Michael: What I keep telling people, you’ve got to have control of your own product and you’ve got to have a product that is exclusive. This thing, you’ve got competition out the butt, everywhere. Everybody’s selling this. You don’t have any kind of exclusive product. It’s hard to sell something for $30 you can get for $6.00. What I would tell you to do is bust your butt and create your own product. [MUSIC]

Michael: Hi, it’s Michael Senoff with www.Here’s another consultation with a gentleman named Nido. Nido bought into a business opportunity called Coastal Vacations. It was about a $1,300 package and it’s selling or being able to buy at wholesale vacation certificates and then reselling them. So, he called me. He’s a Jay Abraham student and he wanted to ask my advice on how he should market his business. You’ll find in the next 45 minutes that I wasn’t too excited about the idea, but we get into some ideas on how he can leverage his time, how he can set up automatic selling systems, and I just give him in down to earth real advice on what he should do with this business opportunity. If you’ve gone into a business opportunity before and it relies on you to actually do the selling and all the appointment setting and everything, I think you’re going to find this consultation helpful. Stick with it. It’s about 45 minutes. Enjoy.

Michael: Nido.

Nido: Yes.

Michael: You told me you had a couple of businesses. I’d be willing to help you out the best I can. Do you want to tell me what you’ve got going?

Nido: One thing is a company called Coastal Vacation. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of them? Basically what they do is they are a wholesale travel company. A lot of the guys they use it to kind of just like a cruise . You kind of just basically pay up front once and then the next person you recruit, you get a commission from them just the first time.

Michael: Is it an MLM deal?

Nido: It’s not, but that’s the way I use it because of the wholesale travel. I sell it to businesses so they can use it as an incentive for either a big sale or basically you can give away a free vacation, a free cruise, just increase their sales. They can give it to the people that work with them. I’m doing the retail side of that. I’m not doing it MLM. You don’t have to do it MLM, but some people choose to do it that way.

Michael: But the MLM, is it just a two-tier direct selling thing or is it a true MLM?

Nido: It’s a _____. I think that’s the compensation they use as part of MLM, but it’s not like the regular MLM that every month you have to purchase something.

Michael: So, you’re using it just as a product to buy wholesale and resell?

Nido: Exactly. I’m just using it to resell to businesses, market it to businesses, schools; just so they can have like fund raisers, stuff like that.

Michael: How much do these vacations cost you and what can you sell them for?

Nido: The vacations actually cost me nothing. For $6.95, that’s just for shipping and handling, they actually cost me nothing.

Michael: They’re the certificates, right, for $6.95.

Nido: Yes.

Michael: How much did you pay to get into this thing?

Nido: I paid $1,300.

Michael: $1,300 and what do you get for that, the rights to buy them for nothing?

Nido: Exactly, buy it for nothing. _____ to really, really nothing. That’s what I liked about it. One site called Free Gifts of America, and they sell video games, movies, DVDs and all those gadgets that everyone uses and you can actually give away a free $1,000 gift certificate for free. You just pay for shipping and handling.

Michael: But they’re sending you paper, right?

Nido: They’re just sending me paper.

Michael: So, for $6.95, they’re still making $5.00 on it.

Nido: Yes. Another good thing is I can actually just photocopies of those, so I don’t have to order them.

Michael: For $1,300 you got the rights to buy all of this stuff and they give you five free vacations?

Nido: Five free cruises. They give you 30 vacations.

Michael: You get 30 of those same certificates or do you get something more special?

Nido: You get 30 certificates, you get 5 cruises because they’re actually different packages you can get in. I just got in the first package, the one package. If you got into level two packages, those are about $3,000--that’s how much it’s going to cost you--you get unlimited free cruises.

Michael: But the free cruises, what’s the catch? Where’s the angle?

Nido: The catch is you’ve got to pay for port fees and taxes.

Michael: How much is that?

Nido: And that’s going to be about $100/$150 a person.

Michael: For like a seven-day cruise?

Nido: For a seven-day cruise, yes. So, you’ve got a free room, you get free food while you’re on the cruise, you have free entertainment. The only thing you’ve got to pay for is for alcohol and if you want to gamble. And they actually have a package that’s about $9,700. If you get that, it actually comes with free everything.

Michael: Are they using major cruise lines, Carnival?

Nido: Yes, Carnival, Norwegian, Princess.

Michael: Are there special blackout dates?

Nido: You have to get it 60 to 90 days in advance. That’s the only thing.

Michael: You have to book it 60/90 days in advance?

Nido: Yes.

Michael: Do these cruises, they leave out all over the country?

Nido: All over the country; Bahamas, anywhere you want to go. They also have European part of the deal, but if you want to go to Europe, if you want to have a free vacation to Europe, you can _____ and you get discount cards. For example, if you want to get a car rental, you get a discount card. If you want to go out, like a Diner’s card, you get that. It comes with the package. And they also have condo cards. So, if you want to get a condo for a week what you would usually cost you about $3,000, you can get it for half of that price or even less sometimes. It depends on the time.

Michael: Does that come with your package?

Nido: It comes with your package.

Michael: How do they explain to you when you sign up how they’re able to do this?

Nido: The travel industry, not everything is booked, so basically once you get a free vacation, they know that room is going to be empty. In other words, they’ve got to make money because you’re going to be spending money on their shops, on their bars. That empty room’s not really going to generate any kind of income anyway and they’re rarely full depending on the season. So, they’re like all right, why don’t we get all these and lease them and then those people are going to be able give others referrals. They’re going to enjoy the sights and enjoy the scenery and they’re going to go back and tell more people. They’re trying to plan their vacation and might get a chance even to go there. So, that’s the explanation that they give.

Michael: If it costs you $6.95 just for the shipping, what are you selling these packages for?

Nido: See, the thing is you really can’t even resell that cruise for the real price and what I do is, for example, if you don’t want to buy the package, let’s just say that you have a--you already know I get these things for free anyway and I just make copies. I’m not making $6.95. These things cost me $6.95, for $30, that’s how much I’ll give it to you for. Now, I have like a limit. So, I’m going to give you for that price--the minimum you have to buy is 10. You can either up sell, you can cross sell your list and use direct mail that any customer who buys $15 or $30 worth of food that comes with it. So, that’s how I try to market it. If I want to sell the package because that’s how they do it, I know if I’m a level one director because that’s the package I bought, I can sell it for $1,300 and make $1,000 commission, if you buy the whole package like the same way I did. A lot of people don’t do that. That’s what I offer first, but if they don’t want to do it that way, I just give them a different package. I might, you know what, buy 10 vacations. Every month you can come back to me and tell me how much more you want. It depends on how well it works for you in the past.

Michael: I understand. So, you basically bought into it so could be able to get them for next to nothing and then to resell them.

Nido: Yes.

Michael: All right. And how long ago did you buy into this thing?

Nido: November.

Michael: Do they give you any marketing support or are you on your own on that?

Nido: I’m pretty much on my own. They do have like those replicating websites and I mean that’s pretty much it, but you’ve got to pay like $80 a month and it captures leads and stuff like that. But even if you’ve got the website, you’ve got to get hits.

Michael: They give you a website?

Nido: Yes.

Michael: For $80 a month?

Nido: Yes. I was looking at it. I’m not really into the Internet, so I basically do some cold calling and make appointments and stuff like that. That’s how I try to do it.

Michael: So, how is it going so far?

Nido: I’m doing all right. Once I get to sit down with someone and talk to them, it’s been pretty well. But the hardest thing in cold calling anyone will tell you is getting the appointment.

Michael: Well, does the company tell who’s having a lot of success with these and they’re successful in marketing it?

Nido: Yes. I’ve actually spoken to the person I _____. I made sure it was someone who was doing it the same way I wanted to do it. She’s doing it on the retail side. She’s doing pretty well and she’s given me a couple of ideas. She told me basically send out flyers. She doesn’t really cold call. That’s something that I do.

Michael: Have you found that people are skeptical about the whole opportunity?

Nido: Yes. If you go online and you search for cruises and you search through all these things, the prices are ridiculous. And once you tell them over the phone what you can do for them and what you’re trying to sell and how it can help them, they really very skeptic because the numbers don’t match up.

Michael: Selling the people on the idea is a tough thing. Been on one of these cruises, yet, have you?

Nido: No. That’s one thing they told me, to use the package so you can get a better idea.

Michael: Have you talked to anyone who’s been on one?

Nido: Yes. The lady who talked to me about the business, she’s been on a couple of them actually. She sent me receipts…

Michael: The only thing is the port fees and the taxes.

Nido: Port fees and the taxes.

Michael: And it only comes to $150?

Nido: $150, yes.

Michael: So, what kind of tax is it? Do you know?

Nido: It’s a port fee tax. I mean I really don’t know. Even though you’ve been paying port fees, some of the cruises you actually--what’s included is they add the port fee. So, basically you get a free hotel room for the night and when you come back from the cruise line they have a hotel there. She sent me receipts. She sent me a lot of testimonials, proof on paper from hotels and cruise lines she got and it shows the price, it shows the date and time. Once I sit down with people, I can go it’s kind of hard to believe, but here’s the receipt from this cruise and here’s the receipt from this hotel and some hotels you just pay taxes, 5% tax and tips; whatever you want to give and you owe nothing else. And then there’s some hotels that you just pay like 75% off depending on the time and location. And then she showed me receipts on air flights. That’s one thing you don’t really _____ on prices of similar--most places. She showed me receipts from car rentals; unbelievable deals she got on car rentals, condos, and all those things I have proof on.

Michael: Where are all the questions and answers covered for these people? Do you have brochures that covers everything?

Nido: We have brochures, the website, but once I sit down with these people, I actually have a presentation book that I made. I just kind of run people through it and I show them how to use the package, what the package is all about. I show them proof of how it works, who used it. And they can even call--I know it would be better for me to go on a cruise and then I’ll have a better experience and talk about it a little more, but at the same time, it’s right there for them. Sometimes it’s hard to believe, but it does work. I was skeptical myself when I heard about this company, but once I got into it and I learned all about it, then I know it’s for real.

Michael: Well, selling vacations, there’s a huge demand for that and people love to travel, that’s for sure. The thing is, you’re really doing it the hard way and that’s doing face-to-face presentations. You can only make so many presentations every day. You don’t have an automatic selling system in place. Do you see? I don’t know if the website that they have for $80 a month actually helps you make the sales, but certainly like my website. I mean we’re talking now. How many hours have you listened to me before we finally talked?

Nido: At least 50 hours.

Michael: You’ve heard me tell people this over and over again. How old are you right now, 21?

Nido: 24.

Michael: You’re 24? You’ve got a good product, but you’ve got to go out and sell it face-to-face and there’s nothing wrong with that. I mean it’s great experience and everything, but may as well think ahead and come up with something and use the Internet or use some device to do the selling for you. I don’t know if you’ve listened to all the audio recordings on page G where I’m talking about people developing information products. I’m just teaching what works best for me. My audio recordings are a little selling machine, all automatic without me having to be there and that’s what keeps me sane. I mean right now you and I are talking because I’m doing a recording, so I get something out it and I don’t feel like I’m wasting my time. What I would tell you and you’ve probably heard me tell you this over and over again, I would do an Internet audio infomercial. I would get someone to interview you, whether it’s me or a professional in the travel industry with some credibility or you can pay them to do an interview with you where you outline all the questions and the concerns that the most skeptical person would have. I’m a pretty skeptical person and I’ve seen these things in the past. I’ve seen business opportunities have been selling these certificates forever. There’s always some catch even though you tell me it’s just a port fee and the taxes. In the back of my brain I’m just saying, sure, there’s something else. There’s going to be some catch. How could they do this? Even though I have a good understanding of the barter industry, the trade industry, I understand the concept. The hotel rooms expire or cruise line rooms expire and they have the ability to buy lots of these up at discount and then resell them. But the public doesn’t understand that and they don’t believe it. You’ve got to get past that skepticism and you’re going to need to do a selling job to get people to listen to you. And for you to go set up these meetings and meet with these restaurant owners or business people to sit down with a presentation, you make five appointments; three of them cancel on you. You go there and there’s interruptions. You’re just wasting so much time because you’re doing the prospecting and you’re trying to do the selling all at one time. You don’t have an automatic selling system. An automatic selling system could be the form of a sales letter. It could be a website selling the whole idea of this with a question and answer page or with an audio recording, with testimonials of people who have actually gone on these things. That’s what I would be working on and setting this up if you’re serious about doing this.

Nido: I see.

Michael: You’ve really got to prove to these people…I would have a website from whomever you bought the package from. I would get real clients, real customers who went on these vacations using these certificates. I would get someone to interview them. Have audio interviews up on the site. I would do an intensive interview. Does the company, when they’re selling the opportunity, do they have any audio recordings that help sell the opportunity?

Nido: Yes, they have conference calls.

Michael: That’s selling an opportunity where you’re selling someone to get into the business opportunity. Why doesn’t that attract you, the selling opportunity where you can make $1,000 on the opportunity?

Nido: Well, because I’ve actually been in a lot of marketing companies before and I just really don’t like working with people.

Michael: No, you’ve got a baby.

Nido: I was just never into that because a lot of people really blame you for all the things that go wrong for them. They don’t want to get up. They don’t want to do the work and plus it’s a $1,300 opportunity and once they get in then, they’re not going to do a lot of work and they’re not going to do a lot of stuff and you’re really going to have to _____. I really didn’t want to do that way. Another reason is because I’m a big, big fan of Jay Abraham and I have a lot of his material. And once I learned his _____ and I figured, you know what, I think by me purchasing this package I can combine the two. I can use these as incentives to market Jay Abraham’s ideology on business and just use these to increase sales and you can cross sell them or you can have them joint venture.

Michael: One thing you’re going to find if you go in and start talking to these businesses about marketing in Jay Abraham terms, cross sells and up sells and host parasite relationships, and you’re trying to explain to them how they can use these using these marketing presentations, they’re going to look at you like you’re from outer space. Have you tried that?

Nido: I’ve tried a few.

Michael: They don’t get it do they? Don’t waste your time trying to do that. You and I understand it and the few Jay Abraham students in the world understand it, but for you to believe that you’re going to be able to convince people about this, explaining to them all of this great newfound knowledge that you understand and trying to sell them on that knowledge and sell them on the vehicle of using a vacation certificate to do that, you’ve got a long sell ahead of you. You’ve got to approach them in a way that gets their attention. It’s not necessarily the vacation certificate that’s going to do it, but you’ve got to approach them and call them on the phone and say something like, you don’t know me, don’t hang up, but would you be open to the idea if I had a way to double the people who come into your restaurant. Just something like that and then you’re going to have their attention. They’re going to say well how do I do that. Well, it’ll take ten minutes for me to explain. Can I come in and show you or can I send you something? And you’ve got to qualify these people first. The answer to your thing is not just one thing you’ve got to do. You’ve got a business and there is so many things. You’ve got lead generating ideas. You’ve got to qualify your prospects. You’ve got to make the appointments. I guess the first thing what I would do is I would find a method that’s working gangbusters for other people who have done this before you. I know you want to go to restaurants and that’s one idea, but do a little more research and find some other distributors who are kicking ass in this business. Call the company. Go back to the website. See who’s leaving testimonials. See who’s doing a tremendous retail volume with these certificates and pick that guy’s brain and find out what he’s doing and find out how he’s doing it and just copy it. You’ve got to call the company and say who is doing the biggest volume in these retail certificates and how are they doing it. Why try to reinvent the wheel and come up with your own thing when you can just model what someone else is doing, a proven system. If he doesn’t want to tell you about the system, see if he’ll license the system to you, what he’s doing exactly. It’s a huge world out there. Now, he may be doing it for one industry that you could take to another industry, but he’s got a system in place that’s working.

Nido: The person that I got the business list, she is actually one of the best-- actually another guy who I went to his website. I like the material and referred about--he learned from this marketing guru…pretty sure he was referring to Jay Abraham. I gave him a call. The only way he would help me, if I lease out a package from him and then I was like well I already have the package. It’s kind of like would you just coach me even if I have to pay you. The kind of guy--my time is money…so basically if I’m going to help you out I want to be compensated. I’m like well I’m willing to pay you, but he’s like no you have to buy this package. _____ cold calling and ask them if they want 50,000 marketing ideas for pennies on the dollar.

Michael: No, I understand. Are you married?

Nido: Yes, I just got married five months ago.

Michael: Congratulations. So, what kind of money would you like to make out of this?

Nido: If I make $2,000 a week I’ll be happy for now. That’s my goal. I don’t know if you got my email. Another thing I’m doing--I’m trying to help other businesses. See, I was like why don’t I start my own different business and just use this as an incentive for me to get clients and that’s why I’m doing mortgages. I’m working for a company called National Lender. They’re a mortgage company and I’m basically a recruiter for them. It’s kind of like network marketing in a way, but it’s actually different because in network marketing you have to pay every month. This one you just pay for your training. The amount of training or any other like real estate training, $200. After that you don’t pay anything else. What’s good about it is that you actually get commissions out of all the mortgage _____ that you train. We live on the east coast and real estate is really big over here and that’s something I’ve always wanted to do.

Michael: Here’s the thing. You’re selling something that is free everywhere. That’s the problem. It’s hard to sell something that’s free.

Nido: Do the people know that it’s free? Like if someone came up to me and said I have Hawaii vacation for 99-cents and you’re like how come I never heard of that before.

Michael: The Coastal Vacations, home business opportunity for sale. This is allover the Internet, all over eBay. Coastal vacations, platinum travel package. This is looking at all their brochures. Did you get a CD-Rom and everything?

Nido: Yes, I got a CD-Rom.

Michael: And the video tape?

Nido: Video tape, yes.

Michael: Did you have to buy the brochures from them?

Nido: No, it came with my package.

Michael: If you’re going to be doing marketing, you’ve got to buy them from them right?

Nido: Yes.

Michael: So, what do they charge for all their marketing materials, brochures and everything? Let’s say you want to promote it. You need about 1,000 brochures. You want to do a mailing piece or something.

Nido: The cheapest one they had is about $3.00.

Michael: $3.00 for a brochure?

Nido: Yes. They have some that are $5.00.

Michael: Well, you see how they’re making their money?

Nido: Yes.

Michael: Let’s say you’re out there hustling and you’re doing serious marketing. You’re leaving brochures with people. It’s costing you $3.00 for a color brochure.

Nido: Yes.

Michael: You’re going to get killed. That’s the problem right there. This company, you know, they’re giving something away for free, but they’re making their money on the printing and the promotional material because anyone serious about selling this they’ve got to have brochures and literature. Do they sell audiotapes to help you promote the actual package?

Nido: No.

Michael: That’s just with the opportunity?

Nido: Yes. A lot of this stuff is just like any other company. Depending on the team because every team has printed products and marketing tools and the person--I know that she had sent me some audios on how to do a retail company, some Power Point presentations; stuff like that.

Michael: You’re only 24. If I were you and I don’t want to burst your bubble and I know you’ve invested some money in it, is your wife into this thing.

Nido: She’s cautious.

Michael: Does she support you with this thing?

Nido: She supports me.

Michael: You know what I keep telling people? You’ve got to have control of your own product and you’ve got to have a product that is exclusive. This thing, you’ve got competition out the butt everywhere, on eBay. It’s so easy for people to go let me go see if I can find it cheaper on eBay or let me see what I can find about it. You have business opportunity people all over the place selling this. You don’t have any kind of exclusive product and also the product’s already for free everywhere. It’s hard to sell something for $30 that you can get for $6.00. People are smart. Consumers know how to shop, especially with the click of a button on Goggle search. Why are they going to pay you $30, even though they don’t know about it, they may say well hold on, let me see if I can find it somewhere else. They may like your idea and you’ve done the work in selling it to them, but they’re just going to go around you. I know you bought into the business opportunity. Maybe you can get your money back out of it. If I were you, I’d maybe do enough sales to get your money back and what I would tell you to do is just bust your ass and create your product. All these recordings on page G of my audio recordings, page G, those are the consults with all the people on how to create your own information product. There’s so many ideas on how to do that. They’re so easy to do. You just get a little recorder, if you’re interviewing someone, they don’t have to be as good as mine. I’d have your own product. And if you’re interviewing people, no one can knock that off because no one can knock you off. Doing interviews is so easy. You’ve just got to do the editing. And you come up with any topic you can think of that’s interesting to you and you find experts in that topic. For instance, how many thousands of distributors does this company have, tons?

Nido: Yes. The have a lot.

Michael: Since you want to learn about this, this would be a win-win situation if you don’t want to give up this business. You could go find the top 10 producers in this company and you can do an audio interview with each one. And you can record that and then edit it. So, you have 10 interviews with the top producing companies where you’re doing the interviews, you’re getting all their secrets. You tell them you’re putting a package together of the top producers of this Coastal Vacation business opportunity, and you take that package and go right to the company with it and you sell it to them. Then Coastal Vacations uses that as a promotion to sell people on the business opportunity. But you control it. It’s your product. They’ve got thousands of distributors, so let’s say you sell that package. You get them burned on 10 CDs, you put them in a little binder and let’s say you sell those 10 interviews for $79.00 and you keep $40. Coastal Vacations takes the rest. They can put it in the hands of thousands and thousands of distributors, even the distributors who are trying to sell the opportunity will have to buy it to help promote it. One little product like that could set you. They’re trying to sell business ops. You don’t even have to give them a piece of the action. You can say, look, I’ve put together 10 interviews with your top producers, here they are or you could give them the rights to use them. That’s what these business opportunity people want. They want tools that’ll help them sell the business opportunities. Then you can take those, you put them on a website and you can charge people access to the website or let’s say people had a sales organization under them. You could put their interview up on one page. He wants to show his people how well that he’s doing and he let’s them listen to their interview and then he up sells them on all 10 other interviews. And you can do joint ventures with them. Do you think you could do something like that?

Nido: I definitely could do something like that.

Michael: And at the same time you get to learn all the secrets on how to market this thing. And you’re already interested in it, aren’t you? That’s why we’re talking.

Nido: It’s funny that you said that because the mortgage company I’m dealing with, they really don’t have anything. I was actually looking for some kind of help because it’s actually like a four-year company, even though they already have 39,000 sales associates and it’s really, really growing right now. But they don’t have something like you just mentioned. Something I actually did myself was I called two of the top people in the company and asked what they did to be successful in this company. And if I just put that in a recording like you just said and I get 10 people from…

Michael: You would already had two recording. Do you have a digital recorder?

Nido: No I don’t.

Michael: Do you have a Circuit City over there?

Nido: Yes.

Michael: This is the one I use and I’ve been really happy with it. It’s $100. It’s a Sony. Sony IC recorder. The model number is ICD-ST25 stereo. It’s perfect. You can go Radio Shack and get the plug in. You can figure out how to use it. And start recording your calls. Get permission and do that. In a month, 30 days from now, you can get 10 of these things done. I can provide an editing service. I can do editing for you. I’m going to charge you for it. I won’t do it myself, but I can farm it out or you can go on Elance. You know what I would tell you, you need to learn to do it yourself. They don’t even have to be edited perfectly. You’re going to have to do some editing. They’ve got to be just good enough. But get the raw content out and then once you’ve edited it, you can clean up all the screw ups and make it sound good. And then you’ve got 10 recordings and now you’ve got a product to sell that people. People want a way to sell Coastal Vacation business opportunity packages and to sell the actual vacations. And you’re selling the knowledge. See how the company is making all the money on the brochures and the marketing materials? That’s how multi-level companies make a lot of their money is on all the promotional materials that they sell to the distributors who are out there selling this stuff. Well, now you become part of the promotional material and you can do it better than what the company can do.

Nido: Well, it’s something to consider because I got a room full of promotional material from all the companies I work with.

Michael: So, turn the tables on them. Learn from your mistake and you create some promotional materials that are kick ass.

Nido: I can use this idea you gave me with anything. Like, for example, I can just call experts…

Michael: Anything. You can call the ten best experts of mortgage brokers and then sell to mortgage brokers all over the country. You can call the ten biggest experts in the travel industry and sell to the travel industry; all the people who are trying to make a living in the travel industry. They want shortcuts. They want to learn from the best. They will pay for that.

Nido: Do you think doing it--how do people react. I mean I know people love to be questioned and asked about their success stories.

Michael: Oh, they love it.

Nido: I just cold call and say hey John you’ve been really successful and I really- -can I have about 20 minutes of your time because I have a question. I mean do you think they’re all going be fine with that or?

Michael: Tell them you’re producer, you’re your own company and you’re putting together a website for mortgage brokers or whatever the niche you’re selling. And you’re interviewing the ten top experts in the industry and your interview will be played internationally and you’d like to know if he would like to be one of our top ten experts to be interviewed. It’s free promotion for them. Rarely does anyone want to really know about how they grew their business and most successful people are pretty nice people and willing to tell you anything they want. So, if you ask ten, you’re going to get five easily. It’s all the way you position them. You need to ask them if they’d be willing to help you out. I mean why wouldn’t they? They’re going to be on the website. They get to toot their own horn. They get to talk about themselves and you just grill them and find out every secret they’ve got. Start from the beginning and just let them talk. Before you know it, they’re in a trance talking and reminiscing and you just shut up and listen. Just keep that recorder going. And as they talk, things are going to come up into your mind of I want to ask them about that or you expand more on that and you just make notes on a piece of paper while they’re talking. And then when there’s a break in the conversation and it’s the right time, you can go back and say you were talking about this, well tell me, how did you do this or what kind of promotional material did you use or what was the letter. Who wrote the letter? How much did you pay? Where did you get the copywriter? You just dig deeper and deeper and deeper. Some of the interviews could go two or three hours. Explain to them that this maybe three hours. If you know you’ve got only an hour at a time, you’re going to just have to get the basics. You can find the most commonly asked questions. One real good trick is, let’s say you’re interviewing mortgage brokers. You can go on the Amazon.com and you can find the books, the Idiot Guides to Mortgage brokering and you can look inside the books and you can see the table of contents and then you’ll have your whole outline of things to talk about. The editors have already produced a table of contents of the things they’re going to teach the readers. You follow that format. It’s already been done and that can be related to any subject you can think of. So, your organization of your audio interview has already been formatted. You’re just borrowing it from other books. Does that make sense?

Nido: That makes a lot of sense.

Michael: Sit down and use it as an outline.

Nido: That opened up a whole new idea that I never thought of before. Take on your own stuff because now I have the rights. I can sell it anywhere I want.

Michael: That’s right. You want to have control over your own product. You’ve got to be the main source of your product and no one can flip you, no one can go around you. It’s called the tollbooth position. Anyone who wants your product--let’s say word gets out and some person who just came into the business opportunity listened to your CDs of your interviews with the top experts and they want a copy. Who do they have to go through to get them, you? You’re 24, you may as well get your money out of this thing. Just do a little bit of it on the side, but I think if you invest the time and the pain and just get the product together like this on any industry. Get 10 interviews and you’ve got a product right there that you could really start making some good money with. You’ve just got to do it. That’s the thing. And the first step is go get a digital recorder.

Nido: I’ll do that as soon as possible, go to Best Buy.

Michael: Well, make a note. The digital recorder I got takes only batteries. There’s one that has a charging station and if you’re going to be doing this a lot, I would get the one with the charging station. It’s maybe $50 more because you’re going to go through a lot of batteries and they’re expensive; triple- A’s. They may even be cheaper. I’ve had mine for a couple years.

Nido: Do you study from Jay Abraham? Is that the only person you got all your ideas from because you have got a lot of creative ideas on your website?

Michael: No, it’s not just Jay Abraham. I’ve studied with a lot of people. Just take the ideas and then use it with my own personality. It’s a combination of anyone that I’ve come across. Jay Abraham has a lot of great ideas, but you may have ideas better than him. It’s just an evolving thing. Don’t discount anyone. You can learn from anyone. If you like the person and you like their ideas and you like the way they talk, you think they’ve got good ideas, study them. Has this been helpful?

Nido: Very helpful. I really appreciate it and I’m definitely going to keep your website in my list and refer it to anyone that I know.

Michael: I really appreciate it. Just tell everyone you know. I’m sorry I didn’t give you tons of great ideas for your Coastal Vacation business.

Nido: Oh, no. You gave me something that’s going to be worth--this is something I was actually thinking about. The idea you gave me is basically just get ideas from experts. It’s not really going to put a hole in my brain. It may _____ some other people…

Michael: I can tell you, go give this a year. Get on the phone. Make calls. Go see five or ten people a day. Make a presentation. You may be able to make a couple thousand a week. But it’s a grind. You’ve got to do it over and over and over again unless you have some automatic selling systems. You want to create automatic selling systems that do the selling for you. Take yourself out of the picture.

Nido: Leverage, right.

Michael: Leverage, that’s right. That’s not leverage. You may have the energy now at 24, but when you’re 44, you’re going to be burned out. You’re going to be tired. So, use your youthful energy now to create your own products, your own audio recordings. They don’t have to be that great. They can just be okay. It’s just the ideas. If people give one or two great ideas, it’s going to help them and then always be thinking of something else you can sell in the audio recordings. So, for instance, just expound on one idea. Let’s say you’re interviewing mortgage brokers. When you’re talking to the mortgage broker you tell them they’re going to give their best ideas to you on this interview and as thousands of people are listening to these recordings about you as a mortgage broker, they’re going to want additional help and training and you can make a deal with the mortgage broker to sell one-on-one consulting if the mortgage broker is willing to do that at a certain price per hour; maybe $500 an hour, $600 an hour. Someone who listens to the interview with Joe mortgage broker and you and they want to contact that mortgage brokers, I’ll show you how to keep control over all the leads. Let’s say someone calls and they say I want to talk to that mortgage you interviewed, which happens to me all the time. You make a deal with that mortgage broker that you’ll provide him people who want consulting if you just split the fee with him.

Michael: But you’re going to control the leads. When you get to that point, I’ll show you how do that before you do the editing of your recordings. So, then you have a backend. And if the guy doesn’t pay you, you stop the flow of the leads and if a lead comes in and they want to talk to this one guy, you say I’ve got a better guy you can talk to. You’ve got to have control of the leads and the calls that come in and you just set these deals up. Now you have a backend product, too.

Nido: Yes, trying to get the maximum out of whatever you’re doing.

Michael: Exactly.

Nido: All right. Thanks so a lot Michael.

Michael: Bye Nido.

Nido: All right. Have a good day.

Michael: Good luck.