’s easy to install. It’s really not hard. And there are services you can upload your audio and turn them into play buttons automatically. I can tell you how to do that. So, it may take you a week to kind of get comfortable with it, but once you’ve got it, you’ve got it. Now you know. You’ve got the ability to call anyone on the phone, invite them to do an interview, just have a nice chat/conversation, you’ll have all the questions in front of you; just take all the gold out of them…just like I dig it out of the people I talk to. You’ll never really have to think. You just have to know where to get your questions to ask them. For instance, you talked about an idea for MLM product. Remember the call with Glenn Turner?

Jamell: Yes.

Michael: I thought that was a wonderful interview. I really enjoyed it.

Jamell: It was.

Michael: It was inspirational and this guy is the king of network marketing for way back in the 70s. What if you were to get ten interviews like that and interview ten kings of MLM and ask them all the same questions and get that all on audio recordings, all as a digital download product. And I’m just going to keep it simple for you. Don’t even worry about CDs. Just have it as a digital product. You upload the ten audio recordings, you have a little simple one-page description/letter with all the links, and there’s your product.

Who can you get to sell that? You could get the guy who you did the interview to do it with. Let’s say Glenn Turner was the king of one these multi-level marketing companies and let’s say you had nine other recordings with other great MLM leaders. Well, what you do is you go to Glenn or some of the top distributors in the company and they’re all trying to train their people the best they can. So, you say hey your downline maybe interested in this free audio recording that I did with the king of multi-level, Glenn Turner. Here’s the link. Why don’t you send this out to your entire downline. They’ll probably learn something, get a little motivation under them, and maybe they’ll go out and recruit some more people. It can’t hurt and it’s totally free. So, you get them to endorse the recording, send an email to all their lists, all their downline to listen to your free recording. But you only have the Glenn Turner recording on there. At the end of the recording or at the beginning of the recording, you say if you like this recording, we’ve got nine other audio recordings with the leaders of MLM and you give the names of the people you did the interviews with and you can have a click here button and have a little sales page with a description of each guy you interviewed and a description of what it’s about; just like I do on my site. And then you can have that as a product you can sell for $49 or $100 or whatever.

Jamell: Right.

Michael: So, you get them to endorse it to their lists and then you do the same thing with each one of the other leaders. You get the interview nailed down with the leader, but you don’t have to necessarily get them. If they’re too big and you don’t think they’re going to endorse it, you get some of the top players in their downline to endorse it to their downline. They already have the built in customers to listen to it. If you do a great interview with them, it will be of real value and it’s free. But then if they like what they heard, then you sell the other nine. Does that make sense?

Jamell: It does.

Michael: Is that easy? All you have to do to get your product is to do ten audio recordings. And it’s a lot of work doing the editing and I recommend you do the editing _____. You do it right. You don’t be lazy and you do a good job on the editing. I kind of consult and show you how to do that. And then you’ve got a digital product that you can sell. You don’t have to mess with shipping or anything. If you feel like you want to create a physical product, that’s not a bad thing. That’s easy to do, too. But to start off, you can do a digital product and you’ve got a great valuable product. You can go to all kinds of people. You can call it the kings of MLM.

Jamell: I know how…I mean just from everything I’ve learned _____ of these people exactly how to go out and get private lenders for real estate deals. There are so many things I know how to do. And like you said, I firmly believe…I understand exactly what you mean by once you do something and you learn it, it is easy. Everything is easy once you learn how to do it for the most part.

Michael: It’s just a pain not knowing how to do it. I’m the same way. So, you talk about you know how to go out and get loans from private individuals for real estate deals?

Jamell: Yes.

Michael: Have you done that yourself?

Jamell: Yes.

Michael: How many times?

Jamell: Three times for a guy that I was doing some work with.

Michael: And it works like a charm?

Jamell: It does. It does, like you said, when you know how to do it and put a presentation together. Because they’ve got to trust you.

Michael: You have a proven presentation?

Jamell: Yes. It’s actually one that I learned from a guy, whose course I bought, and it does. It’s awesome. He provided everything that you needed. You just basically put it all together and you go out and you’re professional and you’ve just got basically put on this presentation and show people exactly what kind of money that they can look to make in a years time or something like that depending on how long they wanted to work with you.

Michael: Was it by any chance a guy named Tom Kish?

Jamell: No, I’ve listened to him. This guy actually…his name was Gary Briscoe, but I actually know who Tom Kish is.

Michael: I’ve seen his email and stuff. What do you think about his getting money from unsecured credit cards?

Jamell: He does that and there’s also another lady that does it, too. I can’t remember her name. But it makes sense. I mean one of the businesses that we had started up before the real estate business, that’s how we got the money to do one of the houses we got, we basically got it subject to the existing loan. Basically meaning we didn’t have to use any of our money to get the house. Basically they were in trouble, so they signed over the deed. They were going to get foreclosed. We needed to come up with $5,000 to pay for back payments. By using the company’s credit, we were able to get credit cards to pay the back payments so we didn’t have to use our own money. Once the house was sold, we just paid the card back.

Michael: Back to this private borrowing from private individuals. Is it a course that you took?

Jamell: Yes.

Michael: You just made some angles on it and did it your way.

Jamell: Right.

Michael: That market is extremely hungry because I market a business buying system by a guy named Art Hamel. Have you heard any of those recordings?

Jamell: I’ve listened to a part of one of them and it really intrigues me.

Michael: You’ve got to listen to this guy. He is good. If you go to my products page, along the left side, there’s a link called business buying. I’ve got about 12 hours with nothing but Art Hamel.

Jamell: Wow.

Michael: All his deals are multi-million dollar deals. He never borrows from the bank. He uses private investors. So, it’s the same thing you’re doing, but on a bigger scale, but you’ll probably learn a lot from him. So, that market is a very hungry market. If your system really works, that’s a system that you can create an information product for. That’s a wonderful market and a great product that you can put together. I could help you put together an audio product. That’s something you could sell for $597 easy.

Jamell: My biggest thing, like I said, is there are so many people selling software to teach you how to put the site together and put the product together and different places you can go and it’s like honestly I’m just so afraid to buy something because I don’t know if I’m going to get what they’re saying I’m going to get. A lot of these people give license rights to copy. You don’t know if it’s all what you’re going to get. So, that’s just being the biggest thing with me as far as getting a website up and doing these things and get video and audio on your website.

Michael: You don’t know where to go. I wouldn’t worry. You don’t need video on your website and I go into that. I’ll send you some links to explain why audio is better than video. And the reason is, as you just explained to me, audio is much more accessible. You can’t go driving around town watching video in your car, can you?

Jamell: No.

Michael: No. Your video is more powerful to sell someone on an idea because you’re using visual and audio at the same time. You’re getting more emotions going. And it is more powerful if you compare it just to audio, but audio is more accessible. You can listen to them on your cell phone and their downloadable. You can burn CDs you can play in your car. And people don’t like their time being wasted or with a video that could be easily used as an audio product. People are busier than hell. So, that’s why audio is good because you can multi-task, you can listen while you’re doing work. It’s just a very convenient medium. It’s only 100 years old, too. Think about that.

You’ve got a couple great ideas. I think that’s a wonderful market right there. If you’ve got a system that’s proven and works, you can use it based on your own experience. It becomes your product. You can’t get knocked off because it’s your experiences and your know how from real experience that you have credibility in doing it. You can enhance on the product by using audio or you can go the MLM route and do a series of interviews with people. And the advantage of that is when you’re interviewing the experts, even though you can do the same thing with your real estate financing deal, you want to use the leverage of their downlines, which could be very powerful. You can make a lot of money using the leverage of MLM downlines.

Jamell: Right. Michael, these are my goals, my dreams, the things that I’ve set for myself to reach by the time I’m 30 or at least be on the path is to have direct marketing company that has various different streams as far as reaching out to the consumer. It’s always been information. I’ve learned basically from you that that’s the way to go. My biggest thing, like I said before, was just not really knowing which route to go to try to get myself started and who to buy from and who to learn from. From teaching people personal development to real estate strategies, I mean you name it, it’s basically having a company that has this various different branches as far as different things I could help people do to get the best for those that don’t want to work a job.

Michael: That’s like what I’m doing. Different array of products that’ll help people make money. But you’ve got to start with one and get one going and get the system in place and then you can do another one. Or if you don’t want to, you could milk that one for years and years and make a lot of money just with that one product with a market large enough and hungry enough because the time you focus on developing another product…and we all fall into that trap, even me, loving to create the product, but not loving to do the marketing and the work it takes to get the first product you created out there.

Jamell: That’s what I want to do. I honest just want to become a great marketer. I have visions of myself literally going all around the country teaching people and I know it can happen and it’s going to happen. I don’t know how, but it’s going to happen. I’m not going to rest until I’ve gotten exactly where I want to be. A lot of people have visions of making a million here, a million there. It’s not necessarily the money. I have visions of myself doing hundreds of millions of dollars a year and not because of just having a lot of money, but because of what I’ll be able to do for my family, for people that I care about. I mean my ultimate dream is to be able to start schools around the country of entrepreneurship to help young kids from an early age just to teach them that there are other ways other than just the conventional job.

Michael: Absolutely. That would be great. I’d love to do something like that. I’m more…instead of going around the country physically teaching…I want to use and harness the power of the Internet like what I’m doing so I can be here at home not wasting time. Not that it’s a waste of time going out and speaking publicly, but this is a much more effective medium for getting my message across using this wonderful Internet and downloads and delivering it. I don’t have to go speak. All I have to do is get website URL to any child or any student who wants to learn and there’s the university right in front of them.

Jamell: That’s awesome.

Michael: It now becomes getting the message out, the marketing. Getting the message out and getting people to the site so they could be exposed to the material. Just like you found it. I know when we talked yesterday you were talking about a product and I know you want to sleep on it and stuff, but have I convinced you to go with something that you can sell for more money.

Jamell: Yes, and it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while, especially ever since I found your site. And like I said, it was mainly just a matter of which way do I go. It makes perfect sense. I mean when I look at the people that I’m reading about, Dan Kennedy and Jay Abraham, and they’re charging $25,000 to $50,000 for information for one seat sometimes, it’s definitely the way to go. That’s where the money is.

Michael: I would never charge $50,000 or $20,000. I was marketing a seminar for a guy who was selling a consulting training on how to be a marketing consultant and it started out at $5,000 and then it went up to $10,000 then it went up to $15,000 and I sold about $100,000 worth of seats for him in the first six months using audio from my website and doing interviews with students who had gone through his training, a number of audio marketing methods. And then he jacked it up to $20,000 and I was like forget this and I had been to the seminars and they were good. For someone who is going to go act on it, they’re worth $15,000. But when it got up to $20,000 there’s a point where you’re just going to say…so, I just created my own.

I found someone who had a product already developed. He wasn’t doing anything with it. He was not Internet savvy and I created my HMA marketing system about 13 months ago and I’ve gotten about $100,000 in sales with that in 2005. I expect to do more than that this year. It’s now all automatic. It was a lot of work at first, but I have probably 20 hours of free audio up on my website all on marketing consulting. And the difference is I give you all the information on how to go get that first client. I give you the intellectual property from the course on how to interview someone. There’s six interviews that you hear for free of me doing an opportunity analysis; that’s the questionnaire session you do with someone, a potential client whether it’s over the phone or in person. You can hear me doing that live. Two of them you’ll hear me close real clients; one for $1,200 for a USP project, which is the first project in the consulting training that we teach consultants to sell in developing and creating a USP. And there’s two occasions I did audio interviews over the phone where you’ll hear me close them right over the phone…the very first time I talked them through this opportunity analysis. We show you how to do that. So, the difference is with this consulting thing, we show everyone how to do it and we take a lot of the risk away.

I guess the whole point is you could do the same thing with anyone. And the thing is, I’m not the expert. I’m just a guy doing the interviewing. Richard, the guy who developed the program, is the expert. So, another important thing when you’re creating information products, you don’t have to be an expert at anything. You can just be a guy interviewing.

Off the top of your head, who are some of the most famous TV personalities you can think of? Just name one, the first one that comes into your head.

Jamell: Oprah.

Michael: Anyone else?

Jamell: Jerry Seinfeld.

Michael: Anyone else?

Jamell: Doctor Phil.

Michael: Oprah is probably one of the most powerful women in history.

Jamell: Yes.

Michael: What does she do?

Jamell: Interview people.

Michael: What did Johnny Carson do?

Jamell: Interview people.

Michael: What does Ted Kopple do?

Jamell: Interview people.

Michael: What does Heraldo do?

Jamell: Interview people. Larry King.

Michael: What does Larry King do?

Jamell: Interview people.

Michael: Are they experts?

Jamell: No, they’re not. They just know how to bring the information to everybody else.

Michael: That’s right. So, my point is, you don’t have to be an expert at anything. You’ve just got to be willing to ask good questions and to be interested in the person that you’re talking to. And you can create products made of gold. What a great way to spend your time. I mean every time I do an interview I’m learning stuff I’m interested in. I try only to do interviews that are interesting to me so I’m seriously interested in asking the questions that I’m interested in. I mean I’m learning all the time. And then when I’m editing the recordings…see, many times when you’re doing the interview I’m really focusing a lot on the questions that I’m asking that they’re good questions, as well. So, I don’t really get to absorb a lot of it. But then I get to re-listen to it because I’ve got to do the editing on it and then I get to listen to it again really up close because you can put hours into editing on one recording. At that same time, I’m never wasting time because I’m still learning from all the great information I dug out of this guy or woman. It’s a great way to go.

I’ll give you an example. I interviewed Vic Conant of Nightingale Conan. Did you hear that one yet? You’ve heard of Nightingale Conan, right?

Jamell: Yes I have.

Michael: Once you go to the main page at www.hardtofindseminars.com , you’ll see Vic Conant interview. It’s one of the links on the front page. It’s a great interview and I asked him what is one of your most effective marketing techniques? What really turned the company around? And he told me for a long time they were selling their audio products, their information products…here’s the product, you pay me $47 or $50 or whatever. And then they changed the concept to where the customer didn’t have to pay anything now. So, they could order their product and not pay anything and then they would be billed later. And he says once they did that, the company just took off.

Now, at the same time, I have a CD set, a preview set for my marketing consulting system, the system that I sell. And so, I’ve got eight of the audio recordings that are online already burned onto a CD because it’s more convenient. Put it up there in special sections of my site where they could pay just for the shipping. And they would just pay me and then I would send the CD sets. And I didn’t get any sales. And then I thought of that interview that I did with Vic Conant and I changed it to where they had to pay me nothing now and that I would send it to them and I would bill them. And since I did that, I’ve sent out almost 100 of those preview sets. Now, I’ll have a little bit of a collection effort in getting money from some of the people, but the whole idea is that one idea from an interview I did is going to make me a lot of money…just that simple strategy.

Jamell: Now, is that the one you’re coming out with in a couple of weeks?

Michael: No, this is the HMA system on how to be a marketing consultant. The one I’m coming out with is strictly how to turn a $28 book into a $3,900 information product.

Jamell: Got you.

Michael: But the other thing I was going to tell you was when you don’t know who to go to for advice, always come back to my site because you’ll see almost all my offers are totally risk free. I send everything to you and all you do is pay the shipping if it’s a physical product, actual shipping. Your card isn’t charge for 30 days, so I let you review the product for 30 days before anything is charged. You can always return it within that time. This how to turn a $28 book into a $3,900 information product is absolutely free. It’s a digital product, so you get to download everything for 30 days before I charge your card. And if you’re unhappy, you just let me know. You’ve got to take the risk away. Now, you’re going to have a lot of people by the time this 30 days come around and people send in their orders, you’re going to have some credit cards that decline and you’re going to have some people that cancel their orders, but you’re going to have more than that who end up keeping the product and you charge their card. And you would have never had those sales if you say give me all your money upfront. You take the risk. So, it’s just a philosophy I learned from Jay Abraham. You reverse the risk. You’ve got to today. And with your information products, so what because once your product is done and you have a digital downloadable product or even if it’s on a CD, even if 50% of your people return or decline, you’re still coming out ahead because your margins are astronomical.

Jamell: Right.

Michael: Your cost is nothing but hosting. It’s nothing. It’s almost all profit. It’s like a license to print money. It really is.

Jamell: Now, what do you suggest prior to your system coming out, is there anything on your site…I saw some things on there that explains how to get content. What about like as far as developing a site, even if it’s just like a one-page sales letter? Do you recommend I just basically bite the bullet and just go out and learn HTML and do it that way or…

Michael: Now, what do I recommend? I recommend as far as creating your sales letter, what you do is you create your audio product first because you’re going to talk your sales letter. Let’s say you hired me to create your information product on this how to get private financing for real estate deals. Now, we’re going to do five separate audio recordings that are going to be designed to create this information product. And so, we’re going to have about four and a half to five hours of audio. As we do that audio, we’re going to be talking about great stuff and each one of those audio recordings, after the editing is done, is going to be transcribed.

We’re going to take clips from the transcripts of that audio, of that natural free flowing conversation…just like we’re having right now. I’m not sitting here writing a script as I talk to you on a blank piece of paper. I’m just talking to you as a person, things that are coming into my head. They’re flowing into my head through my subconscious. There’s no governor on my thoughts right now. So, we’re getting it all down. It’s kind of like the technique where they say take a white piece of paper and start writing and done ever stop. Just whatever comes to your mind write it down. Well, I’m doing the same thing just through audio. But it’s coming through more naturally in a conversational tone, the exact kind of tone you want to write in. So, as we get all those audios edited and we get out the ums and ahs and the stuff where I screw up or where my thoughts change and we clean up that recording.

Then we’re looking at the text in Microsoft Word. We bring it up into the computer and we look at those transcripts and we go through those transcripts and we look for things that we talk about…phrases, sentences that start popping out at you. Things that could be possibly used as headlines and subheads, and we just start going through all that stuff and we start taking pieces out and putting some over here for this part of the letter and here for this part of the letter. And it’s golden stuff for your sales letter. It’s just a matter of reorganizing what you’ve already said in parts of your five audio recordings and putting it into the letter and just creating an organized format for it. So, you’re going to talk your letter.

You’re also, by doing the information product, by doing the interview, the five hours or the four and a half hours, you’re also going to learn your product better and better and you’re going to be better prepared if you want to use PR to do media interviews.

So, out of the recordings you’re going to have a whole bunch of things. You’re going to have transcripts that will become part of your information product that you’ll be able to sell. If you want to go physical, they’ll be printed out and put in a three-ring binder. As you see on my site, they’re in PDF. They’re all downloadable. That becomes more valuable to your buyer because it gives them the chance…if he’s a reader…to be able to read if he doesn’t like audio. Those transcripts can also be bound and put into a book. So, now if you combine all five transcripts, you are a self-published author and you have a book, how to finance real estate deals without having to go to a bank. So, now you’re a publisher. People who publish books have credibility, don’t they. And all it is, is your series of interviews in printed bound form. You get that up on Amazon if you want and use that as a lead in to maybe a service you sell.

So, you have transcripts. You can take these transcripts and create a book. Also you’ll take copy out of those transcripts and create descriptions for your audio recordings. There’s so much you can do with the individual components of the audio and the transcript and you can create several different small products out of it. Your full product may sell for $495 or $597, but you can take one of those transcripts and it becomes a free report or a white paper that you can sell for $19.95. So, you can create that natural progression, that stair stepping into higher end products.

But the whole focus is getting a skilled interviewer to interview you and ask the right questions and dig deep and think on behalf of what the public would be asking you so by the time they listen to that, their questions are probably answered and you’ve covered the material fully so you’re giving them good value.

Another aspect is, and this is real important, is with the service, the audio recording service and the product creation services, I do an Internet audio infomercial. We do that at the very end after we create your product because it gives me more experience and understanding your product and it gives you some experience and understanding even after we’ve created it. But we create a hard hitting recording that is designed to sell your product. So, you have an audio infomercial that can be online. Imagine that we had one of those on my website, the hundreds of people a day who come and listen could listen to that recording and then what happens. They say, well how do I get that guy’s product? That’s a selling machine right there. That’s one tool you can use. Burn it on a CD. Have it up on a website. Create it as a teleconference and use that audio infomercial to sell your product. So, that’s another service I provide. That’s free with the whole product creation package.

Jamell: Got you.

Michael: So, I’ve got a couple different things. I’ve got the product that shows you how to do it. And then I’ve got the service, which is a lot more expensive. It’s in the thousands of dollars range to do it all for you.

Jamell: I’ve got you.

Michael: But you know you need the sales message to sell the product. That’s the most valuable thing. It’s such a good investment because all I’ve got to do is get two clients and I’ve more than made my money back. Every other sale after that is all profit. You’ve got to get a good copywriter that knows what they’re doing and who understands marketing. I didn’t do all the copy myself. I’m not a good copywriter. I’m a good talker. I can talk.

[End of Interview]