Michael: I know what happened with the business deal. The deal didn’t go down. There were concerns on both parts. So, where are you at right now?

Eric: Well, what I started to do is I started to say, “You know what? I understand a lot of ins and out of the health industry, and I have contact with people who actually can make compounds.” So, I’m just actually working on all the systems right now. For instance, making sure I have a company that can take care of the orders. I don’t know if you use a To Checkout or one of those on your website. I can’t remember.

Michael: I use PayPal, but To Checkout is one option. They’re pretty expensive as far as the fees they charge, but you can get yourself set up with a credit card processor pretty easily even if you have poor credit. I would recommend Card Service International. Card Service International will get you started. 3 Who do you bank with right now?

Eric: Bank of America.

Michael: You can call Bank of America. Tell them that you’re starting a business. If you want to do this you’ve got to get a D/B/A and open up a business account. Go down, get a D/B/A, call is something generic. Call it “Health Labs Industries” or whatever, “Brinks Health Products” something generic where you can have multiple products under that. So, get a fictitious business name, and go register it down at the county courthouse, and then bring that paperwork back to the bank. Open up a simple business account, and then once you have a business account open, you can put a couple hundred bucks in there, and then talk to the branch manager and tell him you’re interested in taking Visa and MasterCard for your bank account. At least start it. You’re going to have to test something. You’re going to have to test the sales letter. You’re going to have to see if you’ve got a winning sales promotion if you’re going to test it in the direct mail, and you can test small. So, even if you did only twenty or thirty or forty orders, you and your wife can operate it right out of the house. Once you know you have a test and a statistical sample with a certain mailing list, then if you know you’ve got a winner, then you can get all set up in more of the big time and have a fulfillment company do all that. But, really the first step is really testing and seeing if you have a winning promotion.

Eric: I get you. I’ve got the cart before the horse.

Michael: Exactly. Test it and see if you have a winner. Once you have a winner, the money is there. It’s just waiting for you to mail out more. It may take you six months to get a sales letter that proves to pay out.

Eric: See, that leads me to where I was going to go with you. Are you a joint venture partner with anyone in that industry like myself?

Michael: No, not at this time, I’m not.

Eric: Is that an idea that has attraction for you?

Michael: I’m always open to hear deals. I’ve got a lot of projects going on, and I’m open to it, but I’m not interested in really having too many partners because if you came to me with some kind of proposal, I’m open to it. But, I can pretty much create and develop any kind of product myself and keep all of the profit. 4 I’ve got that ability. Why would I do it and split it with someone when I can feed my family twice as much with my own efforts? That’s kind of where I’m right now.

Eric: I completely understand.

Michael: Yeah, you can’t blame me, and you would do the same.

Eric: I would do the same.

Michael: What did you have in mind? What would be ideal for you?

Eric: The thing is it’s different. I understand that copy is extremely important, and that starts with a test. I’m talking about copywriting and you’re not cheap.

Michael: No, I’m not.

Eric: That’s why from the standpoint what you would charge for your sales letter if you’ve ever taking a company position in lieu of cash and ongoing royalties from the company.

Michael: With copywriting, the sales letter is really everything, and if I was to do copywriting or create a sales letter, however I did, I would really want to be paid upfront. But, I’m really not for hire, but it doesn’t mean you can’t find other copywriters. Now, I can refer you to a copywriter actually, who does a pretty good job. He’s not the best of the best, but he’s pretty serious. He’s out of England, and he’s done a couple of letters for me. There’s a lot of excitement in him. I think he’s a little lazy. He could really do his research a little bit more, but it wouldn’t be a bad start, and I’m sure he’s hurting for work. He’s out in England, and he would definitely, if I referred you to him, be willing to put something together that may work out. Now, if you want to work something out on a joint venture that way, I could entertain something like that where if I hook you up with him, I endorsed you. He did the work for you, and I negotiated it all for you, then I would take a joint venture position in that.

Eric: I’d be more than happy to do something like that, Michael. I have no problem.

Michael: That I can do. I have a guy who is hungry for work, and I’ve tried him out on a couple of things and he’s done a pretty good job, pretty talented.

Eric: Pretty good testing that you got from it? 5

Michael: Well, I haven’t even tested the letters, but I can tell good work when I see it.

Eric: Real good copy?

Michael: Yeah, it’s pretty good.

Eric: See the thing is I’m thinking and this is where I think you can really help me because you’re very much online. Would I be smart to start with online or offline? Because the business was basically all offline. They had atrocious amount of expense, but they made an atrocious amount of money.

Michael: The company you were looking at buying, you had a lot of insider information. I said, “What was their number one product?” And, you told me it was this green drink. So, why not just start with something like that? Go with a green drink. Now, you’ve got the copy that sold their green drink, right?

Eric: Right.

Michael: I’m not saying steal it. You can’t steal it because it’s copyrighted, but you can dissect that and look at that letter and you could provide that letter to the copywriter, and say, “Here’s a letter that’s proven out pretty successful, and give him all the details on it, and have him recreate it in his own way.” So, you’ve got a winning formula right there. Do you know some of the details on that green drink sales letter? It’s a green powder drink that gives you all the nutrients.

Eric: Absolutely. It gives a break down of them. Of course, they have their own proprietary one. They’ve added things that they think enhanced it. And of course, it would be easy for me to throw another product in that to make my own proprietary one, and a product that I believe would extend the ability for the product to work probably very, very cheaply. Now, what they do is they type in the sales letter. They do an exhaustive job of explaining the benefits.

Michael: Is it a direct mail sales letter or is it in their catalogue?

Eric: They do the catalogue, and then they do post cards.

Michael: They have this as a hard-hitting letter in an envelope just for one product, or are they trying to sell multiple products? 6

Eric: They usually do letters with envelopes.

Michael: Where are the sales in this green drink coming from?

Eric: When you say where, do you mean as far as what the segment of the market?

Michael: How are sales being generated for the green drink?

Eric: Catalogue sales accounted for last year, $246,412 of their sales. The catalogue actually is a separate category.

Michael: For the green drink or for all their products.

Eric: For all their products, and then the green drink which was probably basically more or launch a separate launch with this own package, they did 2.9 million.

Michael: With the green drink?

Eric: Yes.

Michael: Were they selling to existing customers or cold lists?

Eric: They have a house list, and they say it’s nearing 65 to 70,000 people.

Michael: Is their list on the rental market?

Eric: Yes it is. I was at the library yesterday and got some information. I was using the SRDS. They have a minimum order of 5,000. The average unit of sale is $125 on this list. It was a huge. 59,208 product buyers in the last 24 months, and in the last 12 months of 2004 – 46,734 buyers. Then, they list hotline buyers which I need to find out more about.

Michael: How many hotline buyers?

Eric: In the fourth quarter, 2004 – 21,393.

Michael: And, this is buyers from any of their products in their catalogue.

Eric: Yes.

Michael: Do they give you selects by product or anything?

Eric: This info is through Rubin Response. 7

Michael: Oh, okay.

Eric: I actually met a VP from there. He flew down to meet with everybody there. So, I’m sure that it would be possible to get that. I bet you I could probably approach him saying, “Hey, I want this list. I spoke to you when you were there.”

Michael: You could rent that list, or you could rent other lists. The list, yes, is very important, but it’s your sales piece - your promotion, your sales letter selling the product. Have you seen a sales piece for that green drink?

Eric: Yes, I have.

Michael: How many pages is it?

Eric: The green drink, I know they have a post card and then at least a page or two.

Michael: That’s it to sell the product?

Eric: Yes, once it was separated from the catalogue, it wasn’t that big of a sales letter, two pages front and back and then it had a postcard with the offer on it.

Michael: Who was their market? Who was buying it?

Eric: Basically over 50 – the baby boomer market who were getting ready to retire.

Michael: What were the main benefits of it?

Eric: To create an environment where cancers and other major health problems like that would not be able to take root, and energy.

Michael: So, this is the thing you want to take, this green drink or your own version of it?

Eric: Absolutely. I saw the shortfall in there. I saw some things that I’d like to do better. For instance, I’ll give you an example. Of course, you can shoot them down as I tell you if they don’t make sense. One thing that I saw was that they offer the better deal and the best deal – good, better, best. One, three, six and twelve, and of course, you may need it longer. It’s more expensive, but the last one, the biggest one with twelve in it actually was including free shipping and you get a free $20 gift certificate. That’s pretty much standard, I’m sure. But, one thing that I thought that was interesting they do offer auto-ship. Of course, it’s not prominent. It’s not something that they pushed. I would’ve thought that it would’ve been more something to utilize. 8 Another thing, I’m thinking to myself, “Okay, let’s say that a customer wanted to buy one to try it out.” So, let’s say that three, six or twelve might be interesting into them but it’s just they might not have the money right now. Why not have some kind of a flex-pay? For instance, for the twelve at three to six payments. Why not have a flex pay on the three of two payments? Just something you can give more to the consumer where they’re able to spread it out. But, also another thing I was thinking about, lowering the risk. Obviously, there’s guarantees. These people give 90 days on the food product. I have read and then researched and found that they say that – I don’t know if it’s QVC or HSN things where they get a lifetime guarantee. Returns only go up to a certain degree, but sales really jump.

Michael: These are all hidden marketing assets. Now, that you’ve looked at this business that they’re not optimizing.

Eric: And another thing, at a certain purchase point, order with us. Try it, we won’t bill your credit card for 30 days. You get the authorization, but you just don’t bill it for 30 days.

Michael: Yeah, you could do that, but you don’t really want to wait for your money. If you want to test this thing, you need to get the money to finance the whole business, unless you can get your product price down. You have an example of a minimum 500 containers of the green drink powder at $13.78. How big of a container is this?

Eric: That was for the ten ounce.

Michael: You need to get this price down I think.

Eric: I went to Vitamin World yesterday. They had a 9.4 with their label on it. I don’t know if they actually have a copyright on that product, but it’s $19.78 for a container. And, then the first week of the month, you get buy one get one free, buy one get one half off.

Michael: Is this $13.78, is this your cost on the product?

Eric: Actually, they start as low at 12.78, I think. It was my cost.

Michael: And, what’s the product retail for? What’s the company selling it for? 9

Eric: This company is selling it for $49.95 at one container depending on how many containers you buy.

Michael: You need to get your price down to under five bucks I think, and I think you can do it. Go search around. The benefits of the product is important definitely, but the benefits are what you’re selling, and if it’s not a green drink, maybe it could be something else, another product that delivers the same benefits like Spirulina, Blue Green Algae. There’s all kinds of – it could be Aloe Vera juice, Aloe Vera concentrate. It could be any of these products. Just find something that costs less, but delivers great benefits. Aloe Vera is a fantastic product. There’s all kinds of stuff.

Eric: What you’re saying is absolutely true. One of their keys products and it’s expensive, is human growth hormone HTH.

Michael: I’d stay away from that one.

Eric: Really?

Michael: Yeah, because there’s a lot of heat on that with the government. EBay is regulated now. You can’t use the words. There’s all kinds of regulations with that HTH stuff.

Eric: Huh, I know there was a lot of heat for the ephedrine products. I didn’t realize the HTH stuff on eBay.

Michael: Oh, definitely. Aloe Vera has got a great history of healing. There’s some romance to it.

Eric: They don’t have it. That’s interesting.

Michael: Go search Aloe Vera juice. It’s totally consumable. Just because this company had a green drink that’s successful doesn’t mean you have to stick with that. You can find any product out there on the market, some products that have great marketing, great copy, and just be a competitor. There’s room, just do it better.

Eric: That’s true, and some of the ideas I had are improvements on what they’re doing. Aloe Vera, yeah the whole family has taken that. It was just for my burns. I had some bad burns once.

Michael: Absolutely. There’s Aloe Vera farms. There’s product lines of nothing but Aloe Vera. You want something that’s consumable, that has benefits. Go through the SRDS, look up Aloe Vera. I’m just giving you examples. Find something that’s already working and just compete, borrow and modify. 10

Eric: Exactly, and that would be a fairly inexpensive compound that even if I added one or two elements to it for my own proprietary compound, it wouldn’t be ten or twelve or fifteen bucks a bottle.

Michael: That’s right. You have to have at least over ten times cost in your product. The cost of your product should be covered in your shipping and handling.

Eric: Exactly.

Michael: And, then everything else should be pure profit.

Eric: There’s a website Certified Natural Laboratories. It’s as low as $48 a bottle. I can get the product for as low as $2.50 a bottle made.

Michael: Certified National Laboratories?

Eric: Certified Natural.

Michael: What do they make, the sublingual stuff?

Eric: These are all caps. At least, from this standpoint these are all an economy line and a premium line. I could use their labels. Of course, I would want my own label, but they’ll ship for dirt cheap.

Michael: And, they have all kinds of stuff?

Eric: Oh my goodness, everything from breast enhancement, male enhancement, sexual health for men and women.

Michael: You have to send me the link. Basically, the products are a dime a dozen. You can find them already formulated. People will drop ship and everything for you?

Eric: For example, they send 48 in a case of their economy product, $2.50 a bottle. I think the shipping was like five dollars a case, which hardly adds anything to the product, a little bit more than a dime. So, what I was thinking was my shipping and handling of $6.95, let’s say, that’s what my competitor has. That would cover the cost of the product. It would cover the shipping, and the labeling.

Michael: The product’s important, but it’s all the marketing.

Eric: The sizzle not the steak. 11

Michael: That’s right. So, that’s what you’ve got to think.

Eric: It’s really good. It’s kind of galvanizing to talk about it because what I don’t want to do, Michael, is I don’t want to mess around and I don’t want to say, “Well, I have to have a whole bunch of money to do this.” Now, when you do a test, is there a point where it’s pointless to test?

Michael: You don’t want to waste your money on a test. I heard you want to test something large enough to where you can generate at least 20 orders. But, let’s say if it’s 5,000 in names and it’s 15 cents a name. So, it’s $150 a thousand. So, you’re going to spend $750 on your names, but you don’t have to mail all your names. You could just mail 500 of them. So, it’s going to cost you $750 and $250 for the mailing. It’s going to cost you about $1,000 to test the sales letter to a market. Depending on the price of your product, if you can pull two percent, the difference between a huge mega-winner and a loser can be just a tenth of a percent. So, if you mail out a thousand and you get two percent that will be 20 orders out to the hotlines, the best names there on the list. For example, let’s say you’re renting from a list that has 40,000 hotlines every month, and you pull a two percent. It makes you a certain amount of money. You have right there 40,000 new people to mail out to every month. When you’re choosing your list, make sure it has a nice large universe – lots of hotlines, lots of new customers. That hotline is the most recent customer of that list renter. So, if it’s my list, the hotline would be someone who’s bought from me in the last 30 days, or the last 60 days. If you’re going to mail to someone, you want to mail to someone who’s hot. If my list is a list of people who bought a diet aid to lose weight, and you have a product that would maybe enhance the diet aid or it’s another diet aid or something related to diet and exercise – equipment or an exercise video, you’re going to want me while I’m hot. I just spent money with my credit card on a diet aid. So, you’re going to hit me up right then as soon as you can. If you wait, I may be off my diet. So, the hotline names are more responsive. They’re the most recent customers because recency is important when you’re trying to sell someone. The best time to sell someone is right at the same time they bought. Every day that goes by, they cool off. You’ve got to get them while their in heat.

Eric: Let me ask you this. This is really an important question. Remember I was telling you about the $6.95 shipping and handling that this company does. People don’t even blink at it, and it’s only charged if they only get the one 12 item. So, let’s say the product only cost me $2.50. I sell it for $25, and of course I’m talking about $2.50 for the product and all the labeling and all the shipping and everything is covered by the shipping and handling. How’s $6.95 shipping and handling for $25 product?

Michael: I think people expect to pay the average of $6.95 for shipping for anything. I would sell the product for more. I think $25 is too cheap. I don’t care what it is. It should be maybe a $59 or $69 product.

Eric: I get you.

Michael: But, your cost of the product is $2.50. You can ship it for probably $2.50. you can pay all your administrative support, handling, taking the data, all that stuff, and that should all be covered in $6.95 shipping and handling fee.

Eric: Really.

Michael: It’s shipping and handling, not just shipping. So, you can charge whatever you want for handling. So, your $6.95 will cover your entire cost of everything except your advertising.

Eric: That’s really interesting Michael. As far as pricing, you threw a price point out there. Should I test price points?

Michael: Lead with something, and I would start higher than lower. You’ve got test each thing individually. Someone wants it. Is $25 compared to $60 really going to make a difference if there’s a risk reversal in there?

Eric: No.

Michael: You’ve got to have the margins in there. If you do a good job, if you have the right copywriter, your work should be put into the sales letter that’s selling whatever you have, and if it’s a multi-page letter – four pages, five, six, seven – the more you tell, the more you sell. Then, you can justify the cost of that product in your sales letter. You can get $69. You may be able to get $109. It just depends.

Eric: You know, that’s very interesting, and boy would that be awesome. I could use the auto-ship in the multi-packs.

Michael: You can only have an auto-ship option if you want until they cancel. You don’t give them a choice, and they’re just on auto-ship.

Eric: Have you seen that to be pretty successful with people you talk with? 13

Michael: That Vincent James guy I interviewed, that’s exactly how he did it. He only offered them an auto-ship option until further notice. If you look at all the TV commercials like Duffy Rankerd selling the acne products, all those are auto- ship.

Eric: Boy, you gave me some really good ideas. You said start it small. I had a secondary line in my house and I got it a long time ago. It was dedicated to the fax. I’ll probably hook that back up.

Michael: For a fax number, a dedicated line?

Eric: Yes.

Michael: Well, you don’t have to do that. If you go to my site and go to “Michael Recommends” there’s a service where you can get your own 800-number. So, it’s an automatic voice mail. You can use a voice mail service, but you can forward this 800-number to anywhere. So, are you online right now?

Eric: No, I’m not. I’m visiting my wife’s grandparents. They don’t have a computer.

Michael: Okay, well, when you get back online, go to www.hardtofindseminars.com, do you know where that section is? It’s called, “Michael Recommends”. The company is called www.Kall8.com. You can get an 800-number within minutes, or even a non-800 number where the calls come into that, and you could have it directed to your cell phone wherever you are. You can direct that number to wherever you want it to go to. So, let’s say you do that mailing and you have that 800-number on there, and you mail it today and you know calls would be coming in the next four or five days. You have it go to your home line. Have it go to your cell phone. Just be able to pick up the phone and talk to those customers and pull out information and find out what made them call. Did they read the whole letter? What do they like about it? What interested them the most? What questions do they have? Because your market’s going to tell you what you need to do to modify the letter.

Eric: Exactly.

Michael: It’s all in the research.

Eric: Yes, to begin with, this is going to be heavy-duty need to get the calls no matter where I’m at, what I’m doing. 14

Michael: You need the letter. The copywriter, the letter is the most important thing. If you do some research, you can go to Denny Hatch. He’s got a couple books out called Method Marketing. This guy has an archive of old direct mail pieces. He has over 500,000 direct mail pieces, all catalogued and archived, and you can go look at some of the old direct mail pieces, and you can buy the piece from him for $40 or $50. He’ll fax it to you. You may be able to find a piece that was pretty successful in the past that’s not being mailed anymore for whatever reason – maybe the company went bankrupt, maybe it never had a copyright, maybe you can find out who owns the copyright to it, and you can license the use of that letter that’s not being used. You may be able to find very successful promotions and letters that aren’t being used and either modify them or buy the rights to be able to use them and developed your own product. On www.hardtofindads.com, you have full page successful newspapers advertisements. I bought a bunch of old National Enquirers from the 1990s, and I was just flipping through them. I bought them off eBay, and you look at the full page promotions in there. Just because they’re not in there anymore doesn’t meant that they weren’t successful. So, I would maybe go to the library. Now, it depends how you want to sell it. Space advertising is one way, but I would start with direct mail. Just type in “Denny Hatch” www.targetmarketing.com.

Eric: Is it all one word?

Michael: No, type in Denny Hatch. You’ll find his website. So, I’ll email you a link, and then contact them and they have a whole section on sales letters. You can talk to one of their advisors there. Tell them what you’re looking for. You’re looking for old direct mail pieces selling herbal products or green drinks. They’ll have it. You can buy the old letter and look at it and dissect it, and find out who was mailing it. You may be able to buy the rights to it, or modify it or give it to your copywriter and say, “Here’s something that was successful.” It may be a sales letter selling an Aloe Vera product which you may want to take and modify for a green drink or vice versa. Let’s say they were energy pills, but it gave vitality and had vitamins and minerals which all the benefits are going to be the same to the human body no matter what the thing is, and modify it to your product. Have your copywriter just modify it, or you can even modify it. It’s all been done before. 15

Eric: Yes, and why reinvent the wheel? Of course, I have to tell you I’m very involved with my congregation and I have meetings. It concerns me because I don’t want to send the wrong message right away if I’m not available. If I’m doing this or I’m doing that I’m not available to take a call, and that’s a sales loss.

Michael: Oh yeah, if you’re doing a test, you better make sure there’s someone there to answer the phone.

Eric: It can’t be a provider because you can’t give them scripts for information on all those products.

Michael: What do you mean you’re involved with your congregation?

Eric: I may get a call at seven thirty or eight o’clock at night.

Michael: If you have to hire someone locally, or do you have any family there. If you use a Kall8 number, and forward it to whoever’s handling the calls, the calls are recorded so you can monitor the person who’s handling your calls and you tell them that you’re going to be monitoring how they handle the calls. You can have a script of what they need to say. Those audio recordings are sent to you via email. So, you can monitor that person. You’ve just go to make sure that someone’s handling the call on your test. It should be you.

Eric: Yes, absolutely, and I want it to be. Kall8 sounds like a really good product.

Michael: Well, at least you’ll know that if someone dials that number and they hang up, Kall8 is wonderful because it picks up all the caller IDs, even if they’re not supposed to pick caller IDs. So, it gives you or your telemarketer a chance to see the number where the call came from, and if you missed it or they hang up, you can call them back and say, “Hey, I know you just called. Were you calling about the green drink?” and, then you just say, “I was on the other line. I missed your call. How can I help you?”

Eric: Kall8 is pretty inexpensive.

Michael: Very inexpensive. It’s great. This service has saved me thousands of dollars because I have people who call for expensive packages that I sell and they hang up. I just call back and I have the caller ID. It’s emailed to me instantly I say, “Hey, I know you just called. I missed your call. This is Mike. How can I help you?” I’m able to find out what they want. In some cases by me calling back it’s resulted in large dollar sales. 16

Eric: Because of a health issue in the past, my credit looks excellent now, but I had to file before.

Michael: You had to file bankruptcy?

Eric: Yes.

Michael: In many cases, there’s merchant providers who can still do that. Now, if that doesn’t work – if someone has a credit card and they really love the product, you can set it up through PayPal or Checkout. There’s other options.

Eric: I thought it would hurt me a little bit.

Michael: It will probably be a little more frustrating, but I think there are merchant providers that will service people who went through bankruptcy. You may pay higher points, but they are available.

Eric: I think Checkout’s 5.5 percent, but like you said, if the product’s $59 or $69 or more, early on using that is not a problem.

Michael: You’d have to check with PayPal. I don’t know all the legalities on it, but if someone has a Visa or MasterCard, you may be able to just log into PayPal and then you’d have to set an account up. You just may have to work those details out.

Eric: I’ll work with that.

Michael: The most important thing is testing a letter, getting a product in a letter, a promotion put together and then test it. If it’s not winning based on your price, then there’s no need to do anything.

Eric: Right, just go into another product.

Michael: Yeah, or just revamp or try it again.

Eric: Now, the copywriter in England you were talking about-

Michael: Now, that we’ve talked, I’m thinking you’re better off finding an existing promotion and just modifying it yourself.

Eric: Okay, that’d be not hard. Like you said, there’s plenty of ads.

Michael: Start with Denny Hatch Target Marketing. 17

Eric: I was wondering if you could just point me in that direction.

Michael: This is probably the better way to go.

Eric: And, then as time goes on with other products if I can’t get it this way, then I’ll have money to spend.

Michael: It’s the “Whose mailing what?” archive. You just have to do a search on Google, Denny Hatch, you’ll find it. It is a vast library of direct mail data and packages, more direct mail intelligence, easy search capabilities, thousands of scanned images, all seamless online ordering. For over twenty years, the “Whose mailing what?” archive has been the leader in the direct mail intelligence, now online and searchable database with direct mail package details and scanned images. The “Whose mailing what?” archive lets you see the mailing packages other companies have mailed in order to learn from their tests and direct mail controls. This is perfect for you.

Eric: It is. That is perfect. I’m going to set up the business, and then I’m going to go ahead and get Kall8 set up. Check with PayPal, check with the merchant services at my bank first because I do a lot with them down there. This is something that they can do for me. Then, I’m going to talk to Certified Natural, find out if they have an aloe first of all and some of the other products like that, but you were saying not necessarily green drink.

Michael: Call Certified Natural, ask them what they’re biggest seller is. Go call these private labelers. Talk to them. What’s selling? Tell them you’re interested in private labeling a line of products. What’s hot? What’s selling?

Eric: The top five, the top three.

Michael: Yeah, the top one. What has meaning right now?

Eric: Wait for them to create a market, and then you jump on the market. You said the copy will do it. Have them help to get all the benefits on the paper for all these products? Questions that people will ask to make sure I’ll be able to answer any questions people will be asking about the product. That’s not hard. That’s really a good idea, and it sounds like this and not go bankrupt.

Michael: There’s so many things you can do. It’s like I said, you can go in and consult. You could find someone who’s already got a business to just get on their mailing list. See what their letters look like. See if their successful themselves, and use the stuff we talked about to rev up the sales. You may be able to buy into a business already existing. There’s thousands of little mom and pop people trying to make a buck off these herbal products. 18 They already have the Visa MasterCard terminals. They already are set up. They already have their formulas. They already have their private labels. You can go in as a consultant, and offer to buy their company based on a performance. Just have them stay on with you. Just like what you were going to do, but instead of a million dollar company even if it’s a little company doing $50,000 a year, $20,000 a year, there infrastructure is all set up which you don’t have.

Eric: Yeah, websites, everything.

Michael: That’s going to save you time.

Eric: That’s true. I have a friend who has that right now.

Michael: Work a deal with them and you could be the brains in the background. Hammer out an agreement that when you build this company to a certain level, that you take a percentage of ownership or all of it or whatever. These people have already invested their time and the labor and getting the credit card terminals. Do it under their name. You work on a commission. Have them pay you a percentage out of gross sales or profits. Let them run it. What do you want to run the company for? It’s a nightmare. All you need is a sales letter that works.

Eric: Isn’t that amazing?

Michael: Leverage off the efforts of others. Let them run it. You don’t want to run a company. What a nightmare. They just want more sales. You help them get more sales. That’s what I would do.

Eric: I might do it that way. My current is in that area. I could see possibilities, and I’m wired that way just from all my research and studying I’ve done and the materials I’ve got from you, and services that you offer.

Michael: These things we talked about, I’ll send you this recording. You can relisten to it and take some notes and do it that way. You don’t want to run a company. You want to find someone who’s already got something that’s not working, but the infrastructure is set up. Then, you want to go to Who’s Mailing What?, and look at their letters. You’ve got to research and find something that’s successful, a letter that was very successful in the past selling a product that would give you r potential market the same benefits. 19 Then, you’ve got to find your product where you can have the cost of the product and the fulfillment and the shipping all covered in the price of the shipping and handling. Your main thing is testing that letter and making sure you have control of intellectual property on that letter. That’s the money maker is that sales letter.

Eric: That’s right because I can license it.

Michael: Yeah, you can license it or you can use it and modify it, all of the above.

Eric: They can’t license it because I’ve got. Ah, that made sense.

Michael: Does that sound easier to do than starting and building a whole company from scratch?

Eric: Yes, it does, and I’ve got the time to do that, too.

Michael: Do some search on Google. Talk to some people selling herbal products. Talk to some of the private labelers. You’ve got to do your research. Ask them what’s hot, what’s going on. It’s all research.

Eric: I don’t want to just jump out there and do what most businesses do, spend all this money, put all the time in, to come and find out it’s so much easier.

Michael: Yes, that’s right.

Eric: It’s funny. I’ve been writing a lot of notes down, but I appreciate you sending me this recording because I will get more information.

Michael: I’ll send it to you, no problem at all. I’ll email it over to you.

Eric: You’ve got a very valuable business. Do you know that?

Michael: Thank you.

Eric: The reviews on the Internet about you, they’re always excellent.

Michael: That’s what we want.

Eric: This is going well.

Michael: I enjoy it. There’s always something to do. I need to do what you’re doing. I need to just get a product, write a killer sales letter and make millions, but I’m crazy because I just want to keep doing audio interviews. I’ve got a great site 20 right now, but I want to double it. Once it’s all set up, then I’m ready to do my marketing which I haven’t done in year. I want the infrastructure all set up and everything which I’m doing it’s going good.

Eric: It’s interesting what you said I can actually get a client, have them add products that I’ve researched, and have sales letter, add to revenue that way. That’s perfect. That really makes a lot of sense.

Michael: That’s the way to go.

Eric: It is. That way I don’t have to touch it. I don’t have to worry about it.

Michael: It’s all automatic. Anything else you can think of that’s on your mind.

Eric: I can’t wait to test it because that was a concern to me. You covered the 800- contacts, pricing, things that were on my mind.

Michael: We can always talk more.

Eric: I really appreciate you being available. I’m really tired of working. That company I believe it closed. See, that’s another thing has a non-compete. He’s sitting there with all this money, millions of dollars, and we get along fine. I had actually thought about approaching him and asking him if he wants to do something because he has all contacts for all the products.

Michael: Well, work it out.

Eric: Yeah, I’ll work it out. Okay, let me let you go.

Michael: Call me if you need anything. I’ll email this over to you.

Eric: Sweet, okay, bye.