Michael: Hi, I'm Michael Senoff, founder and CEO of hardtofindseminars.com for the last five years I've interviewed the world's best business and marketing minds. Along the way I've created a successful publishing business all from home from my two car garage. When my first child was born, he was very sick and it was then that I knew I had to have a business that I could operate from home. Now my challenge is to build the world's largest free resource for online downloadable MP3 audio business interviews. I knew I needed a site that contains strategies, solutions and inside angles to help you live better, to save and make more money, to stay healthier, and to get more out of life. I've learned a lot in the last five years and today I'm going to show you the skills you need to survive. Hi, it's Michael Senoff with Michael Senoff's HardtoFindSeminars.com the title of this interview is called How To Use Barter To Save Your Business, Boost Your Income And Lower Your Taxes. The trade exchange industry is huge right now and its possibilities are endless. Millions of people use it to stay afloat during these tough times. By networking with a closed community, you can use it to save money on everything from home improvements to massages and even vacations. Or you can make serious money at auctions, boosting your existing businesses, or even making long term sound investments. And in this audio, you'll hear me, Michael Senoff, interview a barter expert out of Australia about the best ways to use trade dollars to save, earn and invest real money in today's economy. This expert's name is Don, and Don knows what he's talking about. When he first joined Bartercard, his cosmetic business was struggling, but he quickly turned it around using only the barter community itself. And in this audio, you'll hear how he did it. You'll also hear why margins are important in the trade industry, how to calculate yours, and the best way to get your feet wet. You'll learn legal ways to use trade to decrease your income taxes and make sound investments. You'll learn how to use trade exchange credits to buy and sell homes. You'll learn all about trade coordinators and when you might need them. You'll also learn what you'll want to know about the ebay like barter auction sites so you can make even more money. You'll learn three myths people believe about trade exchanges that just aren't true. You'll learn how to use a staff account to supplement your employees wages or just use it to help your mom pay for groceries. And you'll learn the darker side of trade in examples of how to avoid it. According to Don, after you join an exchange organization, there will be many times where you'll think something like, I don't really have the cash for this tuition, home improvement, or house, but maybe there's a way I can swing it using barter. And chances are there will be. In fact, you'll pretty much be like a kid in a candy store once the ball gets rolling for you. And this audio is the perfect first step. Don's also put together a trade course that includes success stories and how to's from millionaires around the world who have all made their fortunes from barter. With a seemingly endless amount of things you can do for family, friends, yourself and your business, why not get the ball rolling today? For more information, email me at www.hardtofindseminars.com That's hardtofindseminars.com. Thanks for listening. Hey, Don, it's Mike here. How are you?

Don: I'm good, thanks, Mike yourself.

Michael: Good, good. Good to talk to you.

Don: Yeah, finally.

Michael: You know, I love trade. I mean, probably as much as you do.

Don: That's actually how I finally found your site. Because a friend of mine, I think he did your consultants course and he knew I did a lot with trade and he said, oh, you should check this guy out. So I did. And I thought, sounds like talking to me.

Michael: That's great. I was sitting here online. We're going to take a little vacation on Saturday and just go up the west coast. And I was just searching itex, the big trade organization here, seeing what's available for places to stay and things to do.

Don: Great in Australia. These two main ones, one bartercard and the other one's called dbx. But barter cart is the big one. You can get just about anything.

Michael: Yeah, bartercard is big. I think I have their directory. Which is just like a phone book, right?

Don: Correct.

Michael: Yeah, that thing is incredible.

Don: Basically, it originated here on the Gold Coast. Actually, one of the founding directors owns motor brokerage Diago 3. He started it from scratch like 18 years ago. And because it originated here on the Gold coast, where I live, you can get just about anything.

Michael: I have that directory and I've looked through it and it is incredible. As a member with Bartercard, what is your business?

Don: Well, I had a cosmetics business with my wife Susie they were handmade products. The business actually didn't do that well, but it did really well in trade. And we got full retail for our products. Our margins were huge. That's when we really got the grasp on it. He sold that about two years ago. Last two years I've just been a general trader and I sell ebooks, which obviously cost nothing on their website. And I swap things. You know, I think, wow, that really well in trade.

Michael: So your experience, you know, just looking at some of the notes here, when you got involved in trade, you and your wife had your little cosmetics business. Tell me how you first heard about trade and how your business was struggling and how you thought trade may help it, which it did. Which kind of forced you to be more creative with trade dogs. Why don't you start from your first experience with that business you and your wife had?

Don: We moved from Sydney to the Gold Coast. We didn't know anyone. We had this little cosmetics business and he was struggling. And I got a call from a rep from Bartercard. I'd heard about it before and I was open to anything. So this fellow came and he explained it to me in a way that made sense to me. And when I told him I wasn't sure whether it would work or not, the guy just laughed. And this guy was a millionaire. He owns a lot of property. Told me how he managed to renovate houses on trade and sell them for cash. And I thought, wow, that just sounds incredible.

Michael: He knew it would work, right?

Don: You know, when you're talking to somebody and they're so positive that the standard works, they're not laughing at you. They're just laughing as you're like, you've got to do it. Look, if you don't do it, sell me your products at wholesale and I'll go and do it.

Michael: Being in cosmetics, what do you think made him so confident that it would work for you? Because you were manufacturing?

Don: Because we were manufacturing. But more than anything was the margins that we had. Some of the products that we could easily sell for $50 were costing us $5 to make.

Michael: What were they? Was it just hand creams, lotions, soaps, or what?

Don: All of that essential oils. And I still sell some essential oils on Bartercard. They've got an e-commerce site, like an ebay type of site because the margins are huge. And I can sell it for normal cash price. If you walked into a body shop, it would cost you $19...20 for a bottle of lavender essential oil. But that would owe me about a dollar.

Michael: Okay, I'VE always got the student in mind as I'm interviewing you. Number one, talk about margins and why anyone considering going into trade has to consider margins. Why is it important for a business considering trade? Why are margins important?

Don: Margin is important because with experienced traders such as yourself, you'll talk about what a trade dollar costs you. Whether you physically bought it or you've made it. For me, this is how I always think of it. I think I have this product. It's cost me $10 to produce it. Now I can sell it for $100. People are very keen to buy things in trade to use their trade dollars so you can command full retail price. So I would look a $10 product. I think that will sell for $100 hand over fist. Then you look at your trade fees which might be about another 13 cents on the dollar. I would look at my trade dollar as 23 cents, which I'll earn very easily. And they'll take that hundred trade dollars and take my family out to a beautiful dinner seafood platter. I'll look at it and I think this meal cost us 23 bucks. You know, it's money we never would have had. And the guy next to me is paying cash, but he's paying $100 cash. But I made my hundred dollars in trade.

Michael: Okay, that's great. Now try and explain to a listener who's thinking, well, that sounds incredible, but it's kind of weird. How can your cosmetics be in such high demand within the trade organization but outside of the trade organization you are struggling with a cash business.

Don: That's correct. I think with trade dollars because you make them so easily. Some people treat it like monopoly money. For example, you might have a solicitor who makes $300 an hour and he might have a spare couple of hours in the week. So he'll fill those two hours in with trade clients. So he's made maybe $600 for two hours work. And he may have given his wife a staff card, for example, so she's got that new slide. Just grab for a sweetheart. We've got plenty of that. So they have like little shops in some of the offices, you know, like the franchise here. And we used to put our cosmetics in the Bartercard office so she can walk in there and look at our $100 gift tax that cost us $10 to make and get Christmas kidney Tennebert. So they just spend it so easily. And because things like that, our cosmetics are beautiful body shop type of product to that calibre. So they hadn't seen it before, so they really went wild for it.

Michael: I know here in the US with itex you do have to work a little harder to find something to spend your trade dollars on. And what about there? I know here sometimes and there's a reputation that sold on trade are overpriced. There are some people who inflate the prices of their products. Are you seeing a lot of that there?

Don: Absolutely. That's the good thing about BarterCard. They really crack down on people that are just taking a piss. And I've always been cautious. You do want to get the best dollar value that you can, but you can't go silly about it. If you can buy something low and sell it high, or if it's something that is red hot, you can put it on the auction site. As long as you don't put the reserve over what the value is, you might have an opportunity of getting a good price for a car. And with that, I had a BMW that was on a trade auction site and I think it hit like 70 grand or something like that. And the car was only worth about 25.

Michael: Wow.

Don: Yeah. But depends on the trade organisation. That was Bartercard. And I actually had my reserve too high on that. When I was new to trade, I kind of did it as a joke and they got a bit angry about it and I said, look, just take it off. So I came to an agreement with one of the fellows that was bidding on the car, gave me some trade and a laptop computer and a little bit of cash.

Michael: This auction site, is that run by Bartercard or is this another outside of Bartercard?

Don: No, it's run by Bartercard and I'll send you a link to it later. It's really well put together. It's like an ebay site almost. It's got a site you can list for free. It would be the equivalent of ebay. Buy it now. You just got set price. Another part of the site is the auction site and that's where things go absolutely ballistic. I've seen people, when the big screen LC TVs started coming out, one company who sold things on trade to make a lot of money because they were actually selling the trade. They're not in trade anymore, but they had big screen TVs that were optioning up for like $18,000. And that's at a time where it probably would have cost you three or four grand to buy one. Of course, they're a lot cheaper now. So you do get some products that are really hot. Anything that's good for business that people want in their business will appear to go really well.

Michael: Give me three myths that you believe that people believe about trade. That just isn't true.

Don: Everyone's dodgy, which they're not. Like any sort of business, you'll get dodgy people that are not straight up. But I found quite the opposite. It's an incredible business network. I've lived on the Gold coast seven years and I've never known so many business people. A lot of them are really good and I've struck up some really good friendships with them. Nip two would be things that are massively overpriced. Again, that's true. But once you build your network, like the people that you're buying up all the time, they're genuine people. That's not so bad at all.

Michael: Yeah, it's like anything. I mean, if you're shopping for cash, you're going to shop and find the best value anyway. It would be no different.

Don: Absolutely. We're really well set up now. We've got to get tyres and suspension to my car. I've got two mechanics on trade and they don't charge me anymore. And if it was a little bit more, that's no problem to me.

Michael: I know here in the US there was a myth that it was kind of a way to avoid income tax. Was that myth there in Australia.

Don: I think, years ago when it first kicked off, that was the case because a lot of people that were in it before or they've been in it for a while, that they tax free and I just sort of. I get a statement, I claim everything with my tax like anyone else would. But there are ways you can legally use trade to decrease your income tax and capital gains tax. Decrease it, absolutely.

Michael: Why don't you share a couple of those ways on how to do that?

Don: I had a situation where I had a lot of trade and we had to try and cash convert our trade to make money to live that the situation we were in.

Michael: How much trade were you sitting on?

Don: About 60, 70 grand.

Michael: Was this all from the cosmetic business?

Don: No, one of them was from the car that I sold. Had a few investment properties as well. First I'll give you a business example and then an investment example of what we did with the business. I'm from the transport industry originally and I've gone back into it. All my mates are in that as well. So a forklift came up on trade. I think it was about maybe 20 grand trade. So I rang a good friend who's got a warehouse and are you still leasing that forklift? He said, yeah. And I said, well, look, this has come up on trade. Maybe we can work something out. So he said, absolutely. So I bought it for 20,000 trade.

Michael: Was it local?

Don: Yes.

Michael: Did you go out and see it?

Don: It's local here, but actually I bought it in Brisbane, but actually had it transported down to Sydney to my Grand Square One.

Michael: Did you check it out physically or have someone look at it?

Don: No, I didn't. The person selling this is actually a forklift hire place. And the guy said, it's the next hire job. We've refurbished it, We've done this, we've done that. We sort of made it really tough because it's the forklift that we send out to hire out. So I have to withstand this, that and the other thing. I think that was five years ago. It's an electric forklift, but he used it every day. He's never missed a beat. He hasn't even had it serviced.

Michael: All right, so you saw the forklift for trade, and it wasn't something you knew, but you knew your friend may be interested in it.

Don: Absolutely.

Michael: So you spotted it, you called your friend, and then what did you say to him?

Don: I've got this forklift and we can work something out, you know, like if you want to hire it off me or lease it or buy it. He said, I want to buy it. So I sold it to him for $15,000. Part of that was contrasting. So I was doing some transport services through him. I just said, look, give me $10,000 worth of freight transport, you know, which probably took me six months to spend down and 5,000 cash. So when on the books, it's $15,000. It's actually a $5,000 lot on my taxable income, But I'd earned that trade for about 30, 35 cents on the dollar. So in real money in pocket terms, the forklift probably only cost me $7,000 or 8,000, and I sold it for $15,000. My friend got a great deal. I got cash in my pocket, and I had that $5,000 loss right off against my income.

Michael: You're listening to an exclusive interview found on Michael Senoff's hardtofindseminars.com. I got you, that's beautiful. It's all made possible with the business and how they're earning that trade. The higher margins you're operating on, the better it's going to be for you.

Don: Yes, I go to some networking events with father, and you get to talking to people and just. I've done a few creative things. You know, the brokerage manager might say, I just want to have a chat to and such venue. I'm like, yeah, no problems at all. And that's the first thing I say to them is you'll have to figure out ways that you can earn your trade, like be fair, but earn it for a good dollar value. And with some people, they might be a massage therapist and that might be difficult for them or if they're an electrician, that might be difficult. So, you know, you get some people out there, they might be working on a big job, they might do part cash, part trades. That's the, the first thing I communicate to people is earn your trade for as cheaply as you can. Still try and give great value. And if you get that part right, the rest of it is just gravy.

Michael: Does Bartercard allow the members to charge part cash, part trade?

Don: It's called a continuous supply agreement. And I've got, with my transport company, I'm a wholesaler for FedEx and DHL courier companies. I've got great rate and I pass most of that rate on my client. I just maybe put 20, 25% on. I've got one client who my margin, I just charge him trade for that and he's extremely happy. It's a really good deal and it's continuous things, so that's okay. You can't really advertise yourself being part cash, part trade. But for example, one of them, a tank I use, all the parts will be cash and all the labour is on trade. There are other organisations apart from Bartercard that will accept part cash, part trade. And there is one particular trade organisation they set up to do part cash, part trade.

Michael: Okay, explain to the listeners why this all makes sense for Bartercard. What's in it for Bartercard? What's in it for itex? What's in it for any of these trade organizations? How do they make their money?

Don: They've actually got a beautiful business because whether you're earning your trade or spending your your trade, they're making money because they charge a percentage each way. I think rule of thumb, it's probably between 5 and 7% every time you buy something or you sell something and it's all taxing for them apart from running the accounts part of it. And maybe they're trade coordinator, they've got fixed costs and if they've got a million members spending $100 a week, they're making 7% of that. So that's how it works for them.

Michael: If someone's coming on into Bartercard or any trade organization. They have to consider for every hundred dollars that they buy and sell something, they're going to be spending anywhere from 10 to $15 cash for that transaction.

Don: That's correct. And you have to factor that into the equation when you're doing something. If you're an organisation like Advertisers, for example, it's a no brainer. They've got a magazine and they've got 10 blank pages, you know, and they might charge you 2,500 trades and you know, it's cost them nothing except for their trade fees. But you'll get somebody else who mows lawns and charges $40 a lawn and he's actually getting less money for his labour. That's the part you need to be careful. Like your consultants for example. If I was getting going with that and I didn't have any clients, it would be a good thing to use to be able to charge the rate that they deserve and it would help build their profile. You know, they could go out and do maybe half a dozen Prada customers, get referrals for them and boom, they're experienced, they've done a few, they've got results, they can show people. They advertise you for nothing, they promote you for free. So it's a great way to get your biz moving, get that momentum happening. And of course business. You can do just about anything. I kept down on my car, including have it washed. You know, that's all on all stationary, website, web hosting. Part of my phone bill is on trade. So you can write all those things off as well.

Michael: That's great. Okay, you were going to tell me an additional story.

Don: We had a few houses and we bought a house using trade to buy it. It's actually a no money down deal. The way this works, when houses or apartments sell on trade, they try and get 25% trade commission component in there being 20% covers your deposit and the 5% covers your legal stamp duties. So if you buy a property that values right with 25% trade in it, you probably don't have to pull any cash out of your pocket. The example, the one that I bought, bought a lovely three bedroom house. It was $400,000 and $100,000 of that was trade.

Michael: How did you learn about it?

Don: I wanted to buy houses in trade. So I had my ear to the ground and this one came up. I went and looked at it and like most houses that are pretty good deals on trade, I bought it on the spot. Then barter took a second mortgage against my property and they lent me the trade to buy the house.

Michael: Oh, Bartercard lent you the money?

Don: Yes, they did.

Michael: So how much did you need to buy it?

Don: With trade, I needed 100,000, but I already had about 60,000 in my account. We did an unregistered second mortgage.

Michael: And they financed it for you?

Don: Absolutely.

Michael: So you would have to pay Bartercard back. I mean, what kind of terms did they give you?

Don: Well, basically what they did was increase my line of credit and I just kept trading. I traded it away eventually. So it was good because like in a situation like that, I rented that house for $390 a week and that sailed along fairly smoothly for 18 months. Then we had other investment properties as well and we started running financial problems. And I had a house around the corner from my own house that I needed to sell. There was about 50 or $60,000 profit in that house. But with the house that I bought on Barda Cart, I actually sold it for 380,000. Now bear in mind, when I bought it, I bought it with 100,000 trade, and that trade probably cost me at the most it would have owed me 40 grand. House probably owed me 340, 350. When I sold it for 375, I had a paper loss which made up for the $60,000 profit I had in the other house. That equivalent, that is hard to compare to the graph. But I think with your course, when you explain about buying trade for 25, 30 cents on the dollar, it's the same thing. Like if you earn your trade for 30, 35 cents on the dollar and you get into lucky investment property like that, basically you can cash convert. If you bought something for 400,000 and held it for three or four years and then resold the 480,000, maybe 500,000 cash, you would have converted all that trade that you originally put into it.

Michael: Right. That totally makes sense. What's great about just buying the trade dollars, if you find someone who's sitting on a bunch of trade dollars and just buying it off of them is. It just totally eliminates the whole commerce part of the business. There's nothing to ship, no customers to deal with. You just skip all.

Don: Absolutely. Like when I listen to your course and when you're ringing in different people and asking to buy their trade dollars, you know, I'd love to do that.

Michael: You do have to kind of be careful. There's a US guy who had a pretty good barter course that I bought. A guy named Bob Myers. Have you heard of him?

Don: No, I haven't.

Michael: I'll have to find the link. I think he was still for a while and I haven't been getting emails from him in a long time. But he was very active in trade here in the US and he had a website and he had a newsletter that he would lease the barter organizations and there were some articles in his course. And I have one of these articles. He had a magazine at one time too, a full on magazine. You know, there was a very famous direct response company on TV. I think it was back in the 70s or the 80s called Lee Press on Nails. It was for women who wanted to have instant nails. And this whole article was about how he would just buy trade dollars as well. Yeah, real interesting stuff. I should send you a couple of these articles from some of these big players here in the US. One guy was an incredible collector of art and he built up this huge portfolio, this huge art collection all on trade. He would buy the art all on trade. Very interesting stuff. There's so much stuff you can do. You just got to be creative about it.

Don: When you go along to a trade night like a shopping night, the different businesses are set up in the hall. We used to do a lot of it, cosmetics and we used to between 5 and $10,000 worth of sales in one night. It was fantastic. But they always had an auction at the end of the night. An auction of a car and things like art. And it would go for extraordinary amounts of money. But they were also really nice pieces. You know, you'd see somebody bidding for something that would be. Might only be worth. I don't know what would be worth in cash flow, maybe a couple of grand. And there'd be a guy paying maybe five grand for it. But I'd look at that guy and I think I know what he does. He probably earns his trade dollars to 10, 15 cents on the dollar. And they just sit on this art and appreciate some value.

Michael: Tell me about this group of guys that formed that barter company where their main aim was to source hot ticket products from China.

Don: Absolutely. There was a bunch of them that had worked Bartercard in different organizations and they got together and they had this huge warehouse they were importing like the place and Zelda guys that were doing the posting TVs. They were doing TVs, they were doing advertising. They had like, you know those trucks, like billboard trucks. That driver. Yeah, they had a few of those going around. So all the advertising money they were making for next to nothing. They had a transport company where they were making good trade dollars as well. But they had all these different things. They had those quad bikes and things like that. But I think they turned over millions of dollars a year in trade. And they were selling it about 30 cents on the dollar, mating it up 20 cents on the dollar and selling it for 30 cents on the dollar. So their margin was 10 cents on the dollar. We're talking millions on the trade dollars. That was huge. But they were really a bit too transparent with what they were doing and Bartercard kicked them out.

Michael: Yeah. So you had mentioned when you emailed me not too long ago, you went to an amazing seminar. Was that all one trade? Brandon Nichols, Brandon Nicholson?

Don: No, that one wasn't. He's not involved in trade. But I went to this amazing four day real estate seminar with a guy that was on trade and that was, I think it was 3,000 bucks. And that was using trade. And that's where I learned a lot of my strategy. He'd been at it for a few years, so, you know, he'd be talking about real estate and this and that. But I knew he was a really big trader. So when every time he had the breaks, I was running up to him and by pumping brains for all the trade information, that's where I got the strategy for buying the house using trade and then selling it for less and creating a lot.

Michael: Well, not only that, you can buy a house and you can refurbish it like you wouldn't believe on trade dollars, you could do the improvements 25, 30 cents on the dollar. From cement work to shutters to fences to, I mean, you name it.

Don: Well, that's what this guy was doing. He had a huge network of landscapers... So his course was all about buying old houses and renovating them and reselling them. But he was renovating them using trade. I think about 60, 70% of his renovation costs were using trade. Another trade that he gave, like for example, one company here in Australia I mentioned before, they're part cash, part trade, and you can't get much with their trade dollars. But generally how people would do it is with that organisation. Just say you had a product that would retail for $89. You'll see that they bought it wholesale for say $20, and you see them selling it for $89, half cash, half trade. So they're still probably getting their 100% margin and they're making all these trade dollars. What guys like that do, they get those trade dollars and they either give it to charity, which is 100% tax deduction. Or just say they go to buy a piece of real estate and just say it's a house and it's worth 350 grand. They got all these trade dollars that they've made for nothing. They can turn around and say look, I'll give you the 350,000 for the house and can I just give you another 35,000 in these trade dollars? You can use them for this or that or whatever. So that way they're bumping up a price for the house, but actually creating some instant equity in it. Less money to put into it by where you're not put, you know, maybe 20% equity into a house to be able to buy it, get a decent loan. This way, you know, if you put a bit of trade in it, it's creating instant equity so it's less of your money you have to put into the house.

Michael: How about the store? You bought $5,000 worth of trade and the trade owed you 25 cents on the dollar and you sold them. What was that about? You said I bought 5,000 trade worth of shares in a trade organization.

Don: The next large trade organisation, ddx. They floated their company and you have to use some cash and some trade. I think it was 20% cash and 80% trade to buy shares. I've still got a lot of shares in that company and again wasn't doing so well. So just say I bought, I think it was $5,000 worth that I sold. Again, they lent me the trade to buy the shares for their company, but I cash converted those at 100% to buy $1,000 worth of shares. It was 20% cash. So it would be like $200 and $800 worth of trade. That trade organization, I earned that trade for 25 cents on the dollar. Then I turned around and sold those shares dollar for dollar.

Michael: Alright. People who have homes, they have businesses that they can get involved in with trade. Give an example how you were able to add $150,000 in cash value using trades that only cost you around 40,000. So basically you increase the value of your home $110,000. What are some of the things you did to the house that you were able to get on trade at 35 cents on the dollar?

Don: We've done a lot. I'll start pointing the front door. We bought this beautiful water feature which we use as a room divider. We actually cut a hole in the wall, put the glass water feature. It's huge. We bought that full trade that was worth three and a half thousand. My handyman put it in. He's on full trade. We bought beautiful bamboo floors. We carpeted the whole house. That was 50% trade for carpet. And the laying of the carpet was full trade. We've had our house painted on full trade. We had two decks built, which added a real lot of value. We got all the timber on trade, really nice timber. And the handyman or some herself, we laid it. So we had it laid on trade. All the fences around our house, we been on trade. I've got a shed out in the backyard that was on trade. A barley hut, I think about 50% trade. All our landscaping, all trade. We had our pool heated. Solar Heating worth $5,000 that was on full trade. We had our pool service, you know, like once a month. So I don't have to worry about that. Plumbing repairs, electrician that plumbs. Part trade, parts, cash, furniture. My wife, she's got a new office. We've got all of that on trade. A computer. I bought two computers in the past using trade that we'll probably talk about for about 10 minutes.

Michael: It's incredible. I'm just hearing all the things and I'm thinking of all the stuff I did to my home on trade. And, you know, it's like a candy store. You're doing all these improvements for about 35 cents on the dollar compared to a regular street value of what they would cost anyone else. And people who may have limited income in earning potential. I mean, just being able to do all this is like giving yourself an incredible raise.

Don: It is. If one of my friends get with me and I have a couple of beers, you know, I get right into their area. It's such that they've got a business online. Look at all the things, you know, because they.

Michael: Oh, wow.

Don: The house is looking great. And we've got some beautiful art. My wife commissioned an artist on trade to this huge picture. We've got this really big feature wall. It's like three pictures instead of one. My wife saw it, and the original art was a lot smaller than one we got. And my wife said, look, sunshade, can I get you to do this? And the artist said, yeah, no problems. We love trade. And I think it was about $3,000 to have it done. When the artist did it, she got creative and sort of changed what the original picture looked like. My wife didn't like it, and the artist said, oh, no problem. I'll just go and sell that. She sold that, I think, for $7,000. I'm not sure whether it was cash or trade. And then she did the one that we want. Cost her $3,000 a trade and you could pay three or four grand cash. Absolutely beautiful.

Michael: Was she painting it on a canvas?

Don: Yes. I know what you call it. When they've got three pictures that makes up one and it's kind of separated, like it's huge, you know, probably six, seven feet tall. And each picture is about two feet wide. So it's a real feature in the house. My son, he's getting tutoring on trade, swimming lessons on trade. I've got a personal trainer on trade. We've got a fruit and veg shop, butcher. We get massage, acupuncture, chiropractic, all of those things. And of course with all the health things like massage and chiropractic, we're in a private health fund so you might pay 60 bucks to see the chiropractor and you get like $28 back through your health fund. But because it's trade, it probably only costs you $25, $30 to make it.

Michael: Here's something that's really important. I'm hearing all the products and the services available where you are in the Gold coast and I guess anyone considering getting into trade for the things we're talking about, unless you're doing the national or international business, you need to have a organization that has products and services in your area that's really going to help you out. And I think that's helped you out a lot.

Don: It has. I've got a friend on the central coast and I really encouraged him to get involved with it but he couldn't seem to get what he wanted so he shied away from it. Also in saying that since I've got the transport company especially, we buy things from all around the country, you know, I'll organise my trade company to go and pick them up, bring them back. We get like runners from an athlete on the other side of the country and we've got a chemist that's up in far North Queensland. We just order all our supplies, Band aids and poison it and you know, Panadol and all those things that you need and vitamins and stuff. We just put an order in, you know, once a month and they send a downpour. It's an advantage if you've got a lot around you. But we bought things from all around the country.

Michael: How about for business type stuff?

Don: Business is the big one because almost everyone at Fintrade has a business so a lot of people want to use their trade dollars only on their business. So that's limiting if they do that. But for business like a PAT car, for example, all the mechanical tyres, I've got my windows tinted seat covers and my car washing my car is fully maintained on trade. There's nothing dirt I can't get for it. My telephone is part trade. And there are some organisations that do full trade on your telephone and they'll do your Internet and whatnot. I don't have that happening. Advertising is your business card. They've got email services that are on full trade. So if you've got a weekly newsletter that goes out, you can do it through one of those email machines. They'll pump it all out for you. Printing accommodation. If you're going away, stay in places on business because there's always a lot of accommodation on trade. You can use staff rewards, you can get them vouchers to a local restaurant rather than giving them a cash bonus. Here's 100 bucks, you and your husband go enjoy that restaurant. There is a lot of things that you can get. I get my computer service on trade. I don't know, you've probably got a few examples yourself, Mike.

Michael: Oh yeah. Well, let me ask you this, is there a dark side to trade you talk about a lot of businesses use trade just for their businesses. And when you're using trade dollars for businesses, I know I'm thinking about the tax consequence. So let's say at the beginning of the year I'm going to spend 20, 30 in trade on business. I want to make sure it's business related so I can write it off as a business expense just like I would outside of the trade world. But when it's so easy to generate trade and I'm spending it on non business expenses, we're going to be liable for the income tax on that because we can't write it off. How do you handle all that? What's your philosophy on that?

Don: Alright, that is a tricky one. Firstly, you can claim this is a trade organisations you sometimes have to pay to join, but there's a monthly fee, you can write that off completely. And all your trade fees, if it's a business, can write all those off as well. So the actual cash runnings of it, you should be able to write a lot of that off. But also when you buy things for your business using trade, you can write all those off. And your car and whatnot, you can write that off to 100%. There still might be some leftover, but if it's a real problem, you can always give the money to charitable organisations on Trade, they use the trade to help people. And again, that's 100% product.

Michael: Yeah. Or just pay the income tax on it. It's still worth it.

Don: Oh, absolutely. A good friend of mine, he was in the restaurant, he had some business problems and that's kind of when I met him and he asked me about trade and I said, look, if you own a restaurant and you're not doing trade, you're just really robbing yourself. So how he did it was quite interesting because he used to get all his trade customers in early so they would fill the restaurant. So it's like all the trade people, you've got to be out by 7, 7:30. So everyone would be in there, the restaurant would be cool. The rest of the street would be quiet. People walking up and down the main restaurant strip take out of his restaurant because it was busy. But what he did is he buys all of his wine on trade. So he makes his trade dollar pretty cheap and it's a pretty expensive restaurant. So he's got a lot of wineries on trade. He's got his bookkeeper and all sorts of things. He gives his staff bonuses using trade and whatnot. So that's worked really well for him. The people that it won't work for are people that have lousy margins or people that won't step outside their comfort zone.

Michael: For more exclusive interviews on business, marketing, advertising and copywriting, go to Michael Senoff's hardtofindsenars.com yeah. Okay. You talk about stuff you can do for your friends and family. You were able to put your mom up in grand vacation, your mom and your aunt.

Don: That actually worked out really well because as it turns out, my mum can't go, but my auntie's still down. But what it was is it's a health retreat, beautiful health retreat just north of here. And it's a 10 day program in a beautiful room and all the healthy stuff, you know, they fast them and get them on juices and fill the good food. So it's worth about 4800. But we paid for it. But they took it as a donation because they have a charitable organisation attached to it. Not only did I get to send my auntie there, I get to write it off against my business as well, which is absolutely stone.

Michael: Wow. So did you approach them on taking it as a charitable donation?

Don: No, I just saw it and I went, wow, I had to trade dollars and my mum's been quite sick, that's why she can't go. And I went, oh, how good If Mum went and my auntie went, sister's there together. They had a real great time through another trade organisation. I'd given them trade dollars before and sort of just their trade dollars. I gave it to them, they said, oh, we can accept this as a charitable donation. I went, fantastic. And my auntie's going next month, but my mum couldn't make it. So we just passed that on to somebody else.

Michael: Yeah, that's great. You know, it's probably because I know that kind of retreat, there's a lot of education. I bet there's some classes and stuff in there about how to eat healthy and stuff. And I bet that's part of why they're allowed to offer that as a charitable donation. My kids are in camp this summer and they're doing a different camp and it's put together by one of the universities. And I remember my wife was saying that we can write those camp fees, it's not on trade, but we can write that off as a charitable donation because it came from a learning institution.

Don: I actually think that this one I originally had in trade, it was about three or four years ago. They've got other causes that they're attached to and I think the type of business that they're in, people go there for probably a life changing experience and really get their health in check. And they've got all this charity set up that people can give. So to me it was an absolute bonus. Thank you. I mean, there was a time when my mum was really low on money. I didn't have a lot of money either, but I had a lot of trade. I gave my mum a staff card and I loaded up with 5,000, gave her the directory for her local area. So she was able to go and get fish and chips or get a beauty treatment, get a haircut, go to a Subway. There was a Subway that was on trade, so she was using it to offset her living expenses.

Michael: Now, Bartercard, that's their whole thing. They actually have a card like a credit card, right?

Don: That's correct.

Michael: What do you call it? A staff card.

Don: I've got my card. But you can have the staff account.

Michael: Like you're the owner and you can have employees on the account.

Don: Correct. You actually transfer money from your account into their account. So you can give them a card and have an employee that you know, rather than them come to you to say, oh, you know, I want to go to beauty salon or this and that. We'll use trade. You can just give them their card that's part of their Agreement you can drop a thousand or a couple thousand a month into their staff account. This my mum kept topping it up for her. So she went from not having much money to be able to utilise all her money for day to day living for her bills and used the Bartercard for treats and began out to dinner a couple days a week and things like that.

Michael: When you take that card into like a Subway, how do they take the card? Does Bartercard have little machines like credit card machines? They do.

Don: What they've done is quite extraordinary really. Subway is not far from me, they've just come on track, but they run it through an Epoch machine and Bartercard have done a deal with one of the banks. So if a lot of businesses like restaurants and stuff that have the epos, you can just go in and use it like a credit card. You can book a restaurant, very nice restaurant, like come in on Saturday night, I'll come in early at some trade, some barter and they're like, yeah, no problems at all. So you can just go in there and you know, my cousin and his wife might come along and we'll just have a nice meal and put it on the Bartercard. And with friends I just say just give me half in cash so we can go out and spend $100 having a flat up dinner which they wouldn't normally do. Cost them 50 bucks. And I do the same thing because I'm on the Gold Coast. As well as accommodation, all my friends that come up here, I book accommodation for them, really nice accommodation. They just give me half, make my trade dollar for a reasonable price. You know, everyone gets the win that way.

Michael: Right, that's good. So you're putting together a course. Tell me what you got going and why you decided to do that.

Don: I've been doing trade for about five years. I did a bit more with it. We've done some sort of more high end stuff with it and I met a lot of people that can't seem to put it together for how to use it. So I've got the idea of recording with you and different people I know have had success with it. I thought I'd just ring them up, get their story and just sort of tie it all together and make it into a product that I can sell on trade that will help people, give them some ideas how they can use it.

Michael: Maybe you can even get Bartercard or some of the trade organizations to endorse it and promote it for you.

Don: Well actually one of the founding business people bartercart, he owns 70% of the trade exchange I go to. So he's pretty open. So I'm going to ask him as well. And I think that would be a really good one. Just a strategy because they hear you speaking about it and they're like, I just don't get it though, you know, and neither did I, but you just have to do it. But if you can get some creative ideas like I did when I did that real estate course, I really pumped that guy for information. I walked out of there with a whole new set of strategies to use them.

Michael: You just got to make some effort. There's a recent interview I did on my site with a guy named Donahue Silvis and he's a new trade broker. He bought out the old trade broker here in Southern California. I interviewed him recently and I just got all his case studies. There's some great case studies in that interview. He owns about six or seven offices. He's the largest ITEX brokerage office owner in the country for itex. And I'm going to be doing. It's called askdonahuesilvis.com basically it's a teleseminar event. But I must have about 100 questions from my students, maybe 150, all related to trade. And I've organized them, the most common ones and the stuff that people really want to know. And they're asking the expert, Donahue Silvas, the owner of the trade exchange. So I'm going to be doing like a four or five part interview with him handling and answering all the questions about barter. You know, the one biggest, most important thing anyone wants to know about trade. So I'll make that available to you if you want to check it out.

Don: I actually do remember email through from you a few months ago. And I actually racked my brain. I thought, I can't come up with anything. What do you mainly use trade for? Anything you can, basically.

Michael: Yeah, it takes effort and sometimes you got to be reminded to use it. But you know, I'm just thinking in the past, you know, you talked about all the stuff you did on your house. You know, I had a guy who did iron work to put together this beautiful wrought iron gate on the front of my house. And this was even before I was buying trades. I had bought this projection TV and did this kind of like triangulation trade. It was pretty weird, but it worked out. You know, I ended up with a gorgeous several thousand dollar gate for maybe a few hundred dollars. We had all the popcorn on our ceiling in our home, scraped by guy on trade. The ironic thing about him, he never finished the job. He, like, flaked out. Sometimes you'll get vendors on trader a little flaky and sketchy, and we never even had to pay him. So we had like a $3,000 popcorn job done basically for free. We had to pay someone to finish up the job, but basically he did most of the work. I've had my home painted on trade. I've got a beautiful big stained glass art window that I had put on trade before my kids were born. So, you know, they walk out of their bedroom and they see these fish and like this ocean scene made. All stained glass fence work done on trade. Brick work done on trade. I remember I had a guy who came out and he was laying concrete pavers in the front of our house, and it was part cash, but he had a girlfriend named Mary who needed new eyeglasses. And so I set up an appointment with an optometrist and got her new eyeglasses. And I think that was several hundred dollars. And that was part of his payment, eyeglasses for his girlfriend. We're getting ready to go on a little trip on Saturday for about a week up the west coast. I've got about three or four places lined up. Bed and breakfasts, hotels and places to stay that are all on trade. There are some restaurants, but, you know, there's not a ton to choose from. I haven't really dug in deep, you know, like where you are, I think Bartercard, and right where you are in the gold coast, you have more concentrated members than we have here in southern California. So that can make it a little bit difficult. You know, I do a lot of direct trade outside of any kind of organization. You know, for almost eight years, I've been bartering all my website server and website hosting with my website guy. I'd have to sit down and make a list, but I've done so much on trade, it's just awesome.

Don: I think one thing that I do like about it, like you were saying that, you know, you've added your website and whatnot. It opens the door for that. That's what I find. Especially when you have cosmetics. Could start dealing with somebody and they like, oh, wow, we can just do a swap if you want. Fantastic.

Michael: That's the most freest form of a trade, is a straight trade outside of any kind of organization, outside of percentages or fees. Technically, you got to follow the law. But a straight trade, that's really where it's at, you know?

Don: Absolutely. Yeah. It just opens the door for that. And funnily enough, my wife, her hairdresser, worked for a salon that was on trade. So we used to go there. And then she left to open up her own salon. I still want to get her to do my hair. And I said, no problem. So we just found her things in trade and contoured it off that way. And this hairdresser, she's right into horses. She's got a couple of horses. And that all came up on Friday on trade. It was secondhand. It was worth about three grand. It was being used twice for something to go up to 1500.

Michael: Yeah, it's just fun, you know? And I just remember my accounting for the last eight years. My CPA is out of Chicago, and I've been doing all my accounting, my corporate accounting, which is normally going to cost me around 3,500 bucks a year. I'm paying, like, right under 700 cash in my wedding. When I got married 10 years ago, I mean, we did the whole wedding on trade. There's a French catering business that loves trade called the French Gourmet here in San Diego. They catered the whole wedding. We rented the tables. I think the band we had was on trade, the flowers, almost everything. I think our wedding cost us maybe five grand cash, which should have cost us maybe 25. I have a sales letter for the Barter secrets course. And I go over all the different things I've done on trade, just like you've kind of explained here in this interview.

Don: Do you find that you spoil yourself a lot more using trade? Because trade you up, we'll stay in that really nice place or go to that great restaurant or. Do you find yourself spoiling?

Michael: Yeah, you do, because it's like free money.

Don: It's like that. And, you know, I like to be able to do that. From the very beginning, we looked at barter as an opportunity to spoil ourselves. And then an extension of that, our family and friends. It's great to be able to do that. And a lot of things that we've got for our son. You haven't really got the cash, but we can appreciate. Otherwise we maybe wouldn't be able to do it.

Michael: But the thing the listeners need to understand is if they want to reap the benefits that you have from this and that I have from this, it's going to take some effort. It's not like you have a dollar bill or your Australian currency where you can just go anywhere. And, you know, anybody takes US Dollars really anywhere in the world, because a trade organization within that organization, you have to work a little harder to earn your trade dollars. But because you're within a closed organization in many cases that can be very easy. Just like it ended up being for your cosmetics. And then you have to make some effort to spend it, you know, and just a little more effort. Not much. But with the Internet it's become easier and easier. The online resources for itex, which is the United States largest trade organization and they're growing, they've done some great joint ventures where they're getting more and more businesses coming on. I think trade worldwide, it's just going to get better and better. I've seen it get better and better over the years.

Don: In hard economic times it really comes up because that's when people are tighten the belt, blah blah, blah. But if they're up more to do trades, if that's happening, that's good. The more people that are involved, the better it is.

Michael: There are certain reciprocal trade organizations. I don't know what's available between ITEX and Bartercard in the US There were two large trade organizations, BXI and itex. And ITEX about three years ago acquired BXI and they actually acquired another one called Intaggio, which was getting pretty big. So ITEX is the big daddy. I'd love to see them to make a move and like either acquire or joint venture with Bartercard and just open up the number of businesses who are involved with it. Because the more businesses you have, the more valuable the dollars become.

Don: The. That's right. There's one that I use here in Australia. They're associated with an American trade exchange. I'm not sure which one, but they're called platinum traders here. And I think I was the third person that joined. And these guys are actually interested. They're real estate developers. So what they do is they hooked up with platinum traders. So I was selling things to some of our cosmetics and some ebooks and whatnot. I started selling things straight away to people in America. So by the time of really got going, already had a couple of grand sitting there. What their strategy was was to get all the big traders on the Gold coast and they do have a lot of them, restaurant owners and whatnot, and then sell them real estate. And what they do is they, because they're property developers, they'd go buy a large parcel of land and then cut it up into 100 lots, do a deal with some builders, put the houses on them. They would then if they were selling the house, say 400,000, they were making a 25% trade. But they were just giving the trade to restaurant owners and whatnot. So it forced them to have to supply their services to the members. So it's gone a little bit soft now but it'll come back again. But what they were also able to do, they were able to pre sell a certain amount of their estate to their barter clients at a premium price. So it set the bar for all the values to the tax people don't very clever the way they did it. And again they're not a real big organization but everyone that's involved in it, they've probably only got maybe five or six hundred members. But everyone that's involved they're really committed because they've got real estate and whatnot. So we used a fair bit of that. I did a big sale to one of those members the other day and I haven't got any real estate with them but they've got some great restaurants with all these restaurant owners. They put them in the houses. So they've got like, you know, 100, $150,000 worth of trade they need to earn back or spend down.

Michael: I'm just sitting here thinking, you know I had mentioned how you got to work a little harder because you can only trade with the people within the trade organization but actually that's not true because if you're a member of the trade organization, you know you can work it out where you can approach anyone outside of a trade organization and still trade.

Don: Yeah, Michael, I love it. The stuff that I do is like my handyman, I originally met him in trade but he got four points. He couldn't do much more and you know, he couldn't really afford to be in it so he got out. But he does work for myself and another fellow and I just get him things on trade. Son's getting married so I've got him $2,000 worth of wine. You know that just goes in as a credit which will contour off. He needed tyres and suspension for his car. That was another $1,700 that I got on trade. He comes, you know, a half a day or a day a week doing my bits and pieces around the house, doing the lawn.

Michael: Well, same thing. Money saved is money earned.

Don: Like with my friends it's a bit more tuned into it now my friend who lives about an hour and a half north of me, he's looking to buy a house, like a second hand house. He said I'm just interested of what we could get done to it on trade because he knows that, you know we can work something out that way. If he gets people on trade, he can give me, you know, maybe 50 cents on the dollar or something or he can trade some things to make it work. So I encourage all my friends and family, if you come into the Gold coast and we'll book you in somewhere. And that was another thing that we haven't spoken about is the trade coordinators. You've virtually got a part time staff member right there. Does that work in America that way?

Michael: Yeah, that's correct. The trade brokers, those offices are there to encourage their members to buy and sell, to transact the business because this is how they make money. For every dollar that goes to their trade organization, they're making 10 to 15%. So the more volume that goes through their organization, the more they make. So yes, they are there to work for you. And here if you need help, you have online services, you can go online and search. That's probably made their job a lot easier. But you pick up the phone, you call your trade broker, you say I'm taking a vacation up the coast of California. Can you help find me some places to stay, some restaurants that are on trade or whatever you're looking for.

Don: It's saving you time at the end of the day because quite often we've got a lot of our suppliers already worked out but the things that we don't have. I'll shoot an email through on a Monday saying these are the things that I'm looking for and that's it, I haven't done anything more. Next thing I'll get an email back or they're like hey, we found somebody that's going to sell you coffee or this and that. And one of the trade organisations, they'll organise everything for me and take the trade out of my account, organize the whole thing caboodle and next minute there's a courier at the door saying oh this is a package from down the coast or whatever and it's a 50kg of coffee. Oh I'll get coffee. And it really worked out well. There was a fruit and veg shop and that's something that's hard to get. Like they were a little bit disillusioned with it. They had to go in there, you know, maybe once a week and I chat to them and they said, oh look, we're going to have a bit of a break from barter. I said ok they and they said yeah, we've just got, you know, we've got two and a half hours that we need to make if we bought something. And I said straight up. I said, well, do you want to sell the trade to me? We'll do a transaction. I bought their debt, so I gave them $2,500 worth of trade. So they were able to put their account on hold and we'd just then run in a contract.

Michael: Yeah, that's wonderful.

Don: Take my son with me. First I go to my personal trainer. He's got a private gym and he flogged me for 40 minutes. From there we. We normally go to the fruit and veg and we buy 50, 60 bucks worth of fruit and veg. Then we go to the bakery which is all entree and get all the bread or the bits and pieces and I get a quiche for coming as well for dinner that night. Then we go to the video shop also on trade. And we get movies because we spend every Saturday night watching the latest movies. And that's all on trade.

Michael: There you go. You have students listening to this and I have students listening to this. They've heard all these great things that you and I have done on trade. So what are you going to tell them? What should they do next? What would you tell them to do? To take the next step?

Don: Take the next step. I'd encourage them to just get into it. I think in Australia, join the big one, which is Bartercard and is that right?

Michael: Yeah, it's ITEX.

Don: Once I get the course going, I'll probably encourage people to send me an email or give me a call and I'll have a bit of a chat to them about it. But okay, join, go to all the networking where you get to meet other members and really get your trade coordinator active in promoting you to make the trade and also finding the women to spend on trade. And I would also say start slowly because a lot of people get planned, they're new and people just jump all over them trying to spend their trade dollars. When we first started, we just did about 10 grand a year in sales. Interest of feel our way through it and we built momentum with our contact and confidence about doing it because it's a skill really you need to learn.

Michael: Another thing I was going to say is, you know, when you call in these trade brokers, I had mentioned there's a lot of stuff online. Supposedly you can see everything that's available. And I know in Bartercard because actually I worked with a consulting client and I got him set up with Bartercard and I remember him letting me go take a look at his account. He was in Canada and there are a lot of members on that Bartercard that you have to contact the broker and that's probably exactly what you're saying. Like a printer. A printer is only going to allocate a certain amount of dollars in trades. So you have to contact the broker. But the point is the broker knows a lot of businesses that will take trade but may not be on the directory, in the printed directory or on the online. Also, the brokers have access with reciprocal trade organizations. So Bartercard, I'm sure has some relationships with other trade organization where they reciprocate each other's clients. You know, if a client wants something in a certain area and they have ways to work that out as well.

Don: What's quite common to me is that I'll ring Bartercards, fix my track coordinator and I'll let them up with this, that and that. But I only want somebody that's keen to do it. I don't want to be ringing somebody and have to twist their arms. Like for example might be to say, I need mechanical repairs. So you might ring up and say, you know, I want this done. And I. So have you got anyone that's keen to trade? Well, they might have, you know, mechanic A that's like, oh, you know, I've got enough trades. I'm not really interested at the moment. I want to find somebody that's keen. And it's usually one of the first questions I ask and I'll bring up and say, John, I found you details in the bartercard directory or trade coordinator gave me a detail. I wanted to get this and that done. Are you keen to trade at the moment? That way, you know, they'll say yes or no. Sometimes they'll do it reluctantly. And I just don't want that situation.

Michael: So, Don, if anyone was interested in learning more about your barter recordings in your barter course, what would be the best way for them to get more information on it?

Don: Just to email me. And that's at Donnydent@bigpond.com I'll shoot out any information I've got or if I've got any questions. And in a nutshell, it's a good thing. It can really enhance your personal life and get some treats you wouldn't have normally had and build some really good business contacts. I mean, that's another thing to start a client, if you're doing a good job for them, they'll tell their friends and their friends come to you and spend cash. So it is a good way to generate your entire business.

Michael: You're absolutely right. All right, well, look, this has been great.

Don: Appreciate that it's really good and that you're doing this site.

Michael: Hey, thank you very much. I appreciate it.

Don: I don't know how many. I've told countless people about it. Like, you gotta go listen to this stuff.

Michael: Alright, great. I love it. That's what I want. Just keep sharing it with people.

Don: Oh, I do. I'm always sending the link out. It's really been great to speak with you finally.

Michael: You too. I appreciate it. I'm glad we got to do this. All right, Don, take care.

Don: Take it easy.

Michael: You too.

Don: Bye. Bye.

Michael: That's the end of our interview with Don. I hope you found this barter interview enjoyable and educational. Don't overlook barter. I love trade. I use it all the time. And for more information on some of my secrets on how to use trade to make more and save more, go to hardtofindseminars.com Barter Secrets Thanks for listening.