Listen To This Recording First If You Are At All Serious About Remembering What You Hear And Read In The Next 117 Hours Of Audio Interviews And Transcripts

Michael: Hey, it’s Michael Senoff, how are you?

Paul: Very good, Michael, how are you doing?

Michael: I’m doing pretty good. Nice to talk to you, meet you voice-to-voice.

Paul: Yes, finally. How’s the weather there in California?

Michael: Actually, it’s real nice today.

Paul: Some linkage with your own past experience is important if you can do it. The other thing that I referred to earlier, there’s different types of memory actually. One is sort of procedural type memory where you’re learning from new actions, or you’re learning from repetitive tasks. The other is information where you’re trying to assimilate a list like the presidents of the United States or the capitals of the various states. That’s a different type of memory – factual and then procedural, and actually, both types of memory are integrated in the brain at two different periods of sleep.

So, if you don’t get a full cycle of sleep at night – for instance, if you short-change yourself and your brain waves only reach a certain level, then there’s going to be one of the types of memory you’re going to be short-changed because typically one type of memory is integrated usually in the latter half of sleep cycle. One part’s integrated in the first part of the sleep cycle.

So, people cramming, cramming, cramming and then staying up late, and then actually not having their brain go through the appropriate sleep cycle to integrate the information. They wake up the next morning and go, “Crap, what did I study last night?

Michael: So, that’s a good tip for better memory. What are some other tips? I see exercise.

Paul: If you’re exercising, there’s a whole list of physiological benefits that go with that, a lot of them associated with improved blood flow to the brain. Also, less stress – stress is killer when it comes to memory. If you’re focused on things that are happening and you’re tense and you’re irritable, you’re not going to be able to remember stuff as well as if you, for instance, are able to relieve that stress with exercise.

The other thing is if you’re tired, you’re not going to be remember as well as if you weren’t. One of the great things about exercise is you come home at the end of the day, you still have energy, or throughout you have energy. So, when you internalize information or you’re trying to get it stuck in your head, you’re not going to be too tired to do that.

Nutrition’s really important as well, and this is a real killer for kids at school, college away from home and what not. But, they don’t get the right balance of nutrients than in fact their brain is going to be functioning at a lower level. In particular, there’s protein that they need actually for the brain to operate properly. You see kids living off of pizza. They wake up and they eat cold pizza in the morning. They have some French fries with some gravy in the afternoon, and then they go home and they get Chinese food or something like that, rice or more pizza for supper. That’s not going to cut it when it comes to the brain getting the nutrients that it needs to operate at a high level, aside from the micro-nutrients and the vitamins and all of those things, but simply on a macro level, you need sufficient amounts of protein in your diet to have a high functioning brain.

Michael: Okay, something on relaxation.

Paul: Two things, of course, that relaxation does for you is that you can learn to relax at the end of the day, for instance, put the worries out of your mind, you can sleep better and sleep we already talked about is critical. Simply deep-breathing exercises at the end of the day can have a tremendously positive impact in allowing somebody to sleep because if you’re focusing on the process of deep breathing – taking in a breath, holding it for three seconds, taking three seconds to let it out, pausing, taking three seconds to bring it, and then holding it – you’re focusing on those particular activities which are repetitive.

In one of your interviews, you were talking to somebody about assembly pens as a therapeutic activity, and they talked about the relaxing.

Michael: That’s right and the Alzheimer’s.

Paul: That’s right, well, when you’re going through deep breathing exercise and conscious relaxation, you’re engaged in some repetitive activity that tends to call you down, not to mention the fact that you are now typically bringing in additional, all of the things that are going on and your body temp is slowing down. If puts you in a good frame of mind for sleep. When you learn to do that, you in fact, can take a two minute little break if you’re writing an exam. You’re writing an exam. You’re a little bit anxious. You’re a little bit upset. Some stuff’s happening in that room. It’s time to pick up your pencils and do your stuff. If you take a minute or a minute and a half just simply go through some deep-breathing exercises, you know what? You provide focus. You provide additional oxygen to the brain, and stress goes away. A whole calmness enters into what you’re doing, and it’s like you open the gates. The information can now flow out. There’s no bottlenecks that are going to stop the facts, the opinions, the descriptions that you need to get down on paper from coming out.

Michael: Very good, you are really going to like this Eugene Schwartz recording because there’s something that he talks about in the very beginning, and the first thing he says is, “I never work without a timer.” So, he’s got a little egg timer and he sets it to 33.33 so when he’s doing copywriting, he describes his system with exactly how he writes copy and he puts that timer on, and he can do nothing but either write or look at the computer. And, he’ll discuss his method which has been very successful and a lot of people have adopted that way of working in these short increments 30 minutes at a time.

Paul: When you take regular breaks, there’s far more of the information that’s either at the beginning or the end of a session than if you sit down and try to plow straight through.

Michael: I’m making a couple connections. I just realized why because Eugene Schwartz was very big into learning. As a matter of fact, you’re going to like this guy, he put out a book, and I have it, and it didn’t register until just now, called, “How to Double Your Child’s Grades in School: Build Brilliance and Leadership in Your Child from Kindergarten to College in Just Five Minutes Per Day.” He sold 800,000 copies. I’ve got the book in my hand, and because I’m just looking at your site and I look at effective listening, and I made the connection. I’m about to tell you, when you hear the recording with Eugene Schwartz, he talks about how important listening is even when you’re interviewing someone and when you’re writing copy. I just made the connection. So, since we’re on that subject, you’ll definitely want to listen to that recording, check out his book. I bought a brand new one off Amazon. I’ve got two young kids who are entering in school. They’re only five and two and a half, but I’ll be going through what you’re doing a few years from now.

So, you have effective listening. Let’s talk about how listening is important in learning, and if we could relate it to the audio recordings. How many times should someone listen to an audio recording to really get it?

Paul: It’s going to depend on their primary means of learning. Some people who have very strong auditory capabilities and that is there focus, in fact, will pick up more than somebody who doesn’t. But, having said that, just the way to phrase that would be that a person should listen to a recording as long as they’re getting something out of it, and that means that they need to deal with it differently each time. The first time you listen to a recording, if you haven’t read the transcripts, etc, it’s all new. So, you’re not sure where it’s going. You’re a little bit confused about what the outcome is going to be except that you know you want to achieve something, and quite frankly you do a pretty good job on your website with the written intro on your webpages, “Here’s what you’re going to hear on this recording.” Well, that’s critical for learning.

You want to tell people what it is they’re going to learn in the intro. We’re starting to get the bones of the skeleton now. We’re starting to get the framework for the information set to come. They know that this person’s going to talk about joint ventures, and the six different ways that they can do a joint venture for instance, or we’re going to talk about the effective way to use classified advertising or whatever. That starts a person out with an end in mind and a potential result in mind.

When they’re listening, of course, when we start dealing with those issues than they can start building on that, but as they’re listening, we talked already about this, they should be questioning. They should be actively involving themselves. By doing that, almost invariably, you miss some elements of what’s being talked about. It’s hard for you to completely engage your mind in what you’re listening and also focus on what’s being said at the same time.

If you’re taking notes as well without pausing your recording for instance, and I listen to an awful lot of stuff while I’m driving back and forth to work. I’m frequently identifying interviews that I’m going to have to listen to again. You’re going to be able to take notes for instance. So, as you’re thinking about one thought, the next thought comes along.

The more familiar you are with the material, of course, the less you’re focusing on the individual thought. I used to wonder why people buy comedy tapes or comedy records or comedy videos. Why would you do that? Well, the reason you do that is because you don’t get the whole thing the first time through. You don’t get all the subtleties and the nuances. You don’t get the second level of meaning necessarily. You’re so busy laughing at something he said that you don’t get the second one.

It’s the same thing like that with learning a piece of material orally, listening to it. When something new comes out and you latch on to it and say, “Oh my god, that’s stunning. That is such a critically important piece of information.” Well, what did you just mess? What were the three or four seconds there that you didn’t hear? You don’t know.

You listen to it the second time around, now you’re catching further depths of meaning, and not just that. You’ve also had a chance to digest some of the material. So, now you start picking up nuances that you didn’t pick up the first time around.

Michael: And, you’re linking.

Paul: You’re linking, right. You now have some of that’s already in there. If you listen to it again, you’re building on what you already have. You’re listening to what’s going on, and you know what? Because you’re now engaged in the creative process, your mind is coming up with new stuff. So, you can easily listen to the same tape, interview, for instance, I’m sure three times and keep getting more out of it each time. I mean, there’s no doubt in my mind whatsoever. I think anybody could effectively listen to a lot of your interviews five times or six times and not wear them too thin.

Michael: Oh, yeah. So, why don’t you give me just a summary of how you got into this and give me like a history with your kids. Tell me the results that your children applying these studies go. What has it meant for you as a family?

Paul: I can make this quite personal because I headed off to university headed for a career in kinesthiology and was going to be teaching Phys Ed in high school. I had suffered some injuries in high school sports, and as a matter of fact, when I got to University, I couldn’t participate in the skills. Suddenly, the emotional connection disappeared. So, my focus drifted. I was no longer as interested because I couldn’t actually actively do the stuff they were talking about doing. I ended up dropping out, and then pursued several different activities.

I met my wife. She had a business manufacturing educational toys for handicapped children. Suddenly, that was something that was completely outside the realms of what I had been exposed to previously. So, I had to hit the group running in terms of learning.

I had been interested in school about learning and had, for instance, taken speed reading courses and studied a little bit about study skills, but at the time, there wasn’t a whole lot available to me. And, schools didn’t teach these skills. They still don’t teach these skills in a lot of cases, but already at that age of 21, I understood how important it was to keep learning. I wound-up some place that I hadn’t aimed at being involved in producing educational toys for handicapped children. I had to learn.

After a few years, we got out of that business, and I got into the construction trade, and again, entered an apprenticeship. It was all about going back to school and learning information. After ten years, I got out of that trade and into working at a nuclear power station in maintenance. There was an opportunity to volunteer as emergency response personnel there. That was a whole other area of interest, and by pursuing those interests outside of work and learning more about that, I wound up finally working fulltime in the fire protection section out at the grid power station, not even close to what I was aiming for when I was younger. You wonder how you wind up places sometimes.

But, I was only able to do that because I continued to pursue learning as a lifetime event, and continue picking up books, information from courses that were available to the outside, and I wound up taking a lot of courses to prepare myself to be able to do my career in fire protection.

One of the things that I loved about this, Michael, was that I was constantly an example for my kids that learning doesn’t stop. “Where’s Dad going tonight?” “Well, he has to go take these courses that’s going to help him at his job better at his job.” So, my children were well aware of the fact that I sometimes would be away for three or four days on the weekend taking rope rescue courses or water rescue courses or whatever. Eventually, it got to where I was actually training some fire departments in different techniques. I was a first aid instructor at a couple of different level.

So, they became aware of the fact that school doesn’t stop at 18. Dad is still taking courses at his age, and then as they progressed through school, my daughter was assessed with different kinds of problems as was my son, and people in the schools were quite ready to put limitations on them as a matter of fact, and there were some doubts about whether they would ever graduate from high school. I have to say my daughter is now in her second year of nursing degree program at the university. My son is now in college pursuing his career.

A significant part of that is because they were able to take specific skills and apply them to learning and help them move along. My daughter in particular turned her marks – once she realized she wanted to be a nurse, her poor grades. I was able to pick up a great book. It’s called, “Study Smarter not Harder”. And, she read that book cover to cover, and it had made a significant impact on her grades even though she had not been aiming at University. She was able to turn it around in midstream and get the kind of grades that allowed her to get accepted into University and happily be accepted into a difficult program like nursing where there’s a lot of demand for it. She was essentially one of the top 25 percent that got accepted out of all the potential applicants, and she’s now working at that.

So, when I saw what was happening with her, I thought, “Well, wouldn’t it be great to pursue this on the Internet potentially as a business?” So, I started with the site I have. It’s not been making me very much money. As a matter of fact, it barely breaks even, and that’s why I thought, “I’m still interested in this area, but what can I do.” And, quite frankly, looking at your site with all the interviews, and then learning about membership sites and subscription sites, and I think again it was from a couple of interviews on your site. I thought, “Well, what about creating a subscription website that is around learning?” That’s what I’m working on right now.

Michael: Absolutely. It can be done. I saw your email. I think it’s a great idea.

Paul: Doing authors, experts in academics, what a great bunch of people. I’m getting a little bit of feeling for how much you must enjoy your work simply by talking to people that are capable in their fields. They’re interested and engaged, and of course, when you’re talking about authors and academics who teach study skills, you’re talking about people who have a love of learning or books, or they wouldn’t be teaching those courses. Of course, that suits me right down to the ground.

Michael: Have you done some interviews yet?

Paul: Yeah, I’ve interviewed four people, and I’ve been on the phone with three others to set interviews up. As a matter of fact, I have another interview coming up Friday morning that I have to do.

Michael: Those three interviews, what’s the goal of these interviews?

Paul: One of them was an award-winning teacher. She teaches high school calculus, but USA Today has their American Academic All-Stars once a year, and they select students from across the country, and they also select teachers from across the country who have been nominated by the peers. And, they select some and they write up little things about them and what they do and what not. On the Internet doing some research, I stumbled across these selections from USA Today. So, I started sending out emails to the teachers. I interviewed Debbie Kollar, who teaches Calculus to high school students. What a pleasure that was.

She talked about not just the teaching, but tutoring and helping kids, being with kids. And, talked about some of the things that she does in the classroom and what she thinks are important. We talked about what could help the students to do better in something like Calculus. Math is a little bit different that the normal run of the activity.

I subsequently interviewed Jean Reynolds who is an author, Linda Wong who is an author. Both of those authors teach study skills and they’ve written text books about them. Linda Wong was approached by Houghton Mifflin to write a text book about study skills, and again that was a great interview. She’s been teaching study skills courses at the college level for something like 20 years.

Michael: This is great stuff. You’ve got a huge market. You love doing this stuff. Just do what I’m doing, just keep piling them up and have different topics, and have them all up on a membership site.

Paul: The obvious market would be the parents or the grandparents, people who are investing tens of thousand dollars for their kids education, and that’s why I want to do the interviews. If I can interview successful students, successful teachers and authors who are experts in the field of study skills and make it easy for a student to say, “Ah, well, I’ll download that mp3. I’ll listen to it with my Walkman while I’m walking back and forth to school.” And, they get involved in the dynamics of the interview, then it may be engaging to them.

Michael: Well, for the kids. I think if you focus and interviewed the kids so it’s kid to kid rather than kid to authority.

Paul: Absolutely. If I can get about 20 different successful students up there, then someone who’s listening to interviews is going to find that successful student that models them to say, “Hey, what this person is saying about learning, that’s my experience. So, what are their strategies to succeed?”

Michael: There you go. Successful learning strategies from kids – the best students in the country – that would be powerful. That would be great.

Paul: Yeah, that’s my aim, and there’s a question about how you market that, but there’s lot of opportunities for joint venture type efforts not only with people who are on the Internet, but even these tutors.

Michael: Yeah, you will, and I’ll tell you what’s going to happen. As you interview these people and these people have books and they’re authors, and they know nothing about marketing. Then, let’s say you have a good rapport built up with someone. What you can do is take any one of those books, if you could acquire the rights to it – let’s say you really liked it and it was very comprehensive, and you take that book and develop it into a seminar or course, something you can sell for $300 - $400 - $500 - $600, and now you have an information product. You get all the copyright rights. Relicense the rights, and say, “This interview is so powerful. I’d like to take your book and can I create a course? Or get the rights to create a course and pay you a royalty on whatever I sell?”

Paul: I hadn’t thought of that.

Michael: There you go. Now, everyone you talk to is going to be a potential information product, and just find one or two that are really good that you can integrate your stuff with, and there’s your product. You can’t sell a book. A book sells for $20.

Paul: You’re breaking it down into bite-sized chunks, and you’re offering it in multiple formats – audio, maybe video, maybe transcripts – so that you’re going to appeal to everybody’s different learning styles.

Michael: Yeah, that’s right. You will see all kinds of opportunities will come about just by talking to these people. You instantly become their friend. This is their passion. They spent their whole life on it, and you’re an interested person willing to take time out of your day to talk about what they love. You just made a buddy. Let me tell you.

Paul: I am knocked over by how engaged the people I’ve talked to so far. They like the idea of that kind of a website. They like the idea of the interviews. They like talking about the topics, no doubt about it.

Michael: Sure, This is teachers. This is what they want to give, and they have a passion for teaching students. I think you would have a great thing going. But, research the market. No one knows for sure, but find out how the industry is. Do some research on the industry. Find out if there are any other membership sites. Are there any learning sites that kids are paying for? If not, why? Do your homework on the market.

Paul: There’s lots of free stuff out there, but it’s all text. Information about how to write an essay, but there’s no interviews with the essay queen.

Michael: That would be great.

Paul: And, what the techniques they use to come up with the topics and how they structure it and how they time themselves – time management, and creativity and all that kind of stuff.

Michael: I haven’t even really started marketing my site. Like you said in that email, a few people know who I am, but geez, it’s such a big country out there. I’ve done no outside marketing other than what’s online. I love talking to marketing students who are in college. They’re just passionate. The ones that love it are willing to absorb this stuff. They listen to it. They’ve just got that hunger

Paul: When you talked about making your recordings available to me, you said, “Send this link to your list.” I only have about 120 people signed up for my newsletter for my website, but you know what? I mean, and not every interview that you have is applicable, but I’m sending the link out because when we’re talking about copywriting, when we’re talking about marketing, when we’re talking about effective and powerful writing, there’s going to be interviews on there that somebody interested in doing well at school is going to get such a tremendous amount out of it. Aside from some of the creativity that it’s going to create and maybe even help some of them come up with little jobs for themselves because there’s a fair bit of conversation on some of those interviews about people’s experiences in school, things that to earn money and what not.

But, when you talk about the principles of the importance of a headline, and the importance of hooking the information to basic human needs, desires and or fears, I mean, that’s powerful stuff about writing period. It’s not an advertisement. It’s writing. If you pick up a book by Stephen King or Tom Clancy, and what are they doing? They are using headlines. They are using hooks to our emotions and our fears. That’s what makes them powerful authors, and any student in school, let’s face it, you have to get the information across typically by text, less often verbally, so anything that’s going to help you be a more effective writer.

The other thing is I am working with a partner on another deal that I may want to talk to you later about, but do you do any consulting on a contingency basis or is it all-

Michael: Really, it depends how much time was involved. I just have to hear what you’ve got going.

Paul: Do you have a couple of minutes?

Michael: Yeah, go ahead.

Paul: You probably don’t realize this, but you know that a lot of people from the UK have moved to North America, either Canada or the US, and you also probably know that when they’re here, when they reach a certain age, they can get their pensions mailed to them from the UK. What you probably didn’t know is that when they leave, if they don’t want to leave their pensions in the UK, they can take it out. And, they can take up to 25 percent of it tax-free.

Michael: That’s their pension from the UK?

Paul: The pension from the UK, and one of the things that one of my friends found out that worked over there for 20 years and then he came over here. He’s been over here for about 15. He had almost half a million dollars in pension because the pension plans over there are extremely generous.

Michael: So, he could take out 25 percent and bring it to the US?

Paul: Tax free, take the rest and do something else with it – either invest it into some sort of a pension plan or put it in an offshore bank, for instance, and most people from the UK that are over here don’t know anything about that. There’s a few specialty outfits that are helping people get their money over because this is a complicated process, and what they do is they charge about 1.5 percent to get your money over. So, for $400,000, they’re going to take six grand, and these people – the people that are charging the 1.5 percent, they’re looking for customers.

Michael: Right.

Paul: So, I’m thinking referral fees. Do you remember the interview you had with the guy who had the mortgage referral business?

Michael: Yep.

Paul: When I was talking to my friend and found out about this, I said, “Well, I wonder what one of these outfits that charges 1.5 percent to bring the money over and take care of all the legal wrangling and fill out all the papers, I wonder what they would pay for a referral fee?”

Michael: Sure. You sell them the leads.

Paul: I’m sure they’d pay $50 to know that somebody was interested in that.

Michael: You just get a telemarketer from Elance. You get a list of the UK new movers, and I’m sure that list is available somewhere – whether you get it from public record. It’s there. You can find it. And, you get a telemarketer to call these people. Well, you’ve got to be careful.

Paul: I actually went on to Google Answers.

Michael: Yeah, I’ve used it.

Paul: That’s right. I heard the interview. That’s how I learned about it. You were interviewing an Internet guy. And, I put a question out there where to find the list for UK immigrants, but what I was looking for was to get a list and then send out a mailing piece to these people.

Michael: Here’s what you do. You know, we have an English Store here, a couple of them in San Diego where you can get the teas and all the comforts of England. That’s where you’re going to find all the UK people, or a catalog that specifically sells English teas. Look, if someone moves from the UK. They miss home. You know what I mean?

Paul: Yeah, there’s got to be a list somewhere.

Michael: There’s newsletter. I’m sure you can do some research and find it. It sounds like a great idea.

Paul: What people are concerned about is they don’t know they can lose their money, and of course, they’re concerned about the financial stability of pension plans.

Michael: Here’s what you do – you find an expert who’s doing this, and you say, “Look, I’d like to help bring you more business.” And, you do an interview with them about the whole process, and you record it, and you put only your name and your phone number on the audio tape.

Paul: What a tremendous idea.

Michael: And, you mail it.

Paul: You’re a genius. What a great idea. Sure. Well, look if I make a million bucks, I’ll throw five grand your way.

Michael: That’s fine. That’s a deal.

Paul: Michael, it’s been a real pleasure.

I want to thank you for listening to this recording with Paul Stevens. I hope you’ve learned a lot and I’ll hope you’ll use some of the tips and tricks to speed your learning of all the content on HardtoFindSeminars.com. Enjoy .