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Michael: Hey, Tom. It’s Mike Senoff out in San Diego.
Tom: Hey, Michael. How are you doing?
Michael: I’m real good. How about yourself?
Tom: Not bad.
Michael: First of all, let me ask you. How much of the HMA recordings have you heard online?
Tom: I would say over the last three weeks, I’ve looked at pretty much everything I could find. So, I’ve dug pretty deep.
Michael: All right, so, you got into the Consulting Secrets section.
Tom: Yeah, you had a couple extra emails and actually yesterday I stumbled on a zip file that looked like it had about twenty other things. I scanned through most of that.
Michael: Those are all free reports. You can use those for your own benefit without anything. When you become an HMA consultant, you get the resale rights to all those. So, that’s a lot of intellectual property that I’ve put together and then I invested in the master resale rights for a lot of great content to help you in your business, to recreate all this stuff.
Tom: But, to answer your question more directly, I probably listened to four or five hours of mp3s.
Michael: Okay, good. All right. I see here in your email you looked again recently when I was recommending Martin Howie’s information. That was last year at this time. That was really my first experience with doing a joint venture with another information product marketer, and that was Martin Howie.
As you know, he was promoting a training on how to be a marketing consultant. Joint ventures can be tricky, and we had some disagreements and then it was just a real big mess. It was a good learning experience, but it didn’t work out with him, but at the same time, I had a lot of people probably like yourself who are still interested in consulting, and I was really fortunate to find Richard.
He’s been doing this for fifteen years, as you know, so I’ve teamed up with him, and that’s what you’re looking at right now.
You have a few questions. Number one – the HMA University, it looks good from what you’ve seen, as far as the samples, and I like the support. The six months free. How much after that?
After the six months, I charge $300 month if you feel like you still want access to the HMA University. You heard some samples of the HMA University, interviews with existing marketing consultants, existing HMA students. I’m continually adding to that content.
If you want to get involved in the HMA system, and you’re going to go all out, six months – you’re going to be able to download everything in there in mp3. So, you’ve got access to it all. You can load it on to your hard drive and then you have everything, and there is probably about over thirty hours of content right now.
Tom: I think you mentioned in one of your mp3s, that you’re wanting to obviously leverage your time.
Michael: I’m continuing to do that, and even with the consultants. For instance, we’ve got a consultant who’s been doing the HMA program for about three or four months. His name is Kevin Fort. He was stationed in Okinawa. He’s twenty-something years old. Military guys have a lot of discipline, and really eager to get his consulting business going.
He has no formal consulting experience, and I have now five part audio recording from the very first time I talked to him, to all his concerns, to him going out there hitting the streets – not screwing up bad, but making mistakes because he was hungry to get a client.
It’s almost like the real world. Starting from scratch, you’re going to have growing pains in anything depending on your experience, but this guy was total green, and you hear his problems and then I would get Richard on a three-way call. So, it would be Richard, myself and Kevin reviewing what he’s doing, what he could be doing better, what he’s doing wrong, and just guiding him as if you would have the same problems. Anyone who would start like him would have the same problems.
It’s called the Kevin Fort Project, and that’s in the HMA University. You’ve got five hours, and we’re following along his actual case studies. I’m excited to hear from him hopefully today because he had sent out a one page endorsement letter. He had a bookkeeper send it out to all their clients, and he had a group presentation scheduled, and I want to hear the results of how that went.
So, this is the kind of stuff, and ongoing interviews would relate and help your consulting business. I’m always adding to that content. So, you have transcripts downloadable, and you can play this stuff.
Tom: That’s certainly valuable, and if it’s getting somebody started, that’s great, but depending on which way you go with this thing, that can be support for you and possibly your people or whatever.
Michael: And, it does it in there. If you’ve got problems, you’ve got questions, you pick up the phone. I’m pretty attentive especially with the HMA consultants who invest this kind of money. You don’t wait days to hear back from me. I get back with you usually within the hour. I work out of my home. So, when my kids are asleep, and my wife’s asleep, then I’m up usually until twelve or one sometimes. I’m always in front of the computer unless I’m taking the kids to school or picking them up or what have you. So, I am available.
Richard’s available, too. So, for instance, Kevin Fort who’s having a problem developing his USP, I go, “Hold on Kevin. Let’s see if we can get Richard.” And, I got him right away. He took the time. We were on the phone for thirty minutes, and we straightened him out, and that’s stuff Richard knows I’m always recording, and that is what we agreed on to offer the support.
But, if you had something really pressing, I’d put you in touch with Richard. He’d be glad to help you. I’ll help you out the best I can, or the other consultants that we can hook someone up with you.
Number two – I think learning this business as a technician is best and maybe that’s enough for most, and maybe even for me. What other avenues could a person do to extend their reach, leverage the information, so as to not have to work in the field forever? Obviously with many models like employees, there’s downside. Your thoughts would be appreciated.
So, are you saying, how could you get into this business and maybe work at the beginning and kind of coast along and still be able to make money as a consultant?
Tom: Well, I don’t know about coast along, but certainly, there’s a point in my mind, I’ve always looked for what is the next step. I’m a guy like you. I certainly could live on the phone and live in front of my computer, and work out of my house. I’ve got three kids with number four on the way.
To go out and do face-to-face stuff, I’ve done enough of that. To be able to do it, and know that I’ll do it and can do it, and I do enjoy certain parts of that, but is there life after that?
Michael: Yes, there is. Okay, and it’s about doing the work one time, and then creating a system and being able to duplicate your work. Let me ask you. What is your expertise? What have you been doing? I saw the Fresh Air Living. Is that the multi-level thing or a distributorship?
Tom: We’re kind of a hybrid. It’s a manufacturer. We have direct selling. We do have a networking component. I have a technical background. I have an engineering degree. I did safety and engineering. I ran a growing family business for ten years in the wellness industry.
Michael: What was it specifically?
Tom: We had a naturalpathic doctor. It’s four nutritionists and staff and a 3,000 item store, and 200 package mail order nationally and a number of things. I ran the whole business end of that, and we grew from about a quarter million dollars year grow home business, to about 1.6 million our last year before we sold everything.
Michael: So, you sold it all out.
Tom: Well, actually, my mother was the doctor, and she suddenly passed away, and duplicated her enough. So, we sold the clients to the nutritionists. We sold the store to the store manager, and some other assets in other directions. There was not enough left there for me to do. So, I’ve been doing this for three years.
Michael: How is the air purifying units going?
Tom: The technology is great. The marketing is great. What I’ve come to the conclusion is that to do this more than 30-35 hours a week drives me insane, and I’ll give you an example. I’m also a runner, and I’m trying to get into things like triathlon. I can only do running and things like that so many hours a week. My body starts breaking down. If I’m on the phone recruiting and training more than a certain number of hours a week, I get grumpy. I need to do something more cerebral.
Michael: My answer to that question would be how do you leverage yourself? And, it would be, instead of being a consultant to anyone and everybody, I would niche your consulting practice. I’ll give you an example, just something off the top of my head. It may not be something you’re into it, but it would good for an example. That would be let’s say you were an Internet marketing consultant.
So, all the seven steps that we talk about in a brick and mortar business, could easily be transferred to an Internet online business, or an online store because creating and developing the USP has to be shown online, on the webpages. It’s got to be integrated in all aspects of the web business.
What’s nice is you can operate this anywhere in the world, as long as they’re speaking English unless you know some other languages, but all aspects of this system can work for an online business, a virtual business, and this could be good because all your business could be done online and through the computer without having to meet face-to-face. It could be done over the phone, through faxes, through emails, stuff like this.
Now, let’s say it took you a while to get that set up, and you had online businesses that you were taking through this system. There’s going to be some aspects that are going to have a common denominator in them. Let’s say you worked with specifically online health and nutrition type business – someone selling nutritional supplements, and let’s say there’s a hundred or a thousand different online nutritional supplement companies, all doing the same exact thing.
So, you get a client with one of them, and you create some success, and you document that success. So, all the work you do in taking that one client through the system, you have already developed, and then you stay within that same product range, and that same online business. So, by the time you get another one, you get to leverage all your work that you did for the first guy and just be able to cookie cutter it into the second guy and the third guy and the fourth guy. Then, it just becomes a game of getting the clients. All the work is done. There’s not going to be too much variance. There will be some, obviously depending with each business – usually just numbers and prices and stuff like that.
But, that’s how you leverage yourself. You stay within the same vertical market, and you niche, and you become an expert. So, let’s say you become an expert for selling the HTH sprays, the sublingual human growth hormone sprays that go under your tongue, and there’s probably a thousand businesses trying to sell that stuff. Does that make sense?
You’re not going after all these different industries, having all these different experiences, all these different researches. You’re just doing it one time, and then you’re going up to the same exact market, and you’ve duplicated yourself and it just becomes cookie cutter.
Tom: That certainly would take some of the chaos and static and learning curve out of it. I absolutely follow you.
Michael: And, one of the things that I enjoy is learning about all different business. But, you could monitor that. If there’s a field you’re really interested in, it’s wonderful to be able to find someone in the field and really pick their brain and learn how their business works.
So, for intellectual stimulation, you decide you want to do. That would be the one way to really leverage your time.
Tom: There’s a principle obviously that you find something that works, and you do it over and over and over. Part of me knows that, and the other part of me says, boy that’s great for while, but I need a new challenge. That’s just my personality.
Michael: Yeah, and that’s fine. When you go for a new challenge, go for another industry, you want to learn about. So, you what you do is you document everything like I do with recordings and then, if you get bored with it, then you have an information product that you can sell at the same time your whole consulting package. Even though you’re following the HMA system, it’s still your material that you developed for that industry, and you can sell it. Then, you have an information product that you can sell without any interaction.
If you get a great success with one guy, you can make some kind of agreement with him. For instance, let’s say you’ll buy him for the first project, meaning you’ll develop his USP for free. Tell him that’s normally $2,500, but in trade, he’s going to allow you the intellectual rights for his entire success with you, meaning he turns over all the rights. If you get him the growth that you say you’re going to get him, he has to agree to almost be your official endorser, and you take that stuff and then you use his endorsement and hopefully you’ll start with someone who’s got some good clout in the industry, and you let him sell you rather than you sell yourself.
Tom: You model him and you also let him endorse you.
Michael: Let him endorse you so, he’s endorsing you was what you did, and you offer the proof of the results, and how can anyone argue with that?
Tom: That’s a good example. I also like your model, but I won’t try to copy it. You’re making waves there.
Michael: Well, go for it, that’s what the recordings are up there for. I encourage you.
Tom: I don’t totally understand your model, but I like it. I’ve been following your for a while.
Michael: Did you watch that articulate presentation? It was that PowerPoint type presentation.
Tom: I did, and I probably paid about 75 percent attention.
Michael: Well, that’s a great tool to leverage yourself as well to get clients. I’ve got the presentation where it can be customized. So, when you become an HMA Consultant, your picture goes in there, your email. You can attach five of the reports to it. You have a description of what it is. At the very end, it has contact you rather than me.
I have it in a generic format that you can use as well. So, you can put a potential prospect in front of that presentation. It’s Richard and myself role playing. He’s selling me on consulting services, and he’s taking me through the whole outline of the system.
This thing has been very effective for me because I’ve got on multiple places of the site, and I’m constantly getting emails for more information, for opportunity analysis. It’s just an automatic little selling machine. I’m not doing any promotion of it, but a lot of the consultants have customized them with their pictures, and you can use that as a great leveraging tool for getting potential customers in front of a presentation, who want to grow, who have the ability to grow, taking you out of the picture, just prequalifying them.
So, that’s something I created for the HMA System that’s really helpful, I think, if used properly.
Do you or Richard do partial barter? No, I’m not interested in doing barter for trading for the air purifier units.
Tom: You breath air, right?
Michael: I do breath air, but I don’t want to do any barter for it.
Tom: Okay, I understand.
Michael: I don’t blame you for asking. Barter is great. I mean, I love barter. Speaking of barter, if that’s the way you’re thinking, you can barter consulting services like you wouldn’t believe.
Tom: Yeah, it’s very intangible. People would do that.
Michael: They do it. There’s another case study with one of my clients. He is my website provider. He hosts my server, and all my websites – a guy named Nick. I had a bill come around for about $3,000 for a year’s worth of server time, and I said, “Let’s do a barter. Let me do your USP, and implement your USP for your business.” He was clueless when it came to marketing, and we did it. That’s three grand in my pocket.
I got about three hours of recordings. So, I documented that entire case study from the first conversation I had with him to identifying and creating and developing a USP to the implementation process. You’ll see the system I set up for him, exactly what he needs to do. It’s real exciting when you call his number and you hear all his people answering the phone just like I told him.
But, barter’s wonderful, and there’s another person who isn’t even a consultant, but she took the information from the free recordings. She’s said, “I’ve got two potential clients. One’s an auto mechanic, but he doesn’t want to pay.” I said, “Well, then why don’t you offer a trade? You do your consulting.” And, what I had her do was she was going to create the USP for him and implement it and I think it was for $3,000, and then he wrote out gift certificates or what’s called scrip. So, he wrote her coupons in hundred dollar increments, thirty of them, for any service within his auto mechanic shop. And, she just used intellectual property, and then she’s got $3,000 worth of services that she could sell, that she could use, or whatever. Barter is great.
Some of the stuff I have on my main site, but there’s some special stuff I put for the HMA consultants, and I’m coming out with a product, and it’s going to be available for any of the HMA consultants and it’s called “Barter Secrets.” I’ve been in the barter industry for some time. I can show you how to buy trade dollars, barter dollars at ten cents on the dollar.
So, that’s why I say anything I can get on trade, and I can get air purification systems on trade. If it’s a thousand dollars, I can buy it for a hundred bucks. So, that answers number three.
Number four – is the market wide open for the HMA marketing and consulting method? Yeah, the market is wide open. I have less than a hundred consultants, and half of them are international. And, the market is absolutely wide open.
Tom: You’ve heard of the 80/20 principle?
Michael: Absolutely, I don’t hear from eighty percent of them.
Tom: That’s something.
Michael: It’s just life. That is just reality.
Tom: It is reality. That’s a good way to answer.
Michael: It’s reality in any business.
Tom: So, if I’m following the Y2K to kind of get an idea of what they’re all about. All the other systems out there, this has a way to help us implement and I think that was one of the key takeaways other than the seven steps and all that.
You know what it seems like, Michael? It seems like everything I’ve read from Jay Abraham, and it’s taken the pain out of creating a system that goes out to see people and do and put that all in one system.
Michael: Richard sums it up, and you may have heard it in one of the recordings where he says, all of the musical notes where there, before Mozart came along, and it’s taking the information and putting it into a system, and it’s based on Richard’s real world experience. The guy is still consulting. He’s doing a lot of group consulting with manufacturers. He gets tons of business through his manufacturing association.
So, he’s quite busy, and he’s built a nice consulting practice where he can really go in and do these group presentations, and that’s a whole nother aspect you learn about, if you like doing that stuff, where the people come in and maybe pay $500 a pop.
Did you hear the Alex Whiting recording?
Tom: I’m not sure.
Michael: All right. He was a Y2 guy. He’s on the HMA University, but I have it on another section of my site. Well, it’s an intensive interview, and he was a Y2 guy. He paid the 35 grand to go to Y2, and he explains what the problem is with Y2. He went out there, and he did the letter to the Chamber of Commerce in his area, and he did about $30,000 worth of business just from one endorsement out to a thousand people, but you’ll hear where Y2 fell short. Not only are they expensive priced, having to pay them a franchise fee and all that stuff.
So, you’re going to get experiences in the HMA University from other consultants with other companies too. So, absolutely it’s wide open.
Tom: Well, I like to hear your answer on that, and again, being that it’s an 80/20 world, and there are so many niches out there, and if a person, and I guess I’m talking about myself, if you have the confidence that you’re a 20 percenter, you can write your own ticket. You just have to do the work.
Michael: That’s right.
Tom: Okay, I appreciate that.
Michael: All right, any surprise expenses I’m overlooking besides the basics – business cards, printing a few brochures, simple regular office stuff? No surprise expenses. The only additional expense would be if you wanted to choose to have access of HMA University after the six months of $300. But, you don’t pay me any commissions. When you want that presentation customized, I don’t charge you for that. I don’t charge you for anything.
You get the entire system shipped to your door, 25 hours on video. You get a recent training he just did two months ago on DVD. You get access to the HMA University – all eleven manuals. You get the entire system, and you don’t owe me anything after you pay for it.
Tom: Where are you seeing this going? What’s you role going to be in five years? Are you going to be the poobah of this thing?
Michael: Foremost, I create and develop information products. I like to build something, and then I have a system on my site that sells HMA trainings, and the system’s set up. My hard work is behind me. It’s all there. You’ve been listening to my stuff for years, and you’ve kind of see how I evolve. I look for creating, developing information products which the HMA System is an information product.
It’s a joint venture I have with Richard, and he’s clueless when it comes to Internet.
Tom: That’s held him back a little bit, obviously.
Michael: Yeah, it has. He doesn’t have the skill. He’s a face-to-face, outside sales guy.
Tom: And, he’s happy with that.
Michael: Yeah, he is. He likes being out. He doesn’t want to sit in front of the computer. With my young kids, I have to be forced to leverage my time the best way possible, and it’s not going to be driving out on appointments. It’s using online and tools like you see on my site to do that. So, he’s just doing it based on where he is, and I’m doing it based on where I am and what I know.
But, no surprises or anything, and it’s really everything you’ve seen and heard. I give you the real world facts about the business. You’ve got the confidence. I’ll provide you all the tools.
Tom: I appreciate you saying let’s talk on the phone because I wanted to do that. My questions were not really absolutely needed to be answered. I mean, your page pretty much answers everything. It’s
$5,570 plus some shipping?
Michael: $5,570 plus $43 for shipping or $48 for shipping, and it ships out UPS ground.
Tom: You’ve got a couple days to lay it out.
Michael: I’ve got everything packaged ready to go. I can ship you everything out today if you wanted.
Tom: I’m going to do this, Michael. Monday is the day. I’ve got to juggle a little money. I’ve got one account that’s close, but I’m shutting down another business and by Monday it will be where I need to put that on a credit card.
Michael: I’ll create an easy payment form, and I’ll customize it, and I’ll email you a link. I’ll turn it into a PDF and you can print it out and fill it out, and when you’re ready on Monday, fax it into me, or fill it out and sign it and scan it and email back and scanned copy of it.
Tom: That sounds great.
Michael: Okay. Where are you located?
Tom: Out in southern Wisconsin, twenty miles south of Madison, Wisconsin.
Michael: And, how old are your kids?
Tom: Noah’s six, Kate is four, Jake is one, and we’ve got one on the way.
Michael: Wow.
Tom: How about you?
Michael: I’ve got two kids. I’ve got one that’s going to be six in about a month, and I have a three year old, two boys.
Tom: More coming?
Michael: No, that’s it. We’re done.
Tom: Tell you what. I had said that somewhere. I had that same spacing, and I don’t know what happened.
Michael: One flew by the goalie.
Tom: Two.
Michael: Two? Oh, man.
Tom: Two to four here in about a year and five months. We don’t have the fourth one, yet, but it’s great working from home.
Michael: Yeah, it is, and I’m very, very fortunate. I have been able to see my kids grow up and be here everyday and put the three year old down for a nap. It is wonderful. I would hate to miss these years.
Tom: Now, are you still doing your pen business?
Michael: Yes, I have my pen business going. I just had to pick up 25,000 pen parts from my mailbox place. They sent them to the wrong place, but I’m going to be revving that up again, too, using some direct mail because the pen business was a fantastic business. It still is. I mean, I still have some nice corporate accounts that order like clockwork, and there’s something to be said for a hard tangible product that can be produced very easily that you have total control over, and there’s a lot of opportunities in some of these big chains.
Like, I’ve got a company with one of my pens, the Red-Eye Pen, who was testing out the Office Max stores. They have a display of scrapbooking supplies, and they private label my pen. They buy them in bulk for me. I make them, and they placed an order for like 7,000 about 30 days ago. Then, the buyer called me and said, “We’re getting ready to go big time with this and go into more stores.”
He wanted me to package them. I said I wasn’t interested in packaging them, but some of these big chains can move a lot of volume, a lot of product.
Tom: You’ve got to consider hooking into them; otherwise you’re feeding on the bottom here.
Michael: Yeah, that’s right.
Tom: I was impressed with that whole story. I’ve run into your stuff about that, and to think that a reasonably normal guy could get into that industry that you would think would be cornered by this and whatever. I come from a manufacturing background, and I must say I was very impressed.
Michael: Yeah, well good. As a matter of fact, Sanford Pen had a security marker, and I got a call from one of their very large distributors who was looking for me to make a security marker, the invisible ink pen because they told me Sanford’s pulling the line. So, lights went off in my head.
So, I contacted Sanford to see if I could private label it for them so they could still refer their customers over to me. So, they gave me the names of their two master distributors who were handling that stuff, and one guy still has 13,000 units in stock.
But, he called me yesterday, not for this because he’s got to go through his inventory, but he called me for a dry erase marker. These guys move tremendous volume, and there’s some opportunity there. I’m just wondering, “Do I want to mess with it?” I want to keep my life easy. I don’t want to open up a big old pen manufacturing company. I do it all out of my home. You probably saw some of the pictures. I bring in some labor and we can knock out ten or fifteen thousand pens a day with four or five girls. It’s just all hand assembly.
That’s a nice little business, too, if you’re not afraid to get on the phone, or pay someone to get on the phone. If you go to the
IDPen.com site, I have a case study where I had a guy named Wayne – he signed up for it – and, I took him on the phone. We were online on Google together, and I go, “Okay, Wayne, let’s do some cold calling.”
So, we were both on our computers. We both had the phone, recorded the whole thing, and you’ll hear me making some kind of hard core direct sales call, and then you’ll hear him calling me back from about 30 minutes of calls. He goes, “Mike, remember that guy Abraham we talked to? He ordered 200 pens.” I go, “All right. Wayne.” He goes, “Mike remember that other girl, Stacy? She ordered 200 pens.”
These security firms are looking for good little products.
Tom: The key, and you hit on it, is if you want to be in business, master communications whether it’s a person on the phone. In business, it could be lots of fun.
Michael: Yeah, it really does.
Tom: I don’t have any further questions. I do want to do that, and Monday is the day I’m going to get everything in like so I can pull that off by Monday.
Michael: Very good. Love to have you, and I’ll take this recording. I’ll stick it up online, and if you want to review it later tonight or tomorrow, I’ll be glad to send you a copy of it, and thanks for letting me do a recording of it.
Tom: Where exactly would I see that?
Michael: I’ll email it to you. I have to convert it and what I’ll do is I’ll send you a link that you’ll push the button and a little player will pop up, and you can just listen to it.
Tom: I appreciate it.
Michael: Take care, bye.
Tom: Hi Mike. Tom Pardee calling from Wisconsin. I had talked with you not too long and mentioned that Monday, today, I would be faxing in the agreement for the HMA material. I did do that late this morning, and wanted to give you just a quick follow up phone call and make sure you received everything. You don’t need to call me back. Obviously, I’ll know when you transact the money on my credit card, and I’m assuming you’ll send me an email follow-up with some other information. In fact, I think that’s what explained on the contract, and definitely looking forward to receiving everything and getting going. My number, if you do want to contact me, and again, you don’t need to 555-555-5555. If you did receive the fax, you can go ahead and run everything. Thanks Mike. Have a nice evening, and I guess afternoon. Bye.
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