Michael: I think the residuals on it, and the reoccurring auto-ship offers tremendous money to be made if you do it right, through these steps that I told you – developing your USP, integrating your USP into your current marketing, the website, your information, your reports, generating alliances and partnerships, media, press releases, community marketing, and then especially direct marketing. It can all come together. You don’t have to do all of these things to see some great sales and a lot of money. It can come in any one of these steps, but all of them working together can grow the business geometrically. Music Here's a quick and easy way you can get into the marketing consulting business. Work part time from home. Help businesses make more money.

Michael: Well, what I want to do, I’m going to take you through what I call an opportunity analysis. I’m going to be on my best behavior, and I’m going to help you the best I can through this kind of fact-finding process. At the same time, I’d like to be able to use the recording to help train some of my students in how to look for opportunities or how to look at a business such as yours and see if we can find some ways to improve it. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to help you or not, but I’ll certainly give it my best shot. Is that far enough?

Dave: Sure.

Michael: Okay, with this questionnaire, I call it an opportunity analysis, and it’s going to help me isolate what I call hidden marketing assets in your business. So, we’re going to determine specific assets in there, and if I can find them, I have a system where we implement marketing projects so we can optimize and leverage these assets if you have them. So, I don’t know how much you’ve learned on the site about what I do. I’ll tell you a little bit about what we do, what I do and what my company does besides providing information products online. I work mainly with small business owners, people like yourself, and I help them maximize their marketing success. Most of my clients are small to medium sized companies with sales under five million dollars per year. The way I work, it’s a unique marketing approach. I’ll look at all the marketing assets, like I said. I’ll find ways to leverage and optimize them from the stuff you already have in place. So, I’m not talking about you having to spend a lot more money on search engine optimization or Here's a quick and easy way you can get into the marketing consulting business. Work part time from home. Help businesses make more money. advertising. I’m trying to look for things you already have that we can optimize with no additional costs. I’m doing this two-fold as a training for the students who listen, but I would also say that if you were to work with me, and you like what I had to tell you, I work strictly on a project-by-project basis implementing these steps. Depending on what we do for you the fee varies per project. Most businesses fall within three different situations. They are either okay but want to do better, or they’re stagnant and there’s no growth whatsoever, or they’re declining. Tell me where you are now with this online business.

Dave: I would probably say – well, if it’s just the online portion of it – stagnant. It has not taken off like I believe it should, and everyone says it ought to.

Michael: All right, give me the history. You told me your son started this. Give me a little bit of background on diabetic wellness. How did it all evolve? How did it get started? Why did it get started? Just give me a little history.

Dave: Actually, my son and his partner worked with Dr. Bill Wheeler, who was a nutritionist, and has developed a nutritional program specifically for diabetics.

Michael: In what capacity did he work with Mr. Wheeler?

Dave: Dr. Wheeler actually did the formulations for the product.

Michael: Has this evolved in multi-level or anything?

Dave: No, it has not. It never has been.

Michael: Okay, good.

Dave: They did a lot of research on what the nutritional requirements are for pre- diabetic and Type Two diabetics, and they went to work developing specific formulations for the supplements.

Michael: Dr. Wheeler, your son, and your son’s partner?

Dave: Yes.

Michael: So, your partner was directly involved with him.

Dave: Absolutely.

Michael: Is he still involved with Mr. Wheeler? Here's a quick and easy way you can get into the marketing consulting business. Work part time from home. Help businesses make more money.

Dave: Yes. When you say involved, Dr. Wheeler is not really involved unless there’s some additional formulations or changes that need to be made in the supplements.

Michael: What part does Dr. Wheeler play in the company? He’s the supplier of all the products?

Dave: No, he is just there to support us with either formulation changes. Sometimes he will do just consultations, but other than that, he’s pretty much on the sidelines and we’re at the marketing stage of just trying to bring it to market.

Michael: Then, how long had they been working with Mr. Wheeler?

Dave: The products have been marketed for about two years, and the way that they have marketed them, they have gone to diabetic conventions and they had a webpage before I took it over. They just tried to sell online. They have not gone to stores or gone to the retail market at all. I have helped them open up some doors to take this from an online sales program to an offline. They’re developing some different packaging for Costco and some of the other retail outlets.

Michael: Let me ask you this. What is special about this line of products? I know you hear about Type Two diabetes. It’s growing. More and more people are getting it. Why should people do business with you? What’s special about these products? How many lines of specifically formulated diabetic products are there like this out there?

Dave: There’s probably two or three other ones. They all take a little bit different approach. If you go to the scientific research, none of them have been optimized to the efficacious levels that some of our ingredients are. So, we really have gone the extra mile so to speak and invested good quality ingredients and at sufficient levels that it actually makes a different for those that are experiencing diabetic symptoms on the Type Two level.

Michael: So, the competition isn’t, from what you understand, through your research, isn’t using the proper levels. They’re more interested in selling and pushing product rather than the quality of the product that’s going to get results.

Dave: Right. They would not stay in business if they were not getting results. We get results, too, and we have quite a few testimonials from people that have been taking our three-pack for a couple years now and have done very well with it. Their glucose blood levels and some of the peripheral neuropathy symptoms that they were having were reduced as well. Here's a quick and easy way you can get into the marketing consulting business. Work part time from home. Help businesses make more money.

Michael: When I ask, why should someone do business with you, to determine what’s unique about your business. We call it, you’ve probably heard of it, maybe you haven’t, the USP, the Unique Selling Proposition. It telegraphs instantly why you and not the others, and I’m looking at your site, and I don’t see any of that at least from the home page.

Dave: Not from the home page. You need to go over to a link here that talks about the research.

Michael: I see the research.

Dave: It is somewhat hard to find, but there is a table that shows all the leading brands in comparison with others, and the different levels of the ingredients.

Michael: I understand. What’s really, really important about a USP, and I’m just using a hypothetical that you’ve got better quality ingredients. That may be it, but it may not. There’s a process in developing what your unique selling proposition is, and there’s four different steps in developing it, and that’s one – researching your customers. Talk to your existing customers who are on the product. They hold the answers to why people will buy your product. Have you guys ever talked to existing customers and followed-up to find out what they like about it, what they didn’t like about it? Any research on it from existing customers who are buying from you on a continual basis?

Dave: We have. I think more needs to be done, but we have done that.

Michael: Did you come up with anything that you learned from your customers that you ordinarily wouldn’t have learned by asking them?

Dave: Probably nothing more than what we anticipated. It was pretty much what they were feeling, the changes they were feeling within themselves. So, they continued to take the product. They felt better. Their blood sugars came down.

Michael: So, what I’m saying is this USP is so critical. It’s got to be researched out. It’s got to be found out. It’s got to be succinct. You got to find out why people should buy your stuff and not the others. Once you determine that, which takes research and it takes work, not only talking to your customers, but researching the competition, your two other competitors, and talking to people within the company. Maybe your son and your son’s partner and yourself hunting out the real reason why, not the reason we think it is, but the real reason through a lot of Here's a quick and easy way you can get into the marketing consulting business. Work part time from home. Help businesses make more money. research. It’s a lot of work, but this one step in your whole marketing process will pay huge dividends if we can get it right. So, once you have that right, let’s just say we did all that research and we found out that people bought this product based on Dr. Bill Wheeler’s credibility, that he was the foremost expert in formulation development. He has the credentials. He’s been at it X amount of years, and that was the underlying theme of your entire business. I’m just saying hypothetical. Sometimes you can have multiple USPs, but you want to find the one that you want to telegraph everytime you touch a customer. So, everytime that customer looks at that website, instead of seeing diabetic wellness, quality diabetic products and information that doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t tell me what’s in it for me. Once we find that USP, that’s what we should be reading on the top of that banner on that website, telegraphed instantly. When someone places an order, let’s say they’re talking to a live operator, and the way they answer their phone, they’re going to telegraph and remind that customer of the unique benefits of why they’re calling. It’s going to be on your invoices when somebody places an order. It’s going to be all over your business. Then, once you have that down, then you get to the next step and you’ve got to integrate that into your current marketing process. The first step is finding out what it is through this process of interviewing and questionnaires and talking to customers and talking to competition and talking to people within the business. Now, once you get that, you’re way ahead of the game. Then, you’re going to take that message and you’re going to integrate it into all of your marketing like the example I just told you, putting it on the banner, putting it on your invoices, putting it on your on-hold when someone places an order, putting it on the packaging, maybe on the box or maybe in the literature that comes with the box. It’s got to be everywhere throughout your company. That’s going to be the one thing your company stands for, and that’s going to be the thing that people are going to remember you by. Do you see how having a USP and finding out what that is can help your business in both telegraphing why you’re important? Do you see how that can generate you more sales once we find out what that is?

Dave: I do, and you know, the development of the website – this is kind of a second generation, and it’s nothing more than what the first generation was, and it was just really as informational piece with our product put there. It was just information about the product. Here's a quick and easy way you can get into the marketing consulting business. Work part time from home. Help businesses make more money.

Michael: It wasn’t really designed.

Dave: We wanted sort of a medical/pharmaceutical sort of look, and there’s a gazillion websites that have sort of the same format. When you open up the site, it doesn’t reach out and grab you like it should.

Michael: Tell me about current marketing processes for you guys. You said you’re doing an offline model. Tell me about how is the product being sold right now. What kind of volume are you doing right now? Are you doing anything with it?

Dave: There’s actually no volume at all other than those people who have bought online just kind of coming across our site being directed by nutritionists or shows that we have done. Quite a few of those people are renewing every month. They’re on automatic delivery.

Michael: How many people do you have currently as customers on automatic delivery?

Dave: I couldn’t tell you that. I don’t know because we did the switch, and those people who were continually on automatic delivery, they’re still being processed by one of the other partners. It’s less than a hundred.

Michael: Less than a hundred?

Dave: Yes.

Michael: Are any phone calls coming in to you about the product or is this all online so far?

Dave: It’s all online. They had an 800-number. They rarely got phone calls. So, they basically dropped the 800-number.

Michael: I do see that you have a box for people to subscribe for the Diabetic Digest. Are you getting people filling out that?

Dave: No.

Michael: None at all?

Dave: One here and there, and nothing to speak of. The idea there was that when they sign up – when we posted a new article in our library, they would get a notification that there was a new article there, and it was available for them. So, it’s not being utilized really well. Here's a quick and easy way you can get into the marketing consulting business. Work part time from home. Help businesses make more money.

Michael: One problem, I don’t know if you notice, when you fill out the form, it takes you to a page that thanks you for filling out the form, and then you close the form and you’re out of the site. It drops you out of the site. Are you in front of it right now?

Dave: I am.

Michael: Give it a try. See if that happens to you.

Dave: It’s close this window.

Michael: Close the window, this web page you are viewing is trying to close this window. Do you want to close the window? Yes. What happened to you when you closed the window?

Dave: It’s letting me close it.

Michael: Even though you’re not getting a ton of traffic to the site or maybe very little, you’ve got people filling out the form. They may be just getting to the site. They’re filling out the form, and then they’ve lost the site. I closed the window, and then I’m gone. I don’t even remember the URL, unless I had it written down somewhere. I’d have to go retype it in. That could be a problem once you get it going. It’s a small thing. I know that’s not your biggest concern.

Dave: I know that there’s several things on this site that have not been completed, and webmaster problems. He’s been moving stuff around, and it hasn’t worked well.

Michael: What I was trying to identify was if there were any sales, I wanted to get an idea because it’s another way of growing your business is the kind of average closing ratio. Since you haven’t been getting phone calls, I’m thinking, “Well, the only type of lead would be through that form.” I was trying to determine how many of those leads are you getting, and if we could improve the closing ratio on someone who fills out that form, that’s only way we have to sell to someone either now or in the future is by capturing their name and their email address. That’s critical online. The whole idea about having a website is you have to get a name to market to. You’ve got to have control and a way to keep in touch with these prospects. So, when you do get your website redone and set up, that little box is critical. That is everything, capturing that name and that email address and having a way to keep in touch with them with an autoresponder series or some kind of Here's a quick and easy way you can get into the marketing consulting business. Work part time from home. Help businesses make more money. offer preferably to get them to call you where you can get a phone number as well. You can even take that box and bribe them for a free CD or a free audio recording or something maybe with an interview with Dr. Wheeler giving them free education. That way you can get a mailing address. So, when you start generating leads to the websites, that’s going to be real critical. You want to have that closing ratio as high possible converting those leads.

Dave: I know that’s critical.

Michael: You don’t have too many past customers. You only have maybe twenty or so present customers and perspective customers. You told me you’re doing some trade shows to generate perspective customers. Tell me about the trade shows that you’re doing.

Dave: I haven’t done them recently, but in the last couple of years, they’ve done a bunch of them. They are specific for diabetic put on by American Diabetes Association. We’re there to basically talk to people about the product. We actually have quite a few leads that come from that primarily nutritionists. We do have a few nutritionists who refer people to the site to purchase.

Michael: You’re selling online on a retail level, right?

Dave: Yes.

Michael: Is the wholesale setting up an opportunity for nutritionists to buy wholesale and resell? Is that something you’ve considered?

Dave: Oh, yes. I was a little bit reluctant, actually quite a bit reluctant. We have not had very good success.

Michael: What’s the reluctance?

Dave: Professional referring or having their patients buy something where they make money from.

Michael: What do the trade shows cost to set up and present?

Dave: By the time their booth and everything, they’re into probably $1,500.

Michael: Are they allowed to sell product right there at the show?

Dave: Yes. Here's a quick and easy way you can get into the marketing consulting business. Work part time from home. Help businesses make more money.

Michael: Are they able to break even by the time they sell product? Can they sell $1,500 in product?

Dave: They usually break even.

Michael: Okay, so the trade shows are break even, and did you say they’re capturing leads from health professionals mainly?

Dave: More health professionals than individuals.

Michael: If you say there’s a conflict of interest, but they’re capturing leads from health professionals, why are the health professionals showing interest in the product, just so they can do a direct referral?

Dave: Yes.

Michael: What are you guys doing with those leads after a trade show? Are they actively being followed up on?

Dave: They haven’t done a lot with that other than sending out information to nutritionists.

Michael: Can you give me a ballpark idea? How many leads can they end up coming how with after a show?

Dave: Fifty to sixty.

Michael: Fifty or sixty? So, they automatically will mail out literature to all 50 of them?

Dave: I believe they have tried that. I’m not absolutely certain, but I believe they have tried that, and done that.

Michael: You’re not sure if that resulted in any kind of business.

Dave: If it did, it was not significant.

Michael: You’re saying the conflict of interest, they’re not going to be buying direct, but they may be willing to refer patients over to you just as an added service.

Dave: Yes, and they do that.

Michael: Do you have any idea if the literature that was mailed out communicated that? Did it approach that angle, or was it mainly, “Well, here’s information on our product.”? What are you sending out? Are they color brochures and stuff? Here's a quick and easy way you can get into the marketing consulting business. Work part time from home. Help businesses make more money.

Dave: I think they were color brochures that were primarily just a description of the product. There was no significant compelling offer, really sales material.

Michael: Just some brochures, business stuff, but they’re getting phone numbers from the people? Do you know?

Dave: No, they were not.

Michael: Those trade shows, if your son and your partner don’t mind doing those, those can be a very effective way in generating leads, and if the leads were handled properly, you could probably start building a business. If they like doing the trade shows, it’s kind of a daunting task. There may be more automatic ways of doing this. Let’s say you break even on the product sales, and you bring home 50 leads from a trade show. Well, if there’s conflict of interest between these health professionals and they’re not going to resell it, if you could get ten of them to start referring patients over to you and really have something where you can offer some kind of incentive that’s not conflicting, that could be a real powerful way to start growing the business is to have the endorsements and referrals from other professionals. You’ve got automatic sales people routing for you, and providing customers over to you. When someone gets on an auto-ship program, what is your cost on this product compared to the retail? What kind of margins are you working on?

Dave: They cost in the $12 range. The last time we did a run, they sold for $39.95.

Michael: Twelve dollar range. You’re buying that directly from Mr. Wheeler?

Dave: He’s not involved in that part of it at all. We’re producing it at the lab.

Michael: Wow, twelve bucks? Why is it so expensive? I’m just curious. I’ve had some experience in the supplement industry. Is it because your ingredients are so expensive?

Dave: Yes, it is.

Michael: It’s really because of the ingredients.

Dave: Yes. If you go over to the library on their site, you can look at the diabetics versus the leading brands. One of the ingredients that is significantly more expensive is this alphalypoic acid. It has a very high level of that, and it is expensive. Here's a quick and easy way you can get into the marketing consulting business. Work part time from home. Help businesses make more money. They can look at doing some formulation changes, but then they compromise the effectiveness of the product.

Michael: What are the competitors selling for? Are they about the same as you? Are they more or less?

Dave: Actually, they’re more. We have talked recently about increasing the cost where they started at. I personally think that they can sell this product closer to $50 or even $69, and do very well at it.

Michael: Yes, absolutely. Sometimes it’s overlooked. People don’t have confidence in their products, so they’ll try and sell it on price. That’s generally what you see in most businesses that all they have to compete on is price. You do not want to get into the price competing game, even if you have competitors selling it for less. Let’s say your USP is, “Better Ingredients, Better Product, Better Results”. Some people care about the price. If that’s your USP, you use the most expensive ingredients available than in any product in its class, your customers should expect to pay a higher price. Sometimes that higher price will elevate your credibility and elevate sales. You may end up able to sell more at the higher price than being perceived as just a price competitive, “me, too” product. With good marketing, a good USP and good positioning, you could brag about being the most expensive diabetic supplement on the market. Here’s why – you support and defend your price because what it comes down to is results, and if you do a good selling job on why you’re the most expensive priced product, and here are the results, and we stand behind them. You can have people on auto-ship at $79 a month. Then, you’ve got some margins that can self-fund your advertising and your marketing because you’ve got some more money in there to play with.

Dave: Yes, exactly.

Michael: That positioning, I think could definitely help you. So, you don’t currently have other than the health professionals who pick up leads at the trade shows, any other alliance opportunities where people are championing your product or referring over to you.

Dave: No affiliate programs. There’s no joint venture programs set up. All those seem to me like they out to room for me somewhere. None of that has been tried. Here's a quick and easy way you can get into the marketing consulting business. Work part time from home. Help businesses make more money.

Michael: Diabetes, there are lots of non-competing organizations out there from all the weight loss products. I’m sure there’s weight loss supplements sold for children. I mean there are so many different business that are not competing with you that you could get involved with where you can tap into a company’s existing customer base just by simply creating an alliance with them explaining who you are, “We specialize in diabetic supplements. You’re specializing in weight loss supplements. The two go hand in hand. Would you like to do a deal?” Come up with some kind of a partnership, an arrangement where they can endorse your product, maybe in trade for you endorsing their product. Having a partnership or alliance or a joint venture, you can tap in to a huge customer list of already buying customers and start generating sales that way. Does that make sense?

Dave: Yes.

Michael: It’s the shortest and simplest and most highly leveraged thing you could do. You’ve got a product, but you don’t have customers. There’s companies with tons of customers, but no additional products. They may have thousands of customers but just one product, and you can make an arrangement. They can endorse your product to their list, and you can cut them a percent. If you want to keep this all online or offline, online, you can set up an affiliate program where it’s all automatic. It can be very powerful, all automatic. Your time would be better spent actually your son and the partner doing nothing but setting up alliances and joint ventures with potential, non-competing products for a share in the profits especially after you increased the price. You’ll have plenty of money to pay out. Imagine if you get your USP right, you position yourself as the most expensive diabetic supplement only because it works better ingredients and results. You’ve got twice the money. You’re making twice as much. You could afford to pay out 50%.

Dave: We need to be at level, don’t we?

Michael: Yes, you do. You need to be at that level, and you could support your claim, and that price positioning may be a good way to go. You also get when you have a higher price like that, you get better customers, better clients, more committed customers. Usually, the customers who pay higher dollar things, they’re more committed. It’s a different level of person. It’s a more serious prospect. They’ll reduce your customer service in refunds and stuff like that, and you’ll have a longer Here's a quick and easy way you can get into the marketing consulting business. Work part time from home. Help businesses make more money. lasting customer at that price, as long as you service them. You keep in touch with them. Pick up the phone every two months and call them. Offer them more information. See how they’re doing. Let them know that you really care about their diabetes and their problem. If you treat them well, and you let them know you care, it doesn’t take a lot of effort. All these processes can be automated through the mail or through an email. You can keep a customer for a long time. Imagine a guy on auto-ship at $79 a month for two or three or four years. The margins are tremendous.

Dave: How about an affiliate program? I’ve done a little bit of research on those like Commission Junction, but it’s a huge dollar commitment to get set up with them on a product like this.

Michael: I have contacts in the industry who could get you set up on affiliate stuff where all the software’s integrated. If you wanted to use me for some consulting, I could definitely help you in that realm. I have contacts in the industry who could help you do that, or I can direct you to people where it’s not a huge dollar commitment. Media is another great way of getting free advertising. Diabetes is always in the media. Do you see how with a couple good press releases that you can tie into existing media stories you can position yourself in a unique way to your local media? Anytime the run a story on weight loss, you could send out press releases or contact the news, local news, regional news, national news, and you can land some big stories. Is Mr. Wheeler available to be involved with media? Is he into that?

Dave: Yeah, we just have to pay him. We have an interview with Dr. Wheeler.

Michael: I saw that on the site. I haven’t listened to it.

Dave: That was an interview that he did. We transcribed it, and it’s up there as well for it to be read. We could get him to do some other interviews. We just need to guide him a little bit.

Michael: How does he sound on the interview, good?

Dave: Yes, good. He’s fine. He has good credentials behind him. He’s worked with many of the supplement companies and just finished working with Body Wise.

Michael: What’s he doing with Body Wise as far as formulating? Here's a quick and easy way you can get into the marketing consulting business. Work part time from home. Help businesses make more money.

Dave: Yes, he’s no longer there. Just in the last month or two he left them, but I think he was a nutritionist and one that was helping with formulations.

Michael: We talked a little bit about media, but also, well you’re on online business, another step in our system for growing the business, and that’s community marketing. It’s really for regional based businesses. What’s your vision for the business, all online automatic, or you’re talking about developing some offline strategy? What would you like to happen?

Dave: The primary thing is developing a very strong online presence and successful marketing. That’s where I would really like to see based on the partner that I’m working with. We have initiated some contact with Costco. I’m not sure where that’s actually going to go. They’ll try it. If they’re interested in what we’re doing, they’ll try it first with their online program. I don’t see that this is a quantity product that we get ourselves in trouble with trying to do online and compete in the offline world, particularly because we could change the label a bit and it’s focus. They’re so specific for diabetics that I think we have to really try to find that niche and try to reach those people. I’d like to do that primarily online.

Michael: Well, that community marketing, there’s an internet step in the business, an online step for growing the business, but the community marketing, as you know, there’s tons of communities, online communities that you can certainly leverage. Once you decide what you stand for and what your USP is and that’s succinct, and you can come up with offers and promotions or press releases, these communities are available from online user groups to online mailing lists to websites. Tell me a little bit about the diabetes market. How big is it now? How much opportunity do you see in it? Is it huge? How many millions of people have diabetes currently, and how many are getting it every year?

Dave: The numbers fluxuate, but there’s probably 16-17 million diabetics in the country. The majority of them are Type Two diabetics. There’s actually a very large number of people who fall in the category of what we call pre-diabetic, and that becomes an educational program. We do our best work with the pre-diabetics who take supplements as well as the Type Two diabetics. The best results are seen. It’s a huge market in that there’s more and more diabetics being diagnosed every year. It is definitely a population that is growing. Here's a quick and easy way you can get into the marketing consulting business. Work part time from home. Help businesses make more money.

Michael: What happens when someone gets diagnosed for diabetes? Let’s say a guy goes to the doctor. He’s having trouble seeing. He’s diagnosed with diabetes. The doctor sends him home with what? I guess that’s all across the board. Does he generally get on insulin right away? What’s the medical community doing for diabetics?

Dave: First of all, a doctor will talk to them about their weight and their diet. If a doctor is good, that’s what he’ll do. He’ll show a couple of areas that the patient, individual will have the best results with that they can control. Many of the symptoms can start to go away or go away completely if diets are changed and they start exercising. Human nature pretty much is that we’re lazy, and even though we have a disease, often times, we just don’t do anything about it. People look for kind of quick fixes, and if their blood sugars are totally out of whack and they can’t control them, then they put them on insulin with regular testing.

Michael: Let’s say I’m the normal lazy person. I’ve been diagnosed. I’m not on the insulin yet, and I see your product. What’s the big promise that your products going to do for me? Where am I going to supposedly see the benefits if I start taking your product?

Dave: Well because of the ingredients, it will help to lower blood sugars.

Michael: Do you get to make that claim on your literature and stuff? Is that something you have to be careful with?

Dave: You have to be careful with it, but we’ll let our customers and their testimonials declare that just as much. We have it documented from people who have taken it.

Michael: That it will lower your blood sugar.

Dave: Blood sugars are lowered, and some of the diabetic neuropathy symptoms start to go away.

Michael: What are some of the symptoms that go away?

Dave: Tingling, lack of feeling, numbness in the toes generally, that’s usually where problems start to occur. There’s a big fear factor with people who are well educated with diabetes. They can lose their legs. My background, I’m a physical therapist, and I’ve worked with plenty of diabetics that have diabetic ulcers that just don’t heal very well. They wind up losing toes and feet and so forth. If you want to strike fear into people’s lives, you can kind of go down that road. Here's a quick and easy way you can get into the marketing consulting business. Work part time from home. Help businesses make more money.

Michael: With all my audio work, I can see having a set of interviews with diabetics talking about their stories, how it got out of control, what they didn’t do about it, and what they wish they did about it, having that all on the website. It will just scare the hell out of people about the reality of diabetics. Sometimes fear is a stronger motivator than the motivation of gain. Fear will get people off their ass to do something. You’ve got to hit them hard and that may be a nice angle. Let them hear the reality of diabetics.

Dave: I hadn’t really thought about that, the interview angle for all this.

Michael: That’s my specialty is the audio interview. You could do it with real diabetics. What can happen to you if you don’t do something now? Here is on solution. So, once you have your sales message, once you have your USP, you’re able to create a sales message, and for example, you could have a CD of the reality of diabetics, real interviews with real diabetics who have lost limbs. You could have recordings of that. You could offer that as a lead generating tool. You can have an introduction of why they’re listening. You have a piece that can be a very powerful lead generator and selling tool. At the end of the recording, you could have directions on how to get your 30 day free trial of your product without risking anything. If you up your price, you could afford a 30 day free trial if all they paid was the shipping, and get them on auto-ship. There’s some systems and methods that have been proven over and over again that I’ve learned from. People have made over a $100 million in the supplement industry on how you can set this up with your product as long as your price is higher, and then once you get your marketing message down, and then direct mail becomes a huge leverage. Once you have your selling message, once you have your lead generating, once you have your free trial offer, you can test that on a small level using direct mail. There are lists available of buyers of non-competing products, targeted lists of obese people, maybe people who have joined Weight Watchers. You could target and find pre-diabetic and diabetic people. There’s lists of millions of people out there. So, once you test and get an effective sales message, you can test that list. You can mail out an offer, and see what comes back, and then you just have to understand what your lifetime value of a customer. If you can keep an average customer at $79 for six months, you Here's a quick and easy way you can get into the marketing consulting business. Work part time from home. Help businesses make more money. know that you can spend up to $350 to get a sale, if you know that that average customer stays with you for six months.

Dave: We had gone down that, there’s another site Freediabetix.com. This site was really designed to direct people to a free offer.

Michael: Was this your site?

Dave: Yes, I developed this. I put this stuff together and then I ran across these mini- site experts that did the graphics for us. If you put your name in there, it takes you to the next page which goes into a little bit more information, and then if they order it, then it will flip them over to our diabetic bonus site.

Michael: Were you doing any keyword online Google Adwords or anything?

Dave: We had not started that with this site yet.

Michael: You just put this site up to see if someone would come around it.

Dave: Well, it’s just been finished. So, the next step was going to be for us to put some Adsense ads. There’s a couple of things that need to be changed. I need to get my webmaster back in the saddle to change those. I’m kind of at his mercy.

Michael: Do you know if he designed it in Front Page, with Front Page extensions, by any chance?

Dave: I want to say maybe it was Excite Pro.

Michael: Whoever you’re hosting with, I’m sure they have Front Page extensions. I could go in and change this stuff. It’s not big deal, once I have access to it.

Dave: The second page that you go to has a button that’s for the audio, and you can get those. Again, I think the audio needs to come off the front page. It’s too confusing when people land there to be hearing something that we expect them to read it as well.

Michael: You’ve got a viable product. It’s a tremendous market. It’s doable. It’s just going to take a commitment and time and money on your part. That’s all there is to it. I think it’s a worthwhile thing to go after. You don’t have a lot of assets right now. You have some websites which is an asset. You’ve got the assets of Mr. Wheeler, which is very good. It’s a hungry market. I think it’s a great product to sell. I think the residuals on it and the reoccurring auto-ship offers tremendous money to be made if you do it right. Here's a quick and easy way you can get into the marketing consulting business. Work part time from home. Help businesses make more money. It’s doable. Usually, when I’m looking for assets, I’m usually working with businesses to optimize assets. I’m working with businesses that already have satisfied customers where they’re not doing anything with them, they’re not making upsells. That’s where you can bring in a lot of money very quickly with companies that have lots of existing customers. Through the steps that I’ve told you developing your USP, integrating your USP into your current marketing, the website, your information, your reports, generating alliances and partnerships is tremendous, media, press releases, community marketing through the internet, and then some changes in your website, and then especially direct marketing, it could all come together. You don’t have to do all of these things to see some great sales and a lot of money. It could come in any one of these steps, but all of them working together can grow the business geometrically. I would categorize your business mainly in the start-up phase. You’re not working totally from scratch because you do have some stuff to work with. You have a product. You’ve got a manufacturer. You’ve got an outline of a website. I think you could be helped. It’s just going to take either your time or your money to pay someone who knows how to do this. Do you have money to put into the business to grow it? Or, is it something you just want to learn how to do on your own and do it yourself?

Dave: Well, I definitely want to learn as I go along. Time is of an essence as well. We need to get this project rolling, and get it profitable as quickly as we can. So, we do need to put some money into the marketing part of the coaching part of it to help shorten the curve.

Michael: Who would be doing it or your son? Are your son and the partner, are they into doing this, or are you really the one into doing this?

Dave: I’m pretty much it.

Michael: How old is your son?

Dave: Twenty-nine.

Michael: So, he’s not really into this.

Dave: No, he’s not. He’s on the sidelines. He gets excited about it, but they’ve been struggling with it for a couple of years. They were pretty much going to kind Here's a quick and easy way you can get into the marketing consulting business. Work part time from home. Help businesses make more money. of let it go, and then I said, “Let me see what I can do.” I stepped in because I was interested in the online marketing of the product. It’s in the health field.

Michael: What is your main business, physical therapy?

Dave: Yes, I’m a physical therapist. I’m retired. I kind of want to do something else with my life. I closed my clinic and I’m ready to do something different.

Michael: The online business is exciting. It really is. I really couldn’t think of a better product. I think you have all the ingredients. You’ve got the margins. You’ve got the market. You just got to have the process and the system to do it. If you would like me to do this, I could sleep on it a day or two, and I could write you a proposal, if you wanted to hire me or one of my consultants to work on this. I’ve got consultants all over the world who are trained in the system that I do. It can apply very well. If it’s something to much for me to take on, I could refer you over or I could consult with one of my consultants. I can be more of a mentor to him and walk him through, or I could do a combination of you working on it, and at the same time have me available for consulting while you do most of the actual work. I’ll direct you exactly what you need to do step by step in developing each one of these steps, and if you think you’ve got the stick to it to execute on these things, I’ll clarify and tell you exactly what you need to do. What do you think would be better, just having someone take it over and do everything, or a combination?

Dave: The combination is going to work the best because I’m very much interested in seeing this be successful, but also learning it. I have other sites and other projects that I want to engage.

Michael: What else do you have going?

Dave: I have a family business here in the town that we live which is commercial print screening and embroidery, but we’re taking on a line of 100% organic cotton and hemp clothing. It’s a very specialized sort of part of the garment industry. We wanted a shot of marketing that, and seeing how we can develop a very unique selling position in the marketplace. We’re not just another apparel vendor.

Michael: Is there a large market for the organic stuff?

Dave: There is. I wouldn’t say it’s huge right now, but it is definitely growing every year. More and more people are interested in. Here's a quick and easy way you can get into the marketing consulting business. Work part time from home. Help businesses make more money.

Michael: So, where are you doing all your fulfillment? If an order comes in, are you shipping it to your house?

Dave: We have a warehouse here in the town that we live in with our business.

Michael: You’re operating under where your screenprinting business is and everything.

Dave: Well, for the supplements, they’re actually shipped out of Idle Falls, one of the other partners.

Michael: So, no one else is selling this formula. You have exclusivity on this?

Dave: Yes. Yes, it’s our product.

Michael: Did you have to pay him to do the formulating and everything?

Dave: It’s a relationship that one of the partners had with him. I think he was paid something up front, but he doesn’t receive any percentages right now, Dr. Wheeler.

Michael: If you went to another supplement manufacturer, do you have exactly what’s in that?

Dave: Sure, as we speak, we’re receiving bids from a couple different labs for the next run of product.

Michael: How much do you have to run on each thing?

Dave: It kind of varies. We have some labs that will work on short runs, and we’re looking at a lab that will do larger runs. The short runs are traffic because they’re all that way, but also time turnaround is much shorter.

Michael: How many different products? You’ve got diabetic multi-vitamins, the diabetic select plus and the diabetic calcium magnesium. Are those your three main products?

Dave: Right now, that’s the only three. It’s a three pack, and what we’re doing now is we’re looking at actually combining those into a little cello pack. They’ll have a pack in the morning and a pack in the evening time.

Michael: Are they capsules or tablets?

Dave: Capsules.

Michael: And, how many do you take a day? Here's a quick and easy way you can get into the marketing consulting business. Work part time from home. Help businesses make more money.

Dave: There’s about nine.

Michael: So, you have to take three from each a day?

Dave: No, actually, there’d be eight in the morning, and the same at night. So, it would be twice a day.

Michael: Let’s say I have all three. I’m going to take all three everyday, twice a day. How long is it going to last me?

Dave: Thirty days.

Michael: So, there’s 90 capsules in each one.

Dave: Yes.

Michael: Is it important to take twice a day?

Dave: It is.

Michael: These are the only three products here.

Dave: There’s other products that are on the drawing board. Things have to get off the ground first.

Michael: Are they designed to work in conjunction with each other when he did the formulations or do they work individually? Let’s say someone didn’t want all three. Well, what should I take? If I don’t want to get all three, and I want something to start with, what would you recommend?

Dave: Select Plus, and on our free offer that’s what we’re offering is that Select Plus because people will see the best and most immediate results with the Select Plus. It has to do with the alphalypoic acid strength that’s in it.

Michael: What other products have this alphalypoic acid?

Dave: Well, a lot of the other diabetic vitamins or supplement companies have some in it, but research shows that you need at least 600 mg for an efficacious level. We jumped it to 800.

Michael: What was the free offer? Tell me about that.

Dave: The free offer was they start with the Select Plus, and we choose that because they’ll feel the benefit from that fastest. Unless they return that or notify us, Here's a quick and easy way you can get into the marketing consulting business. Work part time from home. Help businesses make more money. they have to actually return an unused portion by the end of the month before their 30 days is up, they would go on automatic shipment for the complete three pack.

Michael: Did they pay for shipping on the first bottle?

Dave: Yes.

Michael: How much were you charging for shipping?

Dave: I think it was like $6.95.

Michael: So, they pay shipping. What was the results with that free offer?

Dave: It hasn’t been launched yet.

Michael: Oh, this is what you want to do for the free offer.

Dave: Yes.

Michael: If they take advantage of the free offer, they’re automatically put on the autoship?

Dave: Correct.

Michael: That’s a good offer, and then you can upsell them to the other stuff. The numbers are right. All you need is marketing – marketing, money and effort – that’s it. The margins are there especially if you can get your manufacturing costs down, but the margins are there just be increasing the price, and it can be done.

Dave: Our manufacturer mentioned costs are going to go up when we go to a cello pack. It’s just a little bit more expensive.

Michael: If you do shipping from your warehouse, why do you have to put them in a cello pack?

Dave: We don’t have to do that. The last couple of years they just sold them in the individual bottles, but the idea is that’s what everybody else is doing out there.

Michael: If you educate them right from the beginning, they don’t care if it comes in a cello pack especially if it increases your costs. No one’s going to return it because it’s not in a cello pack. You just put three in the box. Here's a quick and easy way you can get into the marketing consulting business. Work part time from home. Help businesses make more money.

Dave: I think the original conversation where the going to the cello pack came from was preliminary feedback from Costco that they wanted it.

Michael: That’s different. That’s Costco. That’s a whole different ballgame.

Dave: My concern is there’s a sea of people out there that want to help. I’ve spent a lot of money going in different directions not knowing really where to start.

Michael: I think I’ll come back to you with an offer where I’m going to provide you, if you want to do some of this yourself, we can do a two-step thing where I can provide you all the information how to do exactly what I’m going to do step- by step. It’s the actual system that we train our consultants in. So, you can go through that a step at a time and do it yourself. It doesn’t take a long time to do it, you’ve just got to do it, and maybe with a combination of some support on my end. That may be the best thing because I’m just going to tell you. If I was to do this for you myself, I’m going to charge you for each step. If that’s something you’re prepared to do, I could provide you the education on how to do it, and then offer you some support with me on the phone and stuff. So, there’s going to be a big cost difference. It all comes down to a factor of time. If I’m working on your business, it means that I’m not working on my business. Now, I have other consultants who maybe can’t do as good as job for me, but they’re trained in the system and it’s really a step-by-step system. Now, I do have one guy in mind who is very into this industry. As a matter of fact, one of his clients is a very large manufacturer of all natural hemp products and was the developer of the bean pillow. I think it’s called Bean.com, but that’s one of his clients he works with. He is into this wellness area, and he specifically trained on my HMA system. I could probably get him to take you on as a client. It would be about half of what I’d charge you. He’s capable.

Dave: It all comes down to my comfort level that in the end I’m going to have results.

Michael: I understand.

Dave: That’s the bottom line.

Michael: We guarantee results. Whether you take me or him on, we’ll work the system until you get your investment back. That’s the worse that can happen. Here's a quick and easy way you can get into the marketing consulting business. Work part time from home. Help businesses make more money.

Dave: Well, that’s fair enough.

Michael: Each customer right there is worth $300 to you. Ten customers is $3,000 a year. How many customers do you need to have to make yourself $20,000 a month? It adds up quick when you have margins in there. Music Hi, it’s Michael Senoff with HardtoFindSeminars.com, and this is part two of my interview consult with Dave. Dave is a distributor of a diabetic supplement product. In the first part of the recording, he contacted me to see if there was something we could do in helping him grow his business. I took him through the HMA’s Opportunity Analysis, and recommended to him that he should take himself through the entire HMA system himself with some consulting with me on the side. So, this is part two, and we go over additional ideas, marketing ideas that can help him get a jump start in marketing his diabetic supplements. Enjoy!

Dave: My wife and I really would like to develop an online business. I’ve been in business since I was a kid, and I’ve been successful in many different ventures. Online marketing and sales, I’ve not done anything with. The technology, how to create a website, and how to put it together so it’s appealing – I’m learning just by trial and error, and it’s really a long process. So, I would like to shorten the learning curve so I can start bringing in some money because we really want to develop a very successful online business. This thing with the diabetic wellness was an opportunity with my son and his company because they were struggling. They pretty much were going to let it go or would in the future if we didn’t take a different approach. I said, “Well, let me take a run at it. I’ll use it as a learning experience for me. Let’s see how we can make this grow.” It’s a great product. It’s a great market. It’s not multi-level marketing. We manufacture it. We deal right with the lab, and we’re trying to put this together.

Michael: Are you pretty set on keeping it all 100% online, or are you open?

Dave: We have some inroads into Costco. We’re having to reformulate the packaging for their needs, but no, we want to do an offline program, any direction we want to go. My feeling is that if we can do a successful offline program, it’s going to help our online sales as well. We’re kind of going down both avenues here, and I’m right now – sad to say it – but, I’m kind of at the helm of the online. I took the website that they had before and kind of redid things

Michael: The website’s mostly pretty good. Maybe what it communicates could be better.

Dave: Yes, and the reality is we’re not making sales off the website right now. There’s no compelling offer there. There’s no real sales pitch, if you want to put it that way, on there.

Michael: You’ve got to give people a reason to go there. You’ve got to have people to approach.

Dave: So, what you’re talking about is your HMA consulting program?

Michael: Yes, the HMA consulting program. It would be two-fold because with it you get two things. The entire course is geared to teaching you how to be a marketing consultant, not only how to get clients and how to take a client through the steps of the system, but how to get paid and all of that, the reality of what it’s like being a consultant. At the same time, you’re learning what to do for your clients. Now, we just added a module to the system where Richard just did a training. A lot of consultants will do group training where the average maybe can’t afford three or four thousand dollars a step, especially small businesses. So, group training has been a part of Richard’s consulting business for some time, and he just videotaped a ten DVD set where he takes 15 business owners, all types of businesses, through the entire system. That comes with the consulting package either to use for yourself or to put businesses through. You could watch it from the perspective of learning how to be a marketing consultant and learn all the steps of the system that you’re going to take someone through, or you could use the group training, sit in front of that and view that as if you’re one of the people in the classroom, in the training learning how to take your business through the steps of the business. You just follow along. Each step has four different components, and a combination of all the steps can give you the growth in the business. Now, when they teach us to be consultants, you want to take on a business with hidden marketing assets. If you were a consultant and I would tell you to approach a business, I would tell you to not take on a business that doesn’t have customers, and unfortunately you’re a start-up, not an existing business. It doesn’t mean you don’t have assets. You do have assets. You’ve got a website that’s been doing. You’ve got money that’s been invested. You’ve go a product formulation. You’ve got Mr. Wheeler’s expertise. Those are all hidden assets, but I’m just saying strictly if I was to look for clients to take on, you wouldn’t be my first choice only because there’s no customers there. So, you’ve got to start building it from the ground up. Certainly, that’s going to be a lot harder. Let’s say you already had customers, and you were doing a certain amount of business, but you weren’t keeping in touch with your customers. You weren’t articulating why you’re different, why you’re important. If you had the customers who were already buying, you could get some growth fast. Does that make sense?

Dave: Absolutely, that’s really where we’re struggling.

Michael: You’re a start-up basically.

Dave: Yes, definitely, and sometimes it’s easier to look out and see what other people are doing than looking at your own. I have a really good friend who’s a horse trainer, and he’s got a lot of great things going for him because he’s nationally known in a certain breed. He produced a video/DVD training that he showed it to me. I said, “You know, you’ve got a great business here.” So, I have been – if you want to use the word – consulting with him to help him move along. It’s been interesting because-

Michael: You can give advice better than do it for your own business.

Dave: Doesn’t that sound weird?

Michael: It’s totally true. I’m the same way. It’s different because you’re in it. You’re emotional. You can’t look at it objectively. It’s impossible.

Dave: I see how he is developing what I’m telling him to do, and now he’s making $2,500 a month, and I’ve made zero with my project. I just thought it was really weird. I just received in the mail from you the CD set on the consulting.

Michael: You did, good.

Dave: You sent that out to me.

Michael: That’s all the best recordings. Many of them are with existing consultants, interviews with Richards. You’ll hear me taking prospects through the opportunity analysis similar to what I did with you

Dave: I’ve been listening to a lot of your stuff. I actually ran across Jason Ryan Isaacson’s interview. How long ago was that done?

Michael: It’s got to be at least two years ago or more. If you get the HMA system, and you want to go through it yourself, you’ve got me to consult with you anytime. You’ll also have any of my – for instance, I’ve got a web designer who I’ve been working with ever since my site started. He’s been with me. He’s a guy from India, but he lives in the United States. He just got married, and he’s very good. I don’t know everything about the web, but this is my guy. I’ve got a team around me. I’ve got transcribers. I’ve got editors. I’ve got my website guy which is him. He doesn’t rip you off. I don’t allow him to rip me off. He’s fair. He gets things done. He just brought on a couple of partners out of India who he’s farming a lot of the work out to. He could handle any of your website needs, anything you want to do, if you direct him to what you want to do. That can be done. If your website guy has flaked out on you, I have someone. This is my personal webmaster who could help you. I could hook you up with him. I’ve got a lot of resources I’d make available to you because as an HMA consultant, that’s one of my higher ticket items that I sell, and you get me with it. If you’ve got a problem, let’s say you’ve got a concern about say the USP or how you should position yourself, I’ll get Richard on the phone. I’ll say, “Richard, I’ve got an HMA consultant. He’s got an existing business. Let’s do a three-way.” This is what I do for my consultants.

Dave: Sounds great. I have one question here. I think this really sounds great because I really would like to learn this in a way that I can help other people. That’s a part of me that’s pretty strong that I want to help other people be successful, sometimes to the detriment of my own welfare. I don’t know quite how to articulate this super well. I worked with Kevin Bidwell. Do you know Kevin?

Michael: I do not know him. Who is he?

Dave: He has Success Secrets. I actually had some introduction to minute marketing, Corey Rudl’s stuff. They had a mentoring program, and I know I do well in a mentoring program. I did it well in my medical practice. I just know how that works and how effective it is. So, I’m 100% sold on that I ran across Corey Rudl and his group. They had a mentoring program. I investigated that, but there’s some things in it that just didn’t sound right to me, didn’t feel good to me. So, I did a little bit of investigation. So, I’m not recommending Corey Rudl’s program. I’m recommending Kevin Bidwell. He was doing a little teleseminar and I got on it and listened to it, and I did a little coursework with him over a couple of months late 2005, beginning of this year. He helped me go through and said, “Well, you could do this, and you need to do this.” Okay, so I went out and developed a website. I put up a website, but I pretty much carried over much of the same look and feel and content lay out as the previous website, but the question is, websites do certain things and that’s to sell. That’s the only purpose of it really is to make a sale. You have content and all that stuff that leads up to the sale, but how do I know when I have a task to do like put up a website or make a content that I’m putting up the right kind of thing? Now, I know that I look at the website and I think, “You know, this really could be a lot more compelling.”

Michael: You’re going to do that by, and this is the most important thing, by researching your market. The USP is the very first step you have to develop. Why is that diabetic going to order from you? What’s important? There’s four steps in developing that USP, and one is talking to diabetics, talking to them on the phone, and then there’s a questionnaire process that’s available that you take them through. You are an investigator. This is the most critical and important thing because if you’re selling something that isn’t on the mind of your buyer, they’re not going to buy. Your message has got to match your market. This is what separates great salesmen from poor salesmen, great copywriters from poor copywriters, great websites from poor websites – is the message has got to ring true with your prospect who’s considering buying your product, what’s important to them. That takes research. That’s interviewing potential prospects, diabetics. Next is researching your competition. What is your competition doing? What are the keys points that they’re selling on? Are they selling on price? Are they selling on quality ingredients? Do research trying to determine how successful they are. Look at their Alexa ranking. It’s just dog-gone hard research. If you can get that message right and then you know through your research you’ve determined makes someone order, you’re going to be way ahead of the game rather than getting the message wrong.

Dave: Exactly, and that came through loud and clear in our last conversation

Michael: I have sources that I can direct you to. There’s archives of direct mails that are mailed out on any kind of health offer, any kind of business offer, actual direct mail pieces, and you can determine the companies who’s mailing it. You can go into the SRDS, which is the Standard Rate and Data Service. This is like the phone book of every direct mail list that’s available for rent, and you can go see how many names that they’re willing to rent on their list. You can determine the monthly hotline names. That means they have say 20,000 hotline names meaning these are 20,000 new customers per month. By looking at this data in the SRDS which is available to you, you can determine this company is bringing on 20,000 new customers per month. You can find the company and go their website and see what they’re selling. You could become their customer and get their direct mail pieces and their promotions, and you can see their entire marketing program that’s bringing them 20,000 customers a month. You can mirror and maybe even improve on what they’re doing. There is financial intelligence, marketing intelligence out there for you, and that’s in the research phase.

Dave: Is that in there as I go through the HMA system?

Michael: I don’t go into the SRDS stuff, but I can certainly direct you to that. I’ll consult with you on what I think you should be doing. Maybe it will help you out in that. I have a subscription to the SRDS and I can give you the user name and password and you can go in there and do the research yourself. It’s something that I pay about $600 a year for. All the data is there. I’ll direct you. I’ll keep it in the top of my mind. So, if I see something or I’m online and I’m researching something that looks like a good idea or may help you, I’ll pass it on to you, if you want to do it, I’ll even offer you this. I haven’t listened to the Dr. Wheeler interview, but I love audio. There’s no better way I think than educating potential prospects through a great audio interview or a great audio recording. Maybe once you do the research and you’ve determined where the real hot buttons are in your research and why customers are buying, then if you want to send me over the questions and set me up, I’ll do an interview with Dr. Wheeler for you and we can put that on your website and use it as a selling tool on your website, or that can be put on a CD and sent out to prospects.

Dave: We tried a couple different interviews with him. He talks just fine. He needs to be guided very carefully with the right questions. If he knows what’s goin to be asked, he’s good. Part of the problem is they’re just very short interviews that take place, and they were radio interviews.

Michael: Maybe you need one that’s in more depth. If a person has diabetes and they’re experiencing pain, you may need a 45 minute interview to really educate them and really sell them on the benefits of what you have. It doesn’t have to just be with Dr. Wheeler. There’s all kinds of experts on diabetes. You can offer some great value like the same way I do with my audio recordings for people. It gets diabetics coming back to your site, and then you build credibility. You can get long-lasting residual customers ordering your product month after month.

Dave: Actually, the fellow who’s helping is with some offline opportunities is actually a diabetic. He’s pretty excited about getting this into like Costco and maybe Whole Food and things like that. I asked him if he knew of some people that have had like amputations due to diabetes, and he certainly did. I said, “You know, what I’d like to do is try to put together an interview to interview these people, not from the standpoint that they have to give their last name and all that. From the standpoint that they’re talking about going way back to when earlier lifestyles may be led up to this.”

Michael: Absolutely. I have a distant cousin, both his legs were amputated. He’s a kid I grew up with in Atlanta, and he was overweight, didn’t take care of himself, and he got diabetes. I think first it was his toe, and then his foot, and then it ended up being both his legs.

Dave: The trick is being able to get them to correlate their current condition back to an earlier time in their life where they could’ve made choices and they didn’t.

Michael: That could be very powerful. You do interviews with people who have gone blind. Really educate and that could be a powerful audio recording and something you could also leverage the media. Let’s face it when someone’s arm gets bit off by a shark, it’s all over the news. How about the stories of diabetics who have lost legs? I can see the media eating that up, and it’s a public service. You could offer the free CD or the free download on your diabetic wellness website. I could see media really being a strong point. If you have a compelling message to lead people and to drive people to your site, and once they’re there listening or downloading or sharing, then of course your solutions right there, your products. Each step of the system, there’s no guarantee which step is going to bring you the results. You don’t know exactly when, but all it takes is one – you could just focus on developing say that audio recording or those series of five or ten minute interviews with amputees or people who have gone blind, the dark side of diabetes. Then, if you have that recording, and it’s up online, you could distribute that for free. You’ve got the recording. It’s edited. It’s there, just like on my site. People can go listen to it on your site. Then, if you approach media with a nice press release, “Diabetic Wellness announces a new free audio recording available to anyone who has been diagnosed with Type One or Type Two diabetes. On this recording, you’ll hear real interviews with diabetics who have lost limbs and gone blind due to diabetes. Hear their stories, and what advice they would give you to not let what happened to them happen to you.” That could be compelling. Once that audio recording’s done, you could approach a non-competing business who is selling wellness products, maybe in the weight loss industry, maybe they can tag along your CD. Your CD can go along with it. Here’s a novel idea. Now, an audio CD that goes into a CD player will hold up to 80 minutes of audio. If you turn it into an audio recording, it will hold 80 minutes. How many CDs – promotional type – fill up all 80 minutes? Haven’t you bought courses and stuff on CD that are only 20 or 30 minutes?

Dave: Oh, sure.

Michael: I had this idea that you could approach someone who’s already marketing let’s say a health related CD, and you could buy the unused audio portion on the CD Rom or work something out. Let’s say you find someone who’s sending out thousands of CDs a month in a non-competing related health-type product or something. People are listening to this CD, and they put it in their CD player. Well, their message gets played, but you could buy that unused audio blank space on the back of their CD and have your selling message. They can offer it as a bonus or something. All they have to do is change the master and add your audio on to the back of theirs. That could be an interesting idea where you can really leverage someone’s postage and their customer, give them something of value. You could work something out with them. If a sale came from one of their customers, maybe you could pay them a commission. If you could find one or two joint ventures like that, you don’t have customers, but there are businesses that have customers. I’m going to give you a perfect idea that just popped into my head. One time on PayPal, I have a recording. Did you ever hear the recording on how to use PayPal shops to do joint ventures?

Dave: I have. I did listen to that.

Michael: After I did that recording, I did a test. Have you ever heard of Gary Halbert’s Dollar Bill Letter?

Dave: Yes.

Michael: Well, I did a PayPal dollar bill letter, and the first one I did, I wanted to see if it would work. It was really just a test to see if this would work. I went on to PayPal shops, and there was a guy selling diabetic chocolate. It was doing a phenomenal business. He had thousands of customers ordering his diabetic chocolate. Now, anyone ordering diabetic chocolate, you could bet they have diabetes, right?

Dave: Right.

Michael: Then, what I did was I emailed him a dollar. I PayPal’ed him I think a dollar or ten cents or a quarter. Now, when you have PayPal and you get money, that’s something you look at when your PayPal comes in and says, “You’ve Got Money.” It says, “As you can see, I’ve PayPal’ed you a dollar, and here’s why.” I have the letter somewhere. I can pull it up for you. I got his attention. I told him that I noticed he was selling diabetic chocolate, and that I had an idea where I think I could grow his business. I don’t remember what specific offer I made him because it was a while ago, but it got him to call me back, an offer for him to call. He called me back, and I had an entry to set up a deal with him. I honestly don’t remember what it was, but it worked. This diabetic chocolate, go type in “diabetic chocolate” on Google, and these could be potential joint venture partners for you – diabetic and sugar free chocolates from Chocolate Fantasies, a chocolate company makers of diabetic sweets. The Diabetic Chocolate Cookbook – these are great potential joint venture partners for you here. With diabetic chocolate, there’s lots of customers. People love chocolate. How many joint venture partners would it take to set-up who have customers that you could piggyback with to really build a nice business? Even share in the profits with them. If you up your price like I showed you, there’s margins in them. You could approach them and introduce yourself. You have the margins if you up the price.

Dave: We talked about that in ongoing discussion, but I brought it to the surface this week a little bit more. I can do. It’s just where to do it at. How far up do we take it?

Michael: You test. You can always go down, but your marketing has got to support your price. The more you tell, the more you sell. You’ve really got to offer value and you’ve got to be able to explain why your price is higher, and with some research, that’s doable. Look at this, Shar’s Diabetic Socks, genuine diabetic socks for men and women. Do you see the 174? What this means is this particular business had 174 transactions. It means you know at least he’s got in his database 174 customers, unless he’s buying things on PayPal, part of that could be purchases, but part of those could be sales that you know he has sold and has used his PayPal account 174 times. I don’t know if you remember the recording. What’s great about this is if you could set up a joint venture with someone like this, you know he’s got the entire database all in his PayPal account. Also, think about this, a good customer for you, let’s say you’re $79 a month on auto-ship, and let’s say you can keep an average diabetic customer for five months.

Dave: Actually, our stats show somewhere around seven to eight months they drop off for a little bit of time, and then they come back.

Michael: So, let’s say with the higher price, they’ll drop off a little early. Let’s just say five months. You’ve got ten bucks in the product. Each customer right there is worth $300 to you. Ten customers is $3,000 a year. How many customers do you need to have to make yourself $20,000 a month? It adds up quick when you have margins in there. If you’ve got 174 people, five or six customers could still be worth it. If you just had someone, if you went on to Elance, and hired a 16-year-old girl, just like I do. I’ll tell you this story. My tanning salon, George, who I’m doing consulting for, we need to bring in someone to do telemarketing. I’ve been monitoring all his calls because I have him set up on a system where all his calls are recorded so we could monitor how his girls are answering the phone. So, a call came in and it was a young girl and she said, “Hi, are you guys hiring?” The girl said, “Well, yes, we might be. You need to come down and fill out an application.” Well, most people aren’t going to call. I heard that recording. I had caller-ID and I called the girl back. Her name is Rebecca, and I interviewed her. I said, “I’m working with George, and we’re looking for someone to do telemarketing.” So, now I’ve got my girl to do telemarketing, very flexible. She lives two minutes from the store. She could walk down there if she wanted to. She’s fine working out of her home. She’s going to be making calls to existing customers on George’s database, on the list. She used to work at McDonald’s. She’s used to working $7-$8 an hour. I said, “Well, is $8 an hour okay?” She said, “Yeah, no problem.” She loves talking to people. So, I’ve got a telemarketer. If you had someone who didn’t even do telemarketing, you had someone working for you for eight hours a day, or two days a week for four hours a day. Eight hours a day at ten bucks an hour, that’s $80, a whole day. She’s contacting people maybe through this PayPal dollar bill letter, generating perspective joint venture partners to do business with you once you outline an offer for them. You could have them doing the grunt work, and then you just making the contact when you have an interested party. She could be online searching Google the word, “diabetes” looking for all the non-competing diabetic type business like socks and chocolate and diabetic medical supply, and make contact with these business owners to do a deal or to joint venture or to partner. Before you do that, you’ve got to have a plan. When they call you, you can say – let’s say you have your lead generating piece and it’s this audio interview with amputees and people who have gone blind, the dark side of diabetes. You introduce yourself. You’re with Diabetes Wellness. “We’ve developed an amazing learning tool for your customers who are ordering your socks. It’s part education and part scared reality and it’s called, ‘The Dark Side of Diabetes.’ We’ve interviewed 20 people who have lost limbs or gone blind from diabetes, and there their real stories. It’s very compelling. Not only will it educate your customers, but it will keep them coming back for your socks. It will keep them on your chocolate. It’s a loyalty building tool.” You’d like for them to send your CD out with your product, with our letter endorsing it. You write it, but it’s coming from that company owner. They’ll send it out for free. Maybe all you’ve got to do is pay for the duplication. They win, and you win, and the customer wins. Wouldn’t that be powerful?

Dave: It’s very powerful. There’s ways of setting it up so that they get their customers to order it and they get credit for it.

Michael: If you need that driving motivation to get them to action, go for it, but in many cases, you may not even need to give anything away. You giving the value of the information for them to give out to their customers to keep them as a loyal customer scaring the hell out of them so they keep buying their socks or keep buying their chocolate or keep buying their medical supplies and their testing supplies and anything related to diabetes to keeping that customer as a stronger buying customer, but at the same time, they’re going to learn about your product, too. If you don’t want to give a CD away, you could give a gift certificate to the CD. It could be a piece of paper that directs them to a website where they enter a user name and password and they have access to the download. Having it on audio CD would be wonderful. If someone has a car and they’re playing an audio CD, it’s just you and that driver. CD players are great. When you get out of the car, it stops, and when you get back in and start the car, it starts right from where it left off.

Dave: I love that part.

Michael: One joint venture could be all you need. A good audio recording and a joint venture could be a great driving force combined with the press release stuff.

Dave: With this course, you can kind of help me and guide me through and make sure I have it right, put it together correctly.

Michael: I’d be willing to help you out any way I can. I’m not going to do all the work for you, but you can tap my brain and people I know and I can direct you to anywhere or anything. You can use my knowledge like with the SRDS if you want to do some research. I’m here to help you.

Dave: If I write something, would you be available to critique it?

Michael: I could give it a critique. I’ll tell you this. I hate copywriting. I’m a better editor than a writer. I’m more of a talker, but I can give you an idea of what you’ve written. I can also direct you – I work with a couple very good copywriters, and one in particular would do me a favor and critique your work. If you needed some professional copywriter, either one of them could do it. I spend a lot of money on copywriters because I know they’re better than me, but it’s a wonderful investment. I may spend four or five thousand dollars on a package – on a letter and on a series of reports and autoresponders, but that money, once I send out the promotion, I’ve made my money back and I’ve got a residual selling thing. You can’t spend too much on a copywriter. You’re not going to need any long type copy. I think with audio and your basic information – some of my sales letters, as you’ve seen, are pretty long and pretty detailed. If someone’s really passionate about a subject, and they have diabetes and they’re really concerned. It’s life threatening and they’re facing the possibility of losing a leg or going blind, this is a major motivating factor. When people get disease, they’ll devour anything they can get their hands on looking for an angle on how to beat it. The more you offer – I have people who want to devour marketing. I’ve got people who have listened to all 100 hours of my stuff because when you’re hot, you’re hot. They want it. They can’t get enough of it. If you could be the guy who provides this great audio resource, and you have the ability to do these interviews. The interview stuff isn’t hard, if you want to develop it that way. I know it seems daunting at first, but just start with one. Start with the one CD we’re talking about. I think that would be powerful.

Dave: We’re going to start a little project here with, again, a friend of mine who’s helping us with the offline marketing. We’re going to get him on a three month program. We have a little program where he enters his blood sugars morning and night, and he’ll just do a whole tracking and download it on your own computer. You can see how progressive. All right, well super. I appreciate your time. We’ll see how we can put some money together to do this.

Michael: Well, let me know. I hope I’ve given you some ideas.

Dave: This has been very helpful.

Michael: What the hell, why don’t you find diabetic chocolate guys and email five or six of them, and just tell them you’re kicking around an idea about developing this CD? Tell them it’s not done yet, but just want to get their opinion on something. Tell them who you are. People love to help other people. Say, “Look, I’m in the diabetic business, too, but we’re not competitors. I think I may have an idea how we can work together.” Tell him who you are. Tell him what you’re doing, and tell him you have this idea for a CD of interviews with people. It’s a great learning tool. You think them providing this CD to their customers when they order their socks, you’d really be doing their customers a service beyond just selling them diabetic socks. You’d be selling them a service that educates them about diabetes and keeps them loyal and as a customer for a longer period of time. Run it by five of them, and you’re going to get one who says, “It’s a great idea. When can we do it?” Then, you know you’ve got one potential joint venture partner, and all you’ve got to do is get the CD done.

Dave: I shouldn’t be afraid of that part.

Michael: You may be a little afraid of that. All the questions you’re going to have to ask somebody is the normal questions someone would want to know. What’s your name? Where are you from? When did you get diabetes? Tell me what do you think caused it. What happened? You’re just going to get their story. They’re going to say, “Well, I got this infection in my toe, and I went to my doctor.” You’re just going to hear the story. Just listen to them, and dig a little deeper. “How’d you feel when you went to the doctor? Were you scared? Did you think you were going to lose your leg?” “No, I never thought that would happen to me? I’ve always been…” You just get their story, and you just listen. I could help you with the technical stuff if you get stuck. I’ll show you how to get the recorder. I’ll show you how to get the software on your computer. It’s a pain in the ass to learn how to do it, but I think I had a real advantage over most internet marketers in that I’m somewhat internet savvy because I’ve taken the time to learn how to do it. Before I had a good webmaster, I was at the mercy, just like you are with your guy, but if they can learn it, you can learn it. You don’t have to learn 100%. All you have to learn is like ten percent to be able to do a half decent website. You know how to operate Microsoft Word, right?

Dave: Sure.

Michael: If you know how to operate Microsoft Word, I can give you a 20 minute lesson and teach you almost ten percent of how to operate Microsoft Publisher. I tell you, go order Microsoft Publisher. You could go on to eBay and order Office 2003 for a couple hundred bucks or $150. I think I bought mine for under $100. Then, you’ll have Microsoft Publisher. You’ll tell me who your website hosting company is. We’ll find out if you have Front Page extensions, and I’ll show you how to open up and get into your website and then you’ll see all the files. It’s just like your desktop. You see your files and I can give you a 20 minute lesson on how to change the text on your website. It’s very easy once you know how. It’s not as complicated as you think. It’s no different than designing a Microsoft Word document.

Dave: Are you familiar with Excite Pro?

Michael: I did order it. I cancelled it. I didn’t need all that stuff. That, I didn’t want to take the time to learn. I’m just as lazy as anyone when it comes to learning all this stuff. It does take a lot of time.

Dave: Yes, it does.

Michael: But, I know how to use Publisher, and that does not take a lot of time. If I gave you a crash course, you’d be like, “Oh, this is easy.” I can show you how to go into your page. I can show you how to change the text – the simple stuff, the main stuff.

Dave: Good. All right. Well, thank you very much.

Michael: You’re welcome.

Dave: How does this usually work? I just send you a check?

Michael: I’ve got a payment agreement. I will outline it, and I will create a PDF and I’ll send that to you. You’ll have to fill it out, and you could pay either by credit card, you can do it on PayPal, you can wire the funds. I have a whole payment agreement that I’ll email to you, and you can hold onto it. If you decide you want to do it, call me or fax it to me and we’ll get going.

Dave: Sounds super.

Michael: I’ll email that over to you.

Dave: I appreciate it.

Michael: All right Dave. I’ll talk to you later. Have a good day.

Dave: You, too. Thank you so much.

Michael: You’re very welcome.