In this interview you are going to hear about both barter and joint ventures at the same time. Using this triangle method you can be making money as soon as next week. You are going to learn how to triangulate a joint venture deal. A triangle has three sides. A triangulation joint venture has three players. This will be an exciting interview I think will give you an even deeper understanding about the enormous potential of Joint Ventures. If you learn what this enterprising Florida man has to teach you about eBay and the barter or retail trade industry, you can make and save you and your family boodles of money for the rest of your life. You'll be astounded by this interview about the worldwide barter and trade industry. You'll learn the best way to turn your time into an ongoing cash income stream. What transpired was an unprecedented 40-minute training class explaining how the major trade organizations operate, inside secrets of how their members obtain and use their trade dollars, the problems these members may experience, as well as the myriad of products and services traded by the members of these organizations. It’s unbelievable! More important, you'll learn how to buy top-of-the-line goods and services in the trade industry for twenty cents or less on the dollar using my personal technique. I also reveal the best types of products and services to purchase trade dollars. After purchasing these goods and services at a low price, a person can either take advantage for his or her own lifestyle or business or can actually sell what was purchased for, perhaps, fifty cents on the dollar thus netting thirty cents or more on each dollar sold. You'll also learn about a great way to get signed up with these retail trade companies for free.

Michael:    It costs you ten cents on the dollar for those trade dollars. That ball will cost you $500 in cash to buy. You sold it on eBay for?

:        $3,500.

Michael:    You made three grand on that deal.  Beautiful.

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Michael:    We can talk a little bit about your experience with trade. A lot of these people don’t understand what trade is. You do. I do, and it’s a hard subject to get wrapped around your head until you’re in it for a little bit.

                  People order my course, The Barter Secrets course on how to buy trade dollars at ten to twenty cents on the dollar, and I’d love to do a little interview with someone who’s got some experience in trade just to prove to them that this is a great opportunity for someone who’s willing to take advantage of it. Would that be all right?

:        Sure. I was talking about barter.

Michael:    I’ll record it, and I’ll stick it up there on the site for people. I think that would be real valuable.

                  How long have you been involved in barter or trade?

:        I’ve bartered most of my life, since I was kid. I started small trading baseball cards and coins or stamps or something. Then, I get into when I was living in California in the ‘80s, I kind of got involved in barter there.

                  I was kind of independent, by myself, and there was a guy that was trading. He was out here in Tennessee. I was trading with him most times because I wasn’t aware of all the organized barter sites that were out there.

Michael:    What were you trading? When you first got in, did you have a business?

:        I didn’t have a business, per say. I was just trading general stuff that I had, mostly collectibles. I like art work and coins and jewelry, stuff that had a decent -up. I could buy it low, and if it was good quality stuff, I could buy low and  it up in barter.

Michael:    When you started, were you a member of an organized retail.

:        No, I was just like an independent trader. I was just trading one on one.

Michael:    So, you were a straight trade, no commission, went to the barter companies.

:        Right.

Michael:    That’s great. That’s the way to do it. 

:        As a matter of fact, it wasn’t until I left California and moved to Florida that I found more of the organized barter companies out there pretty much like BX and ITex, and all those.

                  I’m here in central Florida. It seems to be more barter oriented than they were in California, at least where I was. I couldn’t find them there. I’m sure they were. As a matter of fact, it was a small group, just an independent group called Trade Mate that this guy and his wife started in the area.

                  After about two years, he got well enough known that ITex was expanding, and bought him out. Whatever trade credits anybody had in there, they gave us one-for-one for them. It was great.  We had reached a whole new level of trading. We can go nationwide instead of just being stuck in one area like a county or a couple of counties. Now, we were nationwide. That was the way to go.

Michael:    Tell me. How are you using trade for yourself personally or for a business?

:        I look for stuff like collectibles mostly. I like artwork. In fact, I just completed a trade now. I bought a piece of artwork off of eBay, a good quality antique painting, and I just traded it a couple of days ago to a member for $2,500.

Michael:    What did you buy it for off eBay?

:        I bought it for, my total cost was probably $170.

Michael:    How did you know it was a decent piece of artwork?

:        Because I recognized the artist that was there. There’s a site you can look them up for free. You can look up these artists.

Michael:    What’s that site called?

:        It’s called FindArtInfo.com.

Michael:    All you need is the artist’s name.

:        You need the artist’s name. You go to the search engine right on the main page. Just plug in the artist’s name, and it will pop up. There will be pages. A lot of artists have the same last name, so you have to know both the first and last name.

Michael:    It will tell you the history on the artist?

:        If he’s listed, if he’s got an auction record, you can click on that name, and it will tell you where he last sold something and what it was sold for. Even sometimes if they have a signature of that artist on file, it’ll have it there, and you can see the actual signature.

Michael:    Wow, how comprehensive is that site?

:        It’s pretty good. They have quite a lot of listings. There was one only one called AskArt.com, and they charged you for looking that stuff up. Then, I found out about FindArtInfo.com, which was totally free. That was a great resource because anytime I wanted to look something up or know they had a piece on eBay or whoever had a listed place, to know that that place was online with the real value. I could go to the site and look it up.

Michael:    The person selling on eBay, they had no idea, right?

:        He either had no idea or he just – a lot of dealers in art collectibles are just estate sales. They’re selling for somebody else, or they acquire quite a few pieces, and they’ll just start it out at a price with no reserve. Whatever it goes for-

Michael:    Are you looking for art that you like or you’re looking for art that you can do some research on and find out that has value?

:        I look for art that I like and I look for art mainly from the financial end. It has a history that’s a listed artist that I can show has an auction history and a value.

Michael:    So, by the time you want to sell it, you want to prove its value.

:        Right, I can show somebody that, “Hey, this guy’s listed. I’m not making him up. Here’s how you find out what his last piece sold for.” Usually, I sell under that. I’ll look for a range. Like this one here I just sold, this guy last sold a painting for just under $3,000.

                  I place mine at about $2,500, and as soon as I put it out there, within a couple of days, I got a buyer.

Michael:    Now, how did you put it out? Did you sell it for trade dollars or for cash?

:        Trade dollars for Itex dollars first.

Michael:    So, you put it up on the Itex site and you proved its value with its history. So, you bought it for a hundred and what?

:        About $170 all together.

Michael:    Then, you ended up selling it for what on Itex?

:        $2,500, that’s what, seven cents on a dollar?

Michael:    Seven cents on the dollar, plus you’re going to take ten points on your cash fees. By the time you buy and sell your trade dollars, you’ve paid $250 on your $2,500.

:        On this case, I got lucky because I didn’t have to pay any trade fees. I paid it to a third party. I already knew what I wanted to buy on Itex.

Michael:    So, you bypass the fees by doing it a triangulation.

:        By just getting the guy to make out the draft to the third party guy.

Michael:    There you go. Isn’t that beautiful?

:        Isn’t that great?

Michael:    No one wants to pay the fees, but you know you’re still responsible for your taxes. You deal with that with your accountant. That’s beautiful. I love that. So, what did you end up buying with your trade dollars?

:        As a matter of fact, it was another Itex member who deals in some antiques and collectibles, a guy in Hawaii. He loves trade. He loves Itex. I must have bought about $10,000 worth of stuff from this guy. I was able to resell it for cash on eBay and other places.

Michael:    What was he selling?

:        He was selling some old Hawaiian cultural antiques like Hawaiian pottery, and old bowls from 18^th, 19^th century, Hawaiian native stuff.

Michael:    Did you try and identify the value of that too before you sold it on eBay, or you just knew?

:        Based on what he had on his site, I guess that was part of his business, and what he had on there. I would look it up either – some of it was unusual. You wouldn’t find it on eBay. Some of it was, and some of it I could tell from other research I did on the internet about what it goes for.

                  My cost, remember, my cost in trade was low enough.

Michael:    Seven cents on the dollar.

:        I could sell that, and still make a good profit.

Michael:    Right, so, you have $2,500 worth of trade that you picked up at seven cents on the dollar. So, your cost $2,500 times .07, it cost you $170 cash that you needed to make back before you were in the black. How much did you buy from the guy in Hawaii?

:        In this particular trade, I’ll buy an antique lamp from him that he’s probably charging me just under $1,400 for, but I’ll be able to sell it for $800-$900 cash.

Michael:    So, is he inflating his trade price?

:        He wasn’t really inflating because I seen another eter out there, another gallery actually that was selling that same thing for about twice that.

Michael:    Explain why it’s important before you buy something with your trade dollars to make sure that the seller isn’t inflating the price. Why do you see that sometimes?

:        It’s important to know because you have a fixed price of what you know of what you’re going to pay. You know what your costs are, and when you’re going to go to resell something especially on eBay, nobody wants to pay full price for anything.

                  You have to be able to find out what it’s really worth at eBay and other sites that are out there that can get you the true et value of something, at least the cash value of something out there.

Michael:    So, you had a $1,400 lamp that cost you $90 cash at seven cents on the dollar. Have you put the lamp up on eBay yet?

:        I haven’t gotten to yet. Like I said, I just did this a couple days ago. The guy will ship it to me. I’ll probably have it in a week or so, and then I’ll make sure I get it and everything’s all right.

Michael:    You’ll be able to sell it for six or seven hundred bucks?

:        Sure.

Michael:    so, what you did, that’s called cash converting. You’re buying items at inventory to convert to cash. You took your $90 cost on a $1,400 lamp. You’re going to sell it, and you’re going to cash convert and turn that $98 into maybe $700. So, you make $600. That ain’t bad.

                  Tell me about another deal you’ve done like that.

:        I bought jewelry rings on eBay, great sources of wholesale jewelry, good quality stuff, no junk that I’ve bought for as little as eight to ten cents on the dollar. I can get an appraisal of like $2,000 a ring, and I’ll pick it up for maybe $100-$150. Then, I’ll turn around and sell it for just about – it will come with an appraised value, so I’ll sell it for below that.

                  I’ll place it on Itex or another barter exchange for like $1,500. I’ll get a buyer for it. I just picked up $1,500 trade dollars for ten cents on the dollar. I’ll turn around, go back to that same guy – in fact, I went back to him to buy some other Hawaiian antiques. I picked up something for $1,500 that he charged, and I was able to sell it for about $1,100 cash.

Michael:    So, you made yourself-

:        I made about $950 cash on that deal.

Michael:    Do you have a full time job? What do you do?

:        I do have a regular job. I work at a university in town. It’s a lucrative side business. Barter, the way you and I know it and the way you’re promoting your course is a perfect one man operation, or a husband and wife. It’s a perfect business to have because you have virtually no overhead.

                  The stuff that everybody currently has now in their home, computer with an internet access, a fax machine, a mailbox, that’s all you need. You can do this with – the context that you have in your course, people will be able to do it right out of their own home pretty much from day one.

Michael:    It’s like a candy store. So, in the things you’re describing in some of your deals, you’re talking art. You’re talking antiques. You’re talking jewelry.  I notice a pattern here that all of the items here that you go after, you can evaluate to establish a value before you sell it. You can offer proof of the value, and they’re all items that are subjective in value – artwork, antiques, jewelry, things like that, also all with tremendous -ups.

                  If you were to explain to someone what types of products to look for and to look for and to resell it, tell them why you’re choosing these types of products rather than commodity type products like computers or things that are commodities.

:        The reason I like collectibles like artwork, antiques jewelry is because in the trade business, there’s not a whole lot of that stuff out there. It’s in demand.  People can’t get it on barter like they want. Usually, that stuff has to go for cash. Cash is always king, but in barter, the idea is to save as much cash as you can.

                  Those types of things don’t come up on the barter industries that often. So, when they do, they get snapped up quick because there’s a large demand for that stuff and very few of them out there of comparable value. They’re easy especially with jewelry. It’s easy to get an appraisal on a good piece of jewelry.

                  You show somebody what its worth.  In the barter industry, like anything else, people want to know that something is worth what you’re saying it is.

Michael:    So, tell me your process if you bought a piece of jewelry off of eBay or whatever. Tell me the process of what you do. How do you get it appraised? Who do you call? How long does it take? How much does it cost? What do you get for what you pay to get the appraisal? I’ve never done an appraisal?

:        On eBay, what the good thing about eBay for jewelry, there are certain eBay sellers out there with very high reputations. They’ve been there for years, and a couple in particular that a deal with already have the jewelry already appraised. It’s got a retail.

Michael:    Is it when it was auctioned on eBay, you saw the appraisal right there?

:        Right, they had it right there. They have what they call a Gem ID card from an independent third grade laboratory that guarantees that the gemstones are real, if it’s diamonds or rubies, that they are indeed real, that they weight a certain carat, the gold is a certain percentage of purity.

                  Then, they’ll have a comparable retail value of something. They’ll say, “This is worth $2,200.” Maybe the starting bid might be $100. You can bid from there. Sometimes you’ll get it at the price. I don’t think I’ve ever paid more than ten or fifteen cents on the dollar for any jewelry.

Michael:    So, this is when you’re buying it on eBay. So, if it ten or fifteen cents on the dollar compared to the retail value, correct?

:        Correct.

Michael:    So, if you see a ring that retails value on the appraisal card for $1,000, you’re not going to ever pay over $150.

:        Right.

Michael:    Then, you take your ring that you paid $150 cash for. Then, you go to the Itex or the trade etplace, and offer it for sale for trade and since you’re dealing in retail trade exchange, you’re selling it for that retail value, correct?

:        Correct.

Michael:    Are you able to get the full value in trade dollars for what it appraises out to?

:        I can about 75% of the time.  Other times, I usually will discount it maybe ten or twenty percent just to give people a deal so they’ll see they’re getting a bargain. They’ll usually snap it up. Most times, a lot of people have a lot of excess trade dollars that, like we talked about, they don’t otherwise know how to use it. They can’t sell it or can’t buy anything with it, but don’t want to take the time to do it.

                  So, they see something like jewelry that everybody likes and they can use, and they’ll snap it up.

Michael:    So, you’re able to earn up to 85-90% on your money on trade, on products and services in trade dollars.

:        Right, you can do that consistently.

Michael:    It’s the same thing that I did. When I started in trade, I was doing exactly what you were doing. I was selling very high end margin stuff. I wouldn’t sell anything that I couldn’t make five times my money. I used to sell blank video tapes. I used to sell rolls of Velcro. I used to sell memberships to a computer learning club. I used to sell squeezy balloons, but everything I sold I would make at least five times my money.

                  By the time I did the transaction, I was earning at least 80% on my transaction. My cost on my trade dollars was always 20%, and that included my 10% fee that I would pay by the time the dollars came into my account and went out of my account.

                  Then, I had learned about - someone said, “Hey, you can buy trade dollars.” I said, “What?” I remember talking to this girl, and she told me, “Yeah, you can buy trade dollars.” What was great about that is it bypassed all the commerce and the transactions.

                  I could get to the same point that you’re doing – you’re probably having a lot more fun because it’s fun to buy and sell and look for items, but I can eliminate all that by just bypassing and buying the trade dollars at a discount. That’s what I thought was so beautiful about that.

:        I saw that, too. I thought that was a good deal when I couldn’t come across something that I could get better margins on. I knew a lot of people that would do that, especially if they need to complete a deal quick.

                  There’s real estate on Itex for members. A lot of times they won’t trade for the whole thing, but they’ll get a down payment.  So, if the guy needs to raise maybe $20,000 Itex quickly, and he may not have enough equipment of stuff to sell for that much, he’ll go into somebody and buy the trade dollars. He’ll say, “Hey, I need $20,000 trade dollars.” It’ll be a company that’ll have it. They’ll over him $4,000, twenty cents on the dollar, and they’ll do it.

                  That way, he just saved himself $16,000 cash for a down payment.

Michael:    Why don’t you explain for anyone listening why this is possible? You could never buy cash money at twenty cents on the dollar, but why is it you can do it in the trade industry? What do you think it is?

:        In the trade industry, barter exchanges are like their own banks. They have an unlimited amount of currency out there. They can create their own currency, so there’s no lack of it. A lot of businesses will join a barter exchange and they’ll have a lot of sales on the end. They have something that’s in demand, a product or a service that’s in demand – a restaurant, an auto shop, repair shop, a dentist, a surgeon.

                  They’ll acquire a lot of trade dollars. The problem is he’s so busy in his business that he makes a lot of sales, but he doesn’t take the time to look to see what’s out there.

Michael:    Does it take time to spend your trade dollars?

:        It doesn’t take a lot of time, but it does take time to look around and see what you want and see what’s out there. Some of these – they’re not all big business, some are smaller businesses, but they’re so busy in their business, they don’t have time to look around to see what they can spend it out. Before you know it, it’s come around to tax time and they say, “Hey, you’re going to pay the taxes on all these dollars. It’s going to cost you X amount of cash, and sometimes they’ll just say, I can’t find anything to buy. I just want to move these trade dollars.

                  So, somebody will make them an offer and say, “I’ll buy your trade dollars for twenty cents on the dollar.” The guy will say, “Fine.”

Michael:    So, for example, let’s say a salesman from a local barter company signs up a restaurant which is a popular restaurant. He wants to give it a try. His script is presented to the members of the trade organization, and let’s say he sells $50,000 worth of script, and he’s got $50,000 worth of earned income that he’s going to have to pay hard green US currency in income tax on. That’s $50,000 in trade dollars because the government looks at as you earned $50,000 cash, and you’re responsible for paying taxes just like if you earned $50,000 in real cash.

                  So, he can’t spend those trade dollars, and his accountant lets him know that December’s coming around, and you’re sitting on $50,000 in trade, and you’re going to have to pay income tax on it. You either need to expense it out and spend it on your business or you need to dump it or you’re going to have a big tax liability.

                  So, this is the perfect opportunity to approach businesses who are sitting on a bunch of trade to buy it out from them.

:        That’s correct. As a matter of fact, when we first started out here, there’s not a whole lot of restaurants in our area. There should be, but there’s not. In the beginning when we would sign up a restaurant, the members would like attack the place.

                  The guy was getting so overloaded, within a couple of months, he had so much trade, he had to go on hold because he couldn’t spend it down fast enough.  Sometimes, the trade director doesn’t educate them enough about what you could buy or just wasn’t there at the time.

                  So, he went on hold. Now, he’s got these – like you say – he might have $50,000 in trade dollars, and he’s looking around to see what he can buy. He says, “Geez I can’t buy nothing quick enough that I need to.”

                  So, he’ll get approached. He’s a prime candidate for somebody to pay off money. He figures he already earned the trade dollars. He’s already paid the commission on them. He’s earned them. He’s stuck with them basically.

                  So, now if somebody comes along and says, “Hey, I’ll give you $10,000 for those trade dollars,” he’ll jump on that because he’s got nothing else to spend it on. He’ll say, “Hey, I need the cash. I need to pay down my taxes or other things. I’ll do it.” There’s a prime candidate.

                  Now, somebody can go in and say, “Hey, I just got $50,000 trade for $10,000.” It’s like buying $50,000 worth of anything you want for $10,000 wholesale. That’s the idea behind barter is to buy everything at wholesale. It’s at your cost of doing business or less.

Michael:    What would you tell someone if they said, “There’s just nothing you can buy on trade?” What would you say to them?

:        I would say to them that that’s not true. It takes a little looking, but there’s just about anything you can get in the cash world that you’re paying cash for, you can get on barter if you look hard enough.

                  Most of the websites, now the bigger ones Itex and other ones, it’s all electronic. They have huge websites up there with thousands of listings up there of people wanting to sell what they have – anything from A to Z. The barter trade brokers, most of them will bend over backwards to find what you want.

                  A lot of the stuff gets sold that’s not even listed on the websites for people to see because it’s done behind the scenes. The brokers will work with the people and find what you want. They want you to spend those trade dollars. That’s how they make their commission recycling those trade dollars around.

Michael:    What’s the best deal that you’ve ever done, the most exciting trade deal that stands out in your mind that you can think of?

:        The best one I did was when I sold some jewelry – I acquired about $8,000 in jewelry.

Michael:    Where’d you get it?

:        Off of eBay.

Michael:    How much did you pay?

:        My cost was probably less than $800.

Michael:    Eight hundred bucks, was it like an estate sale?

:        It was like an estate sale. This one dealer I guess that’s all the deal with is estate jewelry or other jewelry manufacturers that they have. It was appraised out at that. I went and sold it.

Michael:    It was appraised out at $8,000?

:        It was appraised out at $8,000. It was probably a total of about three things, mostly women’s rings, and beautiful jewelry. I never had a complaint from anybody I’ve traded to that I’ve dealt with. They’ve never come back and said to me they didn’t like the quality of what they had.

Michael:    So, it cost you $800, appraised out at ten times.

:        I took those Itex dollars and went back to this man in Hawaii who has the-

Michael:    So, you bought it. It appraised out at $8,000 from the appraiser on eBay. You bought it for $800. Then, did you put it up on Itex?

:        I put it up on Itex.

Michael:    Describe to me, how do you put it up on Itex?

:        Itex allows you to put a description up there once you log into your account. You log-in. You give a full description, and you can download photos. The photos were already there from eBay, the photos I had.  So, I just basically click and save them into your file, and you can upload them to the site.

Michael:    So, you uploaded the same photos that you used to buy the jewelry off of eBay.

:        I loaded the photos of the jewelry.

Michael:    And, the description.

:        The gem ID card and the photos of the appraisal so people could exactly see exactly what I had, what it was and what it was worth.

Michael:    How long did it take once you clicked that upload?

:        It took about – within a week to ten days to sell it all.

Michael:    So, were you piece-mealing it out?

:        I would put the three of them as an individual listing at the same time. Sometimes one person bought two of them, another person bought one.

Michael:    So, were you triangulating the deal or having the funds go into your account?

:        I was triangulating a deal with a third party. I already knew what I wanted.

Michael:    So, let’s talk about it. Before you sell something, let’s say I tell the students for the Barter Secrets course that before – what’s important is finding someone who has trade dollars to sell. It doesn’t mean you have to take possession of it, does it?

:        No, it doesn’t.

Michael:    All you’ve got to do is know where it is and have an agreement that they’re willing to sell it at X amount, right?

:        Right.

Michael:    Then, the next step is to do what? Is to find out what you want to buy?

:        Find out what you want to buy, and it’s easy enough to do because there’s enough things there to you want to buy. Once you find something you want to buy, then it’s just a matter of acquiring the trade dollars when you buy them at 20 cents on the dollars. You sell something to acquire them.

                  Once you’ve got it, and once you’ve go the ready buyer – in my case I had the ready buyers of jewelry, I just told them to make the trade draft out to the third party who I was buying from.

Michael:    So, you knew what you wanted from this guy in Hawaii?

:        Right, I already knew what I wanted.

Michael:    So, what did you buy from him?

:        He had what they call an ancient Kohuna potion bowl. It was very rare. It was probably 17^th century stuff that the native Hawaiians when Captain Cooke discovered the islands. This is probably during that same time period.

Michael:    How much was it?

:        It was very rare. It was about five grand Itex for that.

Michael:    All right, so first of all, how much did you sell? Did you get $10,000 in trade for all this stuff that you sold on Itex?

:        I got about $8,000 in trade for the jewelry.  My cost on that was like $800. I went and bought the bowl from him for $5,000 in ITex. I turned around and sold it on eBay for $3,500.

Michael:    So, let’s figure it out. The numbers are – it cost you ten cents on the dollar for those trade dollars. So, that bowl cost you $500 in cash to buy. You sold it on eBay for $3,500. You made three grand on that deal.

:        Correct.

Michael:    Beautiful. 

:        That can be done consistently. There’s plenty of people like that and others. It’s just not with those things. You can do it with cars, with real estate. Even if you didn’t want to make a business of it, just the fact that you could save money on anything you wanted to buy – vacations.

Right now, we’ve got a resort in Saint Petersburg, Florida right on the beach. They’ve got about $200,000 in trade that they’re willing to trade out in room reservations and food and beverages. So, if you’ve got a family of four, you could go down there. It would normally cost somebody two grand cash. If they could buy the two grand at twenty cents on the dollar, they could take a $2,000 vacation for $400.Michael:    That’s right. People don’t believe it, but it’s like a candy store out there, anything you want.

:        Barter is the most lucrative way to save and make money. There’s an old saying in barter is that people don’t really want money. They just want the things that money can buy.

                  Currency itself is worthless unless you can buy things with it. That’s what barter enables you to do.

Michael:    That’s right. Hey, , this has been great. This has been great. I really appreciate you taking the time to do this. I need more recordings from people in the industry. There’s lots of them out there, but I’m glad you emailed me about it.

                  I’ll clean this up. I’ll stick it up on the site for people to hear because it’s a great story.

:        I think if more people who aren’t in the industry who like you and I are familiar with how it works, and what goes on, but there’s plenty of people who don’t. It’s a mystery to them. Once they see how easy it is to do it, it will become very natural to them. It sounds easy when they read the thing, it sounds like, “What’s he talking about?” 

                  Once they see how easy it is to do, they’ll fall right into it.

Michael:    That’s great. I really appreciate it. Thank you. I’m glad you contacted me. I’ll stick this up there. Let me edit it, maybe about a week. I’ll shoot you an email, or just get back with me. Email me and say, “Mike, did you get that edited.” I’ll send you a link to it.

:        I appreciate it.

Michael:    Is there anything else I can do for you?

:        There may be. I’ll go on there and see what you have because you’re always constantly putting up new material. I appreciate that, and I’m sure other people do too that helps us out.

Michael:    I like to sell stuff, too. Are you a Jay Abraham student? Do you study eting?

:        I do study eting. I love all that stuff that I can get about internet eting or online eting from guys like him and the new guys that are out there too that are doing it.

Michael:    I think Jay Abraham learned a lot of his stuff that he teaches. He was very big into barter, too. He had a course called The Barter Barons where he interviewed Dave Wagondwarf. Have you ever heard of him?

:        No.

Michael:    He’s a big time barter player. As a matter of fact, when I was looking to buy trade dollars at one time, I had sent out an email to a list and Dave Wagondwarf called me. I didn’t talk to him, but this guy – I mean. You can approach the trade brokers. They know who’s sitting on trade dollars. They’ll hook you up.

:        I remember when I lived in California at the time when Abraham and those guys were doing all those eting courses and putting those seminars on. Like you said, you couldn’t afford at the time the two grand to get into his seminars, but in the ‘80s when I was there, real estate was the big thing. California was this big – it was during the Regan area. Inflation was high, and real estate was going through the roof.

                  All those big seminars were about how to make money in real estate – no money down, whatever. They had a lot of those seminars. I would go to them because they were free, but I never really could afford to buy their courses. What I’d do – you probably did the same thing – is you wait about a week or two, and then in the paper there’d be a bunch of classified ads of people who bought these courses selling them. “I paid $1,000 for this course. I’ll sell it for $150.” Some wouldn’t have even opened the damn thing.

Michael:    Oh, yeah.

:        If you were there and you wanted the course, you could just wait about a week, get a classified ad and buy it for like 20% of what they were selling it for.

Michael:    That’s true. The whole idea with buying trade dollars or buying seminars at discount prices is you’re catching people when they’re out of heat. When people buy something, they’re excited. It’s new. It has more value to them, but as time goes by, the moving parade, as time goes by, the value of it becomes less and less.

                  You can approach anyone or any business that’s sitting on items that they were very excited, but for whatever reason, the changes of life, divorce, moving – those things that they once really valued have become less and less value. You can pick stuff up for almost nothing that has a high value to someone else in a different area in their life.

                  It’s kind of weird. You’re trading – when you’re buying and selling stuff, the thing that makes it work is time, the time in someone’s life, or the position in their life because depending where they are in life, things have more value compared to the position where the person is sold it is in their life.

:        A lot of businesses – they come and go. If a guy has a lot of trade dollar sin a business, if he had an auto repair shop – say he sold that business and he’s sitting on $20,000. Well, the new owner may not want to know or have anything to do with barter. So, the guy’s got to get rid of the trade dollars. He’s more susceptible to discount cash deal.

Michael:    The thing people have to understand is life’s a moving parade. There’s always things happening in one’s life, and in one’s business. It’s never going to stay the same. So, it’s just a matter of catching them when – not when they’re down, but at the point when you can pick something up.

:        There’s a publisher in New York. He’s an Itex member, and I wanted to buy some ads from him on trade, but he says, I’ve got too much. I don’t know why he couldn’t – he’s just not taking the time to do it because he’s saying he’s out there in New York City and that’s a big et out there. You’re a publisher. There’s something you can buy. You just haven’t taken the time to do it.

Michael:    You can offer him, say, “I’ll help you sell off. The reason you don’t want to take it is because you don’t know what to spend it on.” Tell him you’ll show him how to spend it if you take your trade.

:        Yeah, I’ll make him a deal. I said, “Geez, there’s a lot of stuff on the website. Have you been there lately looking around? Tell me what you’re looking for and I’ll help you spend it down.”

Michael:    All right, well let me let you run. I appreciate it. I sent you an email. Thank you very much, and I’ll shoot you this recording when we get it down. I really appreciate it.

:        Good talking to you.

Michael:    Take care.