When Mike Samonek came up with an idea for a unique cookbook that combined food with special effects (and included a recipe for eating your own face), he didn’t even think about going to a publisher with it. He wanted to maintain complete control of the book, the marketing and the profits. So he went the self-publishing route – and sold 500,000 copies by marketing them himself! And in this audio, you’ll hear exactly how this self-made millionaire did it, along with some tips and tricks on how you can do it too.

First and foremost, Mike considers himself a space-advertising wiz. He’s been successfully advertising his own products in magazines for years. So he knows all about catchy headlines and good copy.

And in this interview, you’ll hear how Mike came up with his brilliant idea, how he’s managed to get an insane amount of free publicity for it, how he writes catchy press releases that scream for media attention and how he targets his audiences – all within this hour-long interview. And that’s not even the whole story. You’ll also get lessons on direct marketing, space advertising and product selection.

Some Key Ideas You’ll Get In This Audio..

• How to use a big red envelope and a black magic marker to get more publicity than you may be able to handle
• How to cash in on the Baby Boomer market by knowing what kinds of products they want right now
• What are the most common mistakes marketers are making and how you can avoid them
• How to write unforgettable press releases that get you noticed
• Ways to get into the psychology of your customers so that you know how to appeal to their wants and needs

Mike has enjoyed a tremendous amount of success with his special effects cookbook. He’s had articles written about him and has appeared on TV and radio programs all across the United States – even the Food Network has run a segment on him. And Mike drummed up all of that publicity himself. But he hasn’t stopped with the cookbook. He’s still producing and advertising a whole range of products– from chicken soup tablets to a course on advertising.

You won’t want to miss this audio. It really shows just how powerful and profitable “thinking outside the box” can be. Enjoy.

Mike: I’m driving down the street one day and I’m thinking to myself, you know, I’ve got to come up with a cookbook. Cookbooks always sell. At the same time, I love science fiction movies. My twisted brain put these two ideas together. I said what a great idea, a special effects cookbook. How to create recipes that move and smoke and sing and glow in the dark and puff, and so immediately I went home and created my first recipe. I think it took me two months to create 50 recipes and put them in a book. I was rolling.

[MUSIC]

Michael: This is Michael Senoff with Michael Senoff’s www.hardtofindseminars.com . What does eat your face mean? Well, you’re about to find out in this fascinating interview with Michael. Michael is a million dollar self-publisher. Michael is also the world’s foremost space advertising expert. Michael’s also a PR expert, getting hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of free press. His book has sold more than 500,000 copies. He’s been featured in virtually every newspaper in the country. He’s been featured on national cable network shows and he’s kept all of the profits. You’ve got to be absolutely crazy, you’ve got to have rocks in your head to sell out for peanuts to a publisher when you now have all the tools to do it yourself. This is a compelling story and absolute proof that the American dream is alive. This interview is 50 minutes. Get ready. Hang on to your hat. Now, let’s get going.

Michael: Hey, Mike, it’s Mike Senoff out in San Diego.

Mike: Good morning, Mike, how are you doing?

Michael: Good. How are you doing?

Mike: Excellent, thanks.

Michael: I really appreciate this. You had told me you sold over 500,000 books. Is that just the special effects book?

Mike: That’s the special effects book, yes.

Michael: 500,000. You’re a real success story. You’ve made a million dollars through the self-publishing business.

Mike: I sure have and I’m very, very proud to say that and it’s been one of my big goals to do that, to be like a Ted Nicholas or a Joe Cosman and by gosh I think I did it.

Michael: You said you’ve been doing space ad writing, for how long?

Mike: I consider myself the world’s foremost space ad guy.

Michael: How did you get into that?

Mike: I got into it because back in the 70’s I was a young guy in my early 20’s. I was a salesman. I started out selling encyclopedias.

Michael: Where did you grow up?

Mike: I grew up in a little place called Chardon, Ohio. That’s right outside of Cleveland. When I was a boy out there, I sold seeds door to door.

Michael: How old were you?

Mike: Probably 8, 10 years old.

Michael: So, you’ve always been entrepreneurial?

Mike: Always been entrepreneurial. I wanted that set of walkie-talkies when I was a kid and if you sold enough seeds, you got a pair of walkie-talkies.

Michael: Was this through school, the garden seeds?

Mike: No, it was just for me.

Michael: Tell me how you did when you were a kid?

Mike: I saw a space ad on the back of a comicbook. You see them all the time selling greeting cards or selling seeds. I lived in a farming community, so I thought that would be a good thing to do and sure enough it was a great…

Michael: Great. Did you get those walkie-talkies?

Mike: I got those walkie-talkies and my buddies and I played Army men with midnight missions with our walkie-talkies and had a blast.

Michael: Did you sell door to door?

Mike: Oh yes, door to door and just walk up and cold knock on the door and had a little pitch memorized.

Michael: When you ordered the little kit did it give you a pitch to use or did you kind of do that on your own?

Mike: It told you exactly what to say. You memorized it and that was it.

Michael: Do you remember how long you did that?

Mike: It was just a summer.

Michael: That’s great.

Mike: It was just a summer and it was a body building ad in those old comic books.

Michael: The Charles Atlas ads.

Mike: The Charles Atlas and Mike Marvel. I used to just pour over those ads. They motivated me so much and when I got a little older, I saw the ad in ’78, I guess it was, by Joe Karbo, The Lazy Man’s Way To Riches and said that’s for me. That’s just what I wanted to do.

Michael: And you bought the book. I’m getting ready…I just got off the phone with a buddy of mine. He’s a copywriter and he has sent me the images of some comic book ads and some other famous ads. They’re sitting on my hard drive and I just haven’t had a chance to upload them to the www.hardtofindads.com website. But I’m going to be doing that probably in the next two or three weeks and I’ll be sending out an email, but a lot of those Charles Atlas ads are in there and some really fantastic ones, especially from the comic books.

Mike: I’ve got a lot of those already. I’ve got a good buddy who still has his comic book collection. I’ve gone through a couple hundred of them and copied all those space ads.

Michael: Did you scan them?

Mike: No. I have hard copies.

Michael: You photocopied them?

Mike: Right.

Michael: So, you like those space ads. How old were you when you really recognized the space ads in the back of the comic books? Where you younger then?

Mike: Yes. My dad was an engineer. He traveled all over the world and one summer he took us to Aruba. I think I was 12 years old. I knew no one there and had a stack of comic books that I bought from a local drugstore there in Oranjestad in Aruba and just stayed in my room and read these comic books. And once again these space ads moved me a great deal. I think that’s when I really got serious about it.

Michael: Did you like them because of the power of it selling you?

Mike: Absolutely. The psychology that the copywriters were using to get right into the core of my soul and how they knew this is exactly what I wanted, it just amazed me because they seemed to understand me so well and they never met me and I wonder how in the heck do these guys to this and understand me so well and know exactly what I want, when I want, to the depth that I wanted it.

Michael: Did you know that you wanted to be like them; you wanted to be able to write like that and sell things?

Mike: I don’t think intellectually I understood that at the time. It wasn’t until the 70’s when I got the Karbo material, that’s when it really started to develop.

Michael: So, were you collecting the ads before you found Karbo?

Mike: No.

Michael: When you saw the Karbo ad do you remember where you first saw it?

Mike: Yes, I think I do. It was in a magazine called Free Enterprise, an excellent magazine that no longer exists, but at that time it was one of the premier opportunity mags. They were just loaded with opportunities. This was one of them.

Michael: So, you ordered his book. After you got the book, you devoured it. What did you think about the first part of the book with the attitude stuff?

Mike: That was right up my alley because I’m kind of a spiritual guy to begin win. I like psychology and I kind of understood that inherent. I really didn’t have to be sold on that part of the book. I was reading Think and Grow Rich and all the self-help books, the Dale Carnegie stuff before I found Karbo. So, that was a natural for it. It just went right into my psyche.

Michael: After you read that book did you launch your first direct mail project?

Mike: I sure did.

Michael: Tell me about it.

Mike: I never had done direct mail, though. I’d always done space ads.

Michael: You’ve always done space ads.

Mike: I’ve always been interested in health and cooking, so the first project I ever did was how to cure hiccups. I get the hiccups when I drink any kind of irritating stuff or if I eat spicy foods. I always used to get the hiccups. I did a little research. This was long before acupressure. I called in acupinch. I went and found out that there was a Chinese meridian on your left forearm that if you pinch it just in the right place, you could interrupt that impulse.

Michael: Yes, it works.

Mike: It worked for me, so I wrote a little course like four or five pages and I put an ad in the one of the rags. I think it was Enquirer. I sold a few books. It wasn’t anything great.

Michael: Did you put a space ad in the Enquirer?

Mike: This was classified.

Michael: Do you remember what your first response was on it?

Mike: No. I think I got 20 or 23 orders.

Michael: How much did you sell it for?

Mike: I think it was only $5 or $6.

Michael: That’s still exciting.

Mike: The ad only cost $20 or $30, so I made a profit from the very beginning. And then from there I went into a full-size book that I created, How To Get Free Dental Care.

Michael: What made you choose that product?

Mike: I had bad teeth and I was living in Cleveland, Ohio. At the time there was a dental school there, Case Western Reserve is still there, a school of dentistry and if you called up you could get into the school and be a guinea pig for the students.

Michael: Oh wow.

Mike: Fillings and have all kinds of procedures done for free.

Michael: There’s probably schools doing that still today.

Mike: Exactly right. At the time there were federal programs in place, the state funded. So, I put together a whole directory of schools and funded program where you could walk in and say I’ve got dental problems, fix them for free. That was my first big selling product. I sold tens of thousands of those.

Michael: So, you put your directory together. How did you sell it? What was your first ad on that?

Mike: My first ad was a junior page ad.

Michael: What’s a junior page?

Mike: A junior page is smaller than a full page, but it dominates the page. If a full page ad is 7 x 10 in a magazine, a junior page will be 5-1/2 by 6-1/2; somewhere around there.

Michael: In what publication?

Mike: My first ad was in The Spotlight. Now, it’s called The American Free Press.

Michael: What kind of paper is that?

Mike: It’s a tabloid newspaper. Was published out of Washington, D.C. Extremely good for testing health food related items.

Michael: Was it a regional test?

Mike: No, it was a national one. I think they had a circulation of 200,000 at the time.

Michael: So, 200,000, you had a junior ad. What was the headline, do you remember?

Mike: Yes. The headline is what really did it. The headline was dentists scream bloody murder.

Michael: Oh, wow, that’s great.

Mike: It got people’s attention to read the ad. That’s the job of that headline is to capture the attention of the reader immediately. You’ve only got them for about a half a second and if you don’t get them immediately, they just turn the page and they’re gone forever.

Michael: Dentists scream bloody murder.

Mike: Dentists scream bloody murder. The readership of that publication are heavy into conspiracy theories and political conspiracies and things like that. I designed the headline to match the demographics of the readership. And I think the subhead was dentists are mad because you can now get free dental care or something like that.

Michael: Was it a copy intensive ad?

Mike: Copy intensive ad. It’s all it was. All my ads are editorial.

Michael: You still have that ad, right?

Mike: Oh sure.

Michael: Maybe for the listeners, can we put a PDF of that ad under the recording?

Mike: I’d be happy to.

Michael: You ran that. This is your first space ad for this product. Tell me what happened. How long did you have to wait before you submitted the ad until the magazine came out? Was it a weekly?

Mike: That’s always the tough part. It is a weekly. Once you place the ad, it’s ten days to two weeks depending upon when you place it before the ad to appear.

Michael: And you have to pay all up front?

Mike: Oh yes. At that time I had no credit with anyone.

Michael: Were you nervous?

Mike: Actually I wasn’t. I was excited.

Michael: Do you remember what the cost of the ad was?

Mike: Let’s see, I think it was $600.

Michael: And that was back in the 70’s?

Mike: Right. That was late…maybe ’79 or ’80.

Michael: So, what happened? You placed the ad. The thing came out.

Mike: I got 700 orders.

Michael: 700 orders.

Mike: At $10 a pop.

Michael: $7,000.

Mike: I was in business.

Michael: Wow. Were you just ecstatic?

Mike: I was ecstatic. Once I had placed a few more ads, I realized that getting 700 orders from a junior page ad in a tabloid with a circulation of 200,000 is just outstanding.

Michael: It is.

Mike: It’s just outrageous. I’ve not been able to duplicate that since, although I’ve done pretty well, but it’s just one of those freaky things.

Michael: All right. Tell me. The magazine comes out. Tell me when the orders start coming in and how you can calculate how many orders you’re going to get. I’m sure you’ve got that figured out by now like with space ads. What can you expect if you’re ad comes out in a weekly?

Mike: If it’s a weekly, you’re going to get probably 75% of your total gross revenue in the first two weeks. It depends if you’ve got a phone line in there or not. My first ad did not have a phone.

Michael: What was your call to action and what was your guarantee in that?

Mike: I always have a lifetime guarantee. I don’t mess around. I advertise honestly and if people don’t like the product, they send it back.

Michael: So, you state in all your ads you have a lifetime guarantee?

Mike: Absolutely. I think at that time it probably wasn’t a lifetime, but it was pretty far out there, maybe six months or something. I have to pull the ad out and look at it. But, yes, you’ve got to have a good, strong guarantees otherwise people are just too hip today. If they get one sniff that you’re trying to con them or sell them something with the untruth involved, you’re going to be dead in the water.

Michael: Because they’re going to pick it up.

Mike: Exactly. So, you have to be completely honest and really give value for the money, really pile on the free bonuses.

Michael: As you’re pouring through these editorial display ads in the rags and stuff, what do you think some of the most common mistakes that you see are happening?

Mike: I think the most common mistake that marketers make is not identifying their USP, their universal selling proposition. A lot of people call it a USAs. I’m surprised how people really don’t understand what their selling and if you don’t understand what you’re USP is, you’re going to do badly. But if you have a really strong idea of what your main benefit is, then you’re really going to sell the heck out of it. I think that’s the most common mistake I see. A lot of times there’s a lot of hype going on, a lot of unbelievable claims being made. I guess if I have to choose one, it would be people just not understanding what a USP is.

Michael: Let’s go back. So, you sold 700 orders. Did you now expand your advertising for that book?

Mike: I did.

Michael: How many papers did you go in?

Mike: In a small way I went into…at that time it was called The National Tattler. It’s like the National Enquirer. Didn’t do well there.

Michael: What happened?

Mike: It’s a different kind of an audience.

Michael: More sophisticated?

Mike: It’s a lot less plus they were not the type of respond to the type of copy I was using. And so, for a few years I was pretty much stuck with The Spotlight.

Michael: Did you try other papers, too?

Mike: I did. I tried daily newspaper and it fell flat.

Michael: Did you lose on The Tattler or did you break even?

Mike: I rarely lose money.

Michael: You rarely lose?

Mike: Yes. Once you understand the principles of direct marketing, you’re not going to lose unless you really do something stupid. If you try to get cute in the headline, you’re going to get killed.

Michael: So, in The Tattler when you ran that, did you do a junior ad in that one as well?

Mike: The Tattler, I believe it was a junior page.

Michael: How many orders did you get on that if you compared it?

Mike: I didn’t block that out. Like I said, I didn’t make a lot of money.

Michael: It wasn’t enough to re-run it, but it covered the cost of the ad?

Mike: Oh, sure.

Michael: In most of your tests, you’ll cover your cost?

Mike: Oh, yes, you really have to. A lot of marketers don’t money in their font end product. They have to depend on backend product. I’ve really never done that. I’ve always made a lot of money on my front end.

Michael: On your front end?

Mike: On my front end, yes.

Michael: Did you handle the fulfillment on the 700 orders?

Mike: Everything.

Michael: You did everything. Tell me about when you produce your product. What are a couple of things that are important if you were to advise me if I’m running a space ad and I’m selling information product? Your packaging, your mailing. Give me some tips on how things that you learned in that process that would make my life easier when I’m handling the orders, the fulfillment, the shipping, and everything. So, orders come in. How are you processing all your orders?

Mike: Well, now I do it a lot different. Back then I did everything myself. It was very simple. It was a small booklet. You just go to an office supply store and buy envelopes and go to the post office and buy stamps. At that time, we were using typewriters and adhesive labels. You just type the label up. You slap it on the envelope. Stick the book in the envelope.

Michael: Was it a #10 envelope?

Mike: Oh no, it was a catalog envelope. It couldn’t be easier.

Michael: You just mailed it first class, with stamps?

Mike: Sure. It wasn’t until later that I started to get involved with more books that I had written. Your fulfillment starts to get a little more sophisticated. You really don’t have to do it yourself. Hopefully you hire people to take care of that for you.

Michael: Let’s go into your next project after that. That was kind of like your first case, but a nice little success.


Mike: I’m driving down the street one day and I’m thinking to myself, you know, I’ve got to come up with a cookbook. Cookbooks always sell.

Michael: They’re always number one sellers.

Mike: Yes, and people buy hundreds of cookbooks. It seems like anybody who comes out with a cookbook they sell it.

Michael: Where did you learn about the market for cookbooks?

Mike: I really didn’t learn about it.

Michael: You were just thinking about it?

Mike: I read something where cookbooks always sell.

Michael: So, now you’re thinking of the hungry market.

Mike: I was thinking of the hungry market and at the same time, I love science fiction movies. And I’m driving down the street. My twisted brain put these two ideas together, science fiction and cooking, special effects and cooking.

Michael: Tell me what year you’re in?

Mike: This was back in 1990. I said what a great idea, a special effects cookbook; how to create recipes that move and smoke and sing and glow in the dark and puff, and snap, crackle and pop and so on. And so immediately I went home and created my first recipe, which was a smoking dragon cake. A cake in the shape of a dragon and it actually blows out safe, mysterious smoke.

Michael: Did you figure out how to do this all yourself?

Mike: Oh yes. I told you, I have a little bit of an inventing spirit. And then from there, I just created another one and another one and another one. I think it took me two months to create 50 recipes and put them in a book. I was rolling. I had the first cookbook; all the special effects…

Michael: What kind of advice would you give someone if you’re producing a good quality book? How did you do it? Did you do this all yourself or did you hire expert advice?

Mike: I actually did both. Unless you’re a very well versed in desktop publishing or you’re a good artist, I would hire it done. I did a little bit of both. I wrote all the recipes out myself in longhand and did some rough sketches. I have a good friend who is a cartoonist, actually. He did the hand drawings and I used a collage of these drawings for the cover of the book and wrote some copy for the back. Just took it down to Pit Printing or Kinko or something. I forget…but I cranked out 20 books.

Michael: Were they all soft-cover?

All soft-cover.

Michael: Was it a color cover?

Oh yes.

Michael: You had photographs of a couple of cakes?

Mike: No, no photographs. I didn’t have a lot of money to advertise at that time.

Michael: How many did you run on your first run?

I think I ran 25 books.

Michael: Did you copyright it?

Mike: Oh sure.

Michael: At that time did you get one of those bar codes or were they not doing it then?

Mike: I did, but not until later, probably a year later. I didn’t bother even with a formal copyright. I just went ahead and printed copyright 1990.

Michael: Was your whole plan to sell this by space?

Mike: Right. But I really didn’t have enough money to do it right, so I did some publicity. And this is another thing I think a lot of marketers don’t pay enough attention to is getting publicity for their products, especially books. Books are hard to sell. If you go to a publisher and have them agree to publish your book, they’re still not going to advertise it.

Michael: Did you try that route…going to a publisher with your book?

Mike: No, I didn’t.

Michael: Never considered it?

Mike: I always considered self-publishing. I wanted to maintain complete control over my product.

Michael: Tell me the negatives. A lot of people think a publisher is going to sell a million copies. What are the negatives of going to a publisher and what could you explain would be some of the benefits of using a publisher? Let’s say you’ve got a great idea. A lot of people want to go take it and try and sell their book to a publisher. Why would you advise someone not to do that?

Mike: Well, you’re not going to sell very many copies unless you’re Steven King or somebody like that. Publishers do not advertise your book. They publish it. They send it to the bookstores and the bookstores stack it up and hopefully when you walk into the store you’re going to see it and buy it. Or unless you’re smart, you can get yourself on radio shows and so on in order to sell books. But you’re still only going to get a percentage from the publisher.

Michael: What do you think a publisher is going to pay you? Let’s say if it’s a $20 book.

Mike: If you write a book and you’re published, you’re lucky if you sell 5,000 copies and you might get a dollar or two per copy. So, that’s a maximum of $10,000 you’re going to realize from your book and nobody can live on $10,000.

Michael: But don’t the publisher make you pay money for the initial printing? Are there any up front fees that the publishers require that you pay for, as well?

Mike: I’ve never heard of that. That could be. Like I say, I’ve never bothered with publishers.

Michael: So, you’re not sure on that.

Mike: No.

Michael: So, you’re basically going to make peanuts?

Mike: You’re going to make peanuts, right. You’re going to spend a lot of time…you’re going to be proud of yourself when you walk into the bookstore and see your book on the shelf. You’re going to say, hey look what I did, but what does that get you. It doesn’t get you any of that stuff that you can spend. And if you self-publish that book, it might take you one dollar to have that book printed up in large quantities and you can sell it for $20 and sell 5,000 copies every month. Now, you’re talking money. But in order to do that, you have to do your own marketing and that’s the kicker. A lot of people when they first do their first book they don’t have the kind of money to advertise it. So, once again, we come back to publicity.

Michael: Did Ted Nicholas influence you, too?

Mike: Oh yes, he was one of the big influences.

Michael: He was mainly space ad, too.

Mike: He was the space ad guy for a long time. That’s where I learned the majority of my space ad stuff.

Michael: Let’s go back to your publicity. So, you gave publicity a try with this crazy idea, science fiction cookbook. What did you do first?

Mike: I studied publicity. Learned a lot from a guy named Paul Hartunian. He probably has the best course on publicity out there and wrote a press release.

Michael: Did you follow his format the tee?

Mike: To the tee, yes. And I sent that press release out and was just inundated.

Michael: Did you mail it or email it?

Mike: I mailed it. This was before email. I mailed it to radio stations, newspaper.

Michael: What was the headline of your press release, do you remember?

Mike: I sure do. I still use it.

Michael: What is it?

Mike: Every year I send these things out. I’ve been doing it for 12 years. The headline on my press release is kids eat their own faces; Mom’s laugh their heads off. There’s a recipe in the book called the Eat Your Face gelatin mold.

Michael: I saw it.

Mike: You can make an exact clone of your face in gelatin and serve it up for the salad course. That’s your Halloween party.


Michael: So, how many did you mail out on this first press release?

Mike: About 100 press release.

Michael: What happened? The phone started ringing.

Mike: The phone started ringing at five o’clock in the morning.

Michael: Did you send your question and answer page or bio page?

Mike: Just send your press release out first and then when an editor or disc jockey calls you, then you offer to send them your bio sheet and your question and answer sheet. They think you’re very professional and you’ve done this before and actually you haven’t. You’re still blurry eyed in your pajamas. I started to get calls, especially from these morning zoo shows on the FM stations. They just thought it was hilarious. They let me talk about my products for five or ten minutes. Give my 800 number out and my website address and hang up the phone and go check and I got orders pouring in immediately. A good thing about publicity is that it creates a lot of this marketing…word of mouth, which is the best kind that you can get. A big upside to all of this is it’s free. You don’t have to pay a nickel. Of course you do want to continue to advertise so you’ve got that one-two punch, especially if you’re going to be on a radio show in Denver. So, then you buy a little space ad in the Denver Post or something so that a lot of people will see that and say hey I heard this guy on the radio. Like when I called you, you said hey aren’t you the guy with these exploding cakes or whatever. You had heard of me because of my publicity.

Michael: That’s right. I heard of you on the food network and I saw the volcano cake. My son’s birthday is coming up and knew right then that was the cake we were going to make because it’s always a big deal. We usually do a theme and I was trying to think of what kind of cake are we going to do. And my wife was like what kind of cake should we do? What kind of cake should we do? And I go I’ve got it. We’re doing the volcano cake with the dry ice. And we did it. And I will email you…I’ve got a great picture of everyone singing happy birthday with our volcano cake with the smoke coming out. I’ll put it up on the website.

Mike: That’s the Holy Grail for the foodies is to get on the food network and I sent them the same press release I’ve been sending out to everyone else.

Michael: When would you send your press release, what month or would you do it all year long?

Mike: You do it pretty much all year long.

Michael: How are you doing it today, by mail or by email?

Mike: I tried email and it just doesn’t work.

Michael: Did you try Paul Hartunian’s email list?

Mike: Yes I did.

Michael: Nothing happened.

Mike: It was weak. A lot of editors are just inundated with these emails.

Michael: What about fax?

Mike: Fax I’ve never done.

Michael: You’re still sticking to the direct mail?

Mike: Direct mail. There’s special ways to do it. You put your press release in a big red envelope and you use a magic marker for your return address and you just write in big letters all over it so that this envelope really looks special.

Michael: What size envelope?

Mike: A big red envelope, 8 x 10, #10. Just be outrageous. Like the guy who wears a red suit, he walks into the room and you’ve got to see him.

Michael: So, you sent these out in a red envelope?

Mike: A big red envelope with a black magic marker and you just write the guy’s name in big black letters.

Michael: That is a great idea. Where do you get your red envelopes?

Mike: Staples.

Michael: So, it costs you more than one stamp to mail it?

Mike: Yes, a couple of stamps.

Michael: Do you handwrite the address?

Mike: Handwrite the address.

Michael: Do you do them all yourself?

Mike: Oh yes. You only need ten a day. Do them when you’re watching TV or something.

Michael: So, that red envelope comes. How many press releases do you send out a year…any idea?

Mike: Oh boy, hundreds.

Michael: Hundreds a year, all right. It doesn’t take you much time. It’s just a little machine, right?

Mike: Yes. You do a little bit every day so that you get that constant flow of interest from TV guys, from radio guys, from newspaper guys.

Michael: What percentage of press are you getting if you broke it up; newspaper, radio, TV, and tell me if there’s a way you can measure the results from each? What do you like best? What works the best?

Mike: The newspaper is best for me.

Michael: Because they write it up.

Mike: They write it up and you get instant results especially for Halloween. I’ve been on full page in the food section, full color. The whole first page is my face and my story and all my contact information. And if you get a big story in Boston or LA or Chicago or New York, millions of people are going to see that.

Michael: When a full page comes out in a big city like that, what happens?

Mike: You sell a lot of books.

Michael: Do you have a call service answering these?

Mike: Oh sure. Oh yes. You have an 800 number in your press release. I have a computerized system where it’s all automated. My system can handle 10,000 calls simultaneously.

Michael: Is it all in-house?

Mike: No.

Michael: You’re using a service.

Mike: This is a company in Tallahassee.

Michael: Is this for your order taking?

Mike: It’s pretty much everything.

Michael: Tell me about the number on the press release. Is that coming to you personally? When you send out your press release, is the media calling you to do the interview?

Mike: The way a press release works and looks is that if you have to follow a format. At the very top of the press release, the upper left hand corner, you just type in for immediate release. On the other side, right across from that, you say for further information, contact…and then you’ve got to have your name and your office phone number. You can leave a number with an answering machine, but I don’t recommend that.

Michael: No, you want to handle all the media contacts yourself.

Mike: Talk to these guys immediately and with a live person, a person who knows the story front and back. It usually has to be yourself.

Michael: When they do the story on you…are newspapers coming out to meet you do to photography and everything?

Mike: Many, many times they do.

Michael: But you have all that now prepared in a kit right?

Mike: Exactly right.

Michael: So, if a newspaper wants to do a story, you’re sending them a media kit.

Mike: You’ve got that…pictures, the whole story, all the questions that they might ask along with all the answers that you want them to give and many times they will print that verbatim.

Michael: Do you give them copies of other newspaper stories that they could use?

Mike: Never had anybody ask me for that.

Michael: Have you ever considered writing a whole newspaper story yourself?

Mike: They don’t want to do that. The guy who calls you or the lady who calls you usually it’s a journalist and they have an editor. And the whole point of writing a press release in the format that I recommend is that you’re not selling anything. You can’t sell anything with a press release. Make them look good with your story. When they go to their editor and they say hey Mr. Editor, this great story I’ve got…this guy who makes his face in Jell-O and he eats it and everybody laughs. That’s a fun story around Halloween and it makes the editor look good, so you let him write and let him sell it for you. It works like a charm, Mike. It really does.

Michael: Tell me your big first press like where a newspaper did a whole story of you on the front page like you were describing. Where did that happen?

Mike: That was the Chicago Sun Press.

Michael: Font page of the food section?

Mike: Right.

Michael: How long ago was that?

Mike: Many years, maybe ’92 or ’93.

Michael: So, you gave them an 800 number for fulfillment and a different number if someone wanted to order.

Mike: Correct.

Michael: And you were already set up with a fulfillment company?

Mike: Right.

Michael: So, where did you find your fulfillment company?

Mike: One of these courses, I think it was a Dan Kennedy book that I found Concord.

Michael: Is it Concord Communications?

Mike: Right.

Michael: Did they have live operators at that time?

Mike: Sure.

Michael: Is that the 800 number where they track the calls and everything?

Mike: They can do everything.

Michael: And they’ll take your order and everything.

Mike: They can do everything like your home office away from home.

Michael: So, Concord Communications. Is that who you still use?

Mike: I still use them and have been with them for years.

Michael: That’s wonderful. When someone calls that 800 number, tell me what happens?

Mike: That’s usually to place an order.

Michael: And Concord has a script and everything?

Mike: Oh yes, a script that I wrote, word for word. They take the credit card number and process it for you. They do the whole thing.

Michael: Wow. What do they charge you for that…to process an order for you?

Mike: It’s about 30% of whatever I’m asking for the order.

Michael: Thirty percent. That example in Chicago, what was the book selling for? Do you have the price…

Mike: At that time I think it was only $12.95 because I only had one book and now there’s three of them and there’s a whole package available, but at that time there was only one book.

Michael: You were paying abut $3.00 to handle the processing of the order.

Mike: Right.

Michael: It’s still worth it.

Mike: Absolutely because you can sell 1,000 books at once.

Michael: And what happened when they thing came out? How many books did you sell?

Mike: I guess 300 or 400 books. I don’t remember exactly. Like I say, it was over ten years ago.

Michael: What did you train them to say on the phone when someone calls in? What was important about your script?

Mike: It was just a generic script. I didn’t do anything special. I Would ask them if they would like to order ten books or five books? I forget exactly what I said. It’s just a regular format.

Michael: So, that was Chicago. What were some other great big hits with your publicity, before we get to the food network?

Mike: Oh, gees, there were so many of them. Just about every newspaper in the country had done that.

Michael: Each one is worth 100 or 200 books.

Mike: Oh yes. Sometimes we’d get 400 or 500 orders. I was on the front page of the paper down here last Halloween. They actually teased it all week. They had a little blurb all over the paper, be watching for the story on this unusual guy who happens to be a resident here. They prime you and they prime you and they get you all slobbering for my stuff and on Halloween there I was, a full color, full-page story on me with all these cool pictures. They sent a photographer out and we did all kinds of cool stuff. I walk down the street now and people say hey aren’t you the guy who was…yes, yes that’s me.

Michael: That’s hilarious.

Mike: I’m a celebrity down here now.

Michael: How many books did you sell on that one?

Mike: Just about 100. It’s a small area.

Michael: What do you pocket after fulfillment and everything on each book? How do you have it packaged now today? Did you up the price and increase the value?

Mike: Yes, I have two cookbooks now with a little free book that explains the science behind the special effects. So, I get a lot of orders from schools and libraries who want to use it in the classroom. It gives the principles of physical science and that’s real cheap to put together. These books only cost me $1.00 apiece. I have them printed now up in lots of 10,000 and on these big machines that can print out ten books at one time, so it’s cheap.

Michael: If you were to recommend someone…let’s say you’re getting up in volumes on printing, could you recommend a printer for someone to use?

Mike: We use someone in Kansas City. You just go to the phonebook and look for local printers and call them up. Tell them you have a glossy book and you need a lot of copies.

Michael: Is it still a soft-cover book?

Mike: Oh yes. It’s the cheapest way to do it.

Michael: Soft-cover, 8.5 x 11?

Mike: Right.

Michael: What does each book end up costing you if you’re doing them in lots of 10,000?

Mike: About $1.00 apiece.

Michael: A $1.00 apiece, not bad.

Mike: I’ve got two books at $1.00 apiece, that’s $2.00 plus the little Brainerd book is about 30-cents to print up. So, I’ve got $2.30 in hard costs and I sell the package on my website for $24.95, but that includes postage.

Michael: So, what do you put in your pocket after the order is taken, after it is shipped, and everything?

Mike: Well, I’m not going to tell you exactly.

Michael: At least $10.00.

Mike: Oh yes.

Michael: $10/$15 a pop.

Mike: It’s over $10.

Michael: We were talking about space and now we’re talking about press releases. If you had your choice, have you lightened up on the space or is your favorite now press releases?

Mike: I think I’m more in space.

Michael: You do more space still.

Mike: I use press releases as a little helper to help along. Like I said before, if you know you’re going to be on the radio in Palm Bay here in Florida, then you would want to buy a little ad in the local paper so that you get that one-two punch. I sell a new book now, arthritis cures…excuse me…Ways to Treat Arthritis Pain. All natural stuff and I’ve been selling the heck out of that with space ads and very, very little press releases.

Michael: So, where are you going into space for that one?

Mike: I go mainly into publications that are over 55, like Good Old Days and Cappers and Grit and World War II and a lot of travel magazines.

Michael: What does that one sell for?

Mike: This offer sells for $15.95.

Michael: Arthritis cures.

Mike: It’s called Dirt Cheap Arthritis Miracles from Mother Nature. It’s a little booklet. It explains a lot of old wives tales that have been around for years and years. Have you ever heard of the nine drunken raisins?

Michael: No.

Mike: That’s a pretty interesting one where you take nine golden raisins and you soak them in gin for a week until they’ve absorbed the gin and you eat nine of these raisins a day and within three or four days your arthritis pain starts to dissipate.

Michael: You’re kidding.

Mike: How it works, I don’t know.

Michael: That’s an old wives tale?

Mike: Wasn’t an old wives tale until people started to try it. If you Google gin soaked raisins, you’ll see it’s not unusual.

Michael: I’m going to have to tell my father-in-law. What’s another good cure in that book?

Mike: Grape juice and _____. It’s apple pectin. You mix the two together and you drink a little bit every day. I don’t know the science behind it, but it does help repair the cartilage in the joints. So, the pain starts to go away. I’m not saying it’s a cure. It’s a way to get rid of this grating pain.

Michael: Well, obviously, it’s such a hungry market. I mean when someone’s in pain, they’ll do anything. My father-in-law has gout. We’ve bought him the cherry juice. When you’re in pain, you desperate to try anything.

Mike: Absolutely.

Michael: You had to me you sold over 500,000 books. Is that just the Special Effects books?

Mike: That’s just the Special Effects books.

Michael: 500,000. Tell me about how you got onto Food Network and what happened, the story behind that.

Mike: I just sent the press release out, kids eat faces for fun, Moms laugh their heads off.

Michael: In your red envelope.

Mike: In my red envelope, right. A producer saw it, gave me a call…

Michael: When they called, what did they say?

Mike: A real friendly woman in her early 20’s was the producer for another company that produces shows for the Food Network out in Colorado. And she said she received my press release and thought that would make a really nice little story on the Food Network.

Michael: Were you jumping up and down?

Mike: Jumping up and down…you betcha because like I said before, this is the Holy Grail for foodies. You get on there and people just love that show.

Michael: How many millions of viewers do they have?

Mike: They have I think 12 million viewers at any one time. She called me up and said we’d like to hear more about this. So, we talked back and forth for a couple of days and she said okay, we’re going to send a producer and a photographer out. They came right here to my home, in my kitchen. They were here for 12 hours. For a five-minute segment it took us 12 hours to film that.

Michael: Wow, 12 hours. So, they came with a cameraman, lighting, and everything.

Mike: The whole deal. It was a big deal.

Michael: Were you preparing all that time? Did they tell you how to do it?

Mike: Yes. You’ve got a signed contract. It’s a lot of work, but they contract out for a show called Unwrapped.

Michael: Right. So, they produce for Unwrapped. Were they specifically developing this segment for Unwrapped?

Mike: Correct. They’re called Heinen Productions. Food Network actually hires out a lot of these production companies to do the actual production of these little cooking shows and then they buy them from them.

Michael: You say it’s a lot of work. Tell me about it? Like if someone is getting ready to do a production with a network like that, what can someone expect?

Mike: Well, in my case, I had to have a lot of food demonstrations all set and ready to go.

Michael: So, you had to make the cake.

Mike: I always have a professional make my cakes so they look beautiful and then I set up the special effects. It’s takes a couple of days of concerted effort, but you really can’t complain because once that show airs, it’s going to repeat three or four times a year. Every time it repeats, the same thing happens. You wake up in the morning and your email box is just jammed full of orders from people who saw that show the previous day.

Michael: Do they tell you when they’re going to re-run it?

Mike: That’s one of the fun parts is that you never know. You just wake up one morning and you open up your email and just one starts to pop right up after the other. After 100 of these things pop up you realize my show aired on Food Network again yesterday.

Michael: Now, when they air on Food Network is it going national or does it sometimes go regional.

Mike: It’s national.

Michael: It’s always national.

Mike: Yes. They even have a separate company in Canada. The show will air up there when it’s not airing down here, so I’ll start to get a whole bunch of orders from Canada and that’s my tip off that the Canadian version ran.

Michael: That little segment, it’s been in Unwrapped, right? But have you ever seen it in different shows other than Unwrapped or is it always airing on that specific Unwrapped segment?

Mike: It’s always on Unwrapped. It’s the same show. They just keep repeating it.

Michael: That’s one of our favorite shows. We watch it all the time.

Mike: That is a good show.

Michael: It’s wonderful. From that Food Network thing, have you estimated how many books you’ve sold just from that one production and then re-running it and re-running it and re-running it? What’s that one been worth to you?

Mike: That’s been a big one. I’d have to say…it’s been over two years now, so I would say that’s been worth at least $30,000 to me.

Michael: That’s wonderful.

Mike: For sending out a press release with a 35-cent stamp or a 40-cent stamp, we got back $30,000.

Michael: On that segment, how do they direct people for more information? Do they just give your website?

Mike: I wish they did, Mike. If they did, I’d be doing 10 times as much.

Michael: And they don’t do it?

Mike: No, they’re not allowed to. They do direct you to the Unwrapped part of Food Network.com.

Michael: People have to inquire how can I get that book.

Mike: If you go to Food Network and then click on Unwrapped, they have a whole list of shows that have aired in the past. You’ll find mine. You just click on that. It tells you all my contact information.

Michael: Oh, it does.

Mike: It tells my website and my 800 number.

Michael: If they gave your website and said to get his book go to…

Mike: If they said go to my site directly, I would have sold a million dollars worth of books by now.

Michael: You weren’t able to wiggle that into your production?

Mike: It’s not possible.

Michael: They make sure it’s not in there.

Mike: I tried to put a little sign that I made, but it was not allowed.

Michael: Didn’t they who the cookbook?

Mike: Sure. I showed a picture of the book.

Michael: We just searched it on Google, but we ended up buying it off of Ebay.

Mike: I see.

Michael: We couldn’t find your website. I don’t know. But we just went on Ebay and we typed in special effects cakes or special effects cookbook. Maybe we did find your site, I’m sure. But we did buy it.

Mike: Well, thanks. I appreciate that.

Michael: It was great. That’s a great story.

Mike: For self-publisher, publicity is the main technique to use to get people to know who you are and to buy your products. It really is beautiful because it’s so cheap and fast. If you do it right, your controversial in your headline, that’s pretty much the key. It’s like a space ad. A headline has to create real interest. You have to seduce the reader to arouse their curiosity, I guess.

Michael: Tell me about your chocolate perfume.

Mike: That’s one of my funny little through away products. I was driving down the street one day with my wife and she’s a choco-alcoholic. She was inhaling a Hershey bar and she just made an off-hand comment, why doesn’t some create chocolate perfume. I’d sure buy it. That’s all you’ve got to do is say something like that to me and I’m off to the races. So, that’s one of my little inventions.

Michael: Do people buy it?

Mike: Around Valentine’s Day. It’s not a real big seller. It more of a novelty thing. Be careful with it because if you do it, you’re going to smell like a chocolate bar for about a week.

Michael: That’s hilarious. Your Gross Out Cookbook.

Mike: Get Sick and Turn Blue Cookbook, that’s a new one.

Michael: How’s this one going?

Mike: Slow, but I didn’t think I’d sell a million copies. It’s mainly for kids 10-12 years old, especially boys. They like to gross each other out.

Michael: Are you doing space ads for this?

Mike: No. I’m contacting catalogs. That’s the best way to market this product.

Michael: So, you constantly have to do marketing?

Mike: Oh yes, 24 hours a day. You know the old saw, a terrible thing happens when you don’t advertise--nothing.

Michael: And nothing happened.

Mike: That’s what happens when you don’t advertise. You don’t sell anything. You’ve got to keep after it every day. That’s why I love publicity because if you have an unusual product, it’s really easy to write a press release with a controversial headline or an unusual way to say something that captures the attention of an editor. And then you’re off to the races. But you have to have an ad out there. Every month you have to do your press releases on a religious basis.

Michael: Tell me about this Eat Your Face gelatin mold. This was one of your first ones, right.

Mike: That’s been around for a long time.

Michael: How do you make the mold of your face?

Mike: Well, have you ever been to a dentist and they make an impression of your teeth?

Michael: Yes.

Mike: It’s called alginate. It’s just an extract of seaweed and that’s what I use. I took the formula from a dental supply house and I tweaked it a little bit. It doesn’t gel so fast. That stuff you get at the dentist gels in two minutes.

Michael: So, does it come in a powder?

Mike: The powder looks like a bag of cocaine, actually. You mix it with some water. It takes two people; a person having his face cloned will lay back with a couple of straws up their nose and the other person just mixes the powder with water until it’s like a cake batter and you just pour this goop on the person’s face and it sits there for two or three minutes and then it hardens up and then you peel it off. That essentially becomes the mold you pour the Jell-O into. When it hardens up, you pop it out and you’ve got your face on a plate.

Michael: That’s awesome.

Mike: Oh yes. I sell a lot of them.

Michael: Are you getting a lot of traffic on your website?

Mike: Lots of traffic.

Michael: How many unique visitors are you getting there a day? Any idea? Are you pretty website savvy?

Mike: No. I hire somebody to do that for me. I don’t do a lot of grunt work. My specialty is creating products and advertising to sell those products.

Michael: You’re the product developer.

Mike: I’m the idea guy and the copywriter.

Michael: Do you know what kind of traffic is coming to your site?

Mike: It depends on the time of the year. During the fourth quarter between Halloween and Christmas, I’ll get thousands of hits a day. Like now, we’re down, pretty slow as I really don’t have anything that people are interested in right now. They’re kind of partied out from the holidays and they’re thinking about resolutions and how they’re going to pay bills and so on and so forth.

Michael: So, you’re seasonal. You’re really at Halloween time every year.

Mike: Yes. This particular site is seasonal, although that’s why I have to keep sending press releases and that’s why I wrote the second book, the second Special Effects Cookbook, which tells you how to create a special effects recipe for every holiday all throughout the year. So, when Valentine’s Day comes around, I have a press release I send out.

Michael: What’s that one called? Is that the Special Effects Cookbook?

Mike: For holidays and special occasions. The first book was just the special effects or called the Amazing and Incredible Special Effects Cookbook and the companion book is Special Effects Recipes for Holidays and Special Occasions.

Michael: Okay, I’ve got you.

Mike: That has every holiday you can think of; Flag Day and Secretary’s Day.

Michael: There it is.

Mike: No matter what time of the year it is, I have a press release that’s going to promote that book.

Michael: How is that going compared to the one that’s just for that Halloween type time?

Mike: That doesn’t do quite as well, but it does drive traffic to the site. I do get calls for Valentine’s Day. I have a beating heart cake. It actually pumps like a real beating heart and that gets the interest of a lot of editors. There’s kind of a gross angle to it and its kind of fun. All through the book you have different recipes for different occasions.

Michael: You’re a real success story. You’ve made a million dollars through the self-publishing business.

Mike: I sure have and I’m very, very proud to say that. It’s been one of my big goals to do that, to be like a Ted Nicholas or a Joe Cosman and by gosh, I think I did it. I’ve got some new products that are coming out this year that I think are going to really, really be of great interest to a lot of people.

Michael: So, when developing a new product, you’re always thinking what can I come up with now, what are the critical things you’re thinking about now? What kind of research do you do now--I’m sure you’re a little more sophisticated--before you come out with a new product? Give me some scoop on this thinking process that you’re thinking at this level before you come out with a new product.

Mike: I recommend to anyone who is coming out with a new product or wants to create a new product or invention or book or report or whatever to concentrate on how boomers are starting to get old and they’re starting to get arthritis. They’re starting to get all the aches and pains that older folks get and this market is just exploding. You can make a lot of money just by inventing a product that takes advantage of a niche in that market.

Michael: I want to talk about people who are afraid of marketing health products because they’re fearful of being accused of making false claims, the FDA type stuff. What do you think about that?

Mike: Funny you should ask me that, Mike, I’ve been up to my neck with that kind of project here for the past year.

Michael: What happened?

Mike: I created an ingestible. It’s a cold capsule, a remedy for the common cold based on chicken soup. Each one of these capsules has the healing power of 16 bowls of chicken soup. You take three of these capsules a day and it’s like you’ve just eaten 48 bowls of chicken soup.

Michael: Tell me how does that work?

Mike: It works great. I’ve tried it myself and believe me it’s powerful stuff. I wrote an ad for it and placed a test ad. I won’t say where. I did pretty well with it. It didn’t get a call, but I had a dream, almost like a nightmare I guess of getting in trouble. It just so happens that I have a friend who’s also in the business who was marketing a stop smoking kit; all herbal based. Nothing in there dangerous. He woke up on morning and found out that all of his bank accounts had been attached by the FDC for making claims that he wasn’t allowed to make. So, that kind of put the kibosh on that.

Michael: You got fearful and you stopped.

Mike: I got fearful like you wouldn’t believe.

Michael: That’s a good move.

Mike: So, I have an asset that could be in danger and so I just stopped. Immediately I re-formulated the whole product. I called a lawyer who is a specialist in vitamins and ingestibles and had my eyes opened. I re-formulated it and rewrote the ad so it’s completely within the boundaries of the FDC and FDA guidelines. No red flags. You do have to be so careful. Now, when you’re writing a book, you don’t have to be so careful. It’s the ingestibles, the stuff you have to be careful with. With a book, you’re just selling information. You don’t have to worry. As long as you don’t say you have a cure for arthritis, a cure for cancer. Many times you can take your headline and just put a question mark at the end of it. For example, never get the common cold but again. Now, if you were to put that headline out there the way it’s written, never get the cold bug again, you’re making quite a claim. But if you put a question mark after that and you turn it into a question--never get the common cold again?--then it’s completely legal.

Michael: Well, you know there’s still a company who does that, though, and it’s called Better Than Botox.

Mike: I’ve seen that ad.

Michael: And they had a question mark and they came after them even with the question mark.

Mike: Yes, that’s probably because there were other red flags.

Michael: So, you hired an attorney to kind of review what you were doing. He opened your eyes.

Mike: He really open my eyes in how you write the copy. You can still say what you want to say, but you just have to say it so that you’re not raising any red flags.

Michael: Well, you’ve heard of Airborne.

Mike: Airborne, right.

Michael: I mean look at that company. It’s humongous. And if you read their copy, it doesn’t make any claims at all. A third grade teacher, she wanted to come up with a way to stop getting sick from her kids. I mean it says really nothing.

Mike: Right. Fortunately I have clinical studies based upon my claim. I can say legally that this product does shorten the duration of the common cold and it does relieve symptoms.

Michael: Based on your clinical studies?

Mike: On clinical studies, right.

Michael: What kind of clinical studies are they, though?

Mike: Done at the Cleveland Clinic. What you’re listeners will have to realize is that you can’t make claims on foreign studies. All you studies have to be U.S.

Michael: U.S. studies. Is the Cleveland Clinic like a reputable clinic?

Mike: Believe me, it’s a world famous…

Michael: I was feeling terrible yesterday. I was nauseous and my wife makes big huge pots of fresh chicken soup. Why is it, what is it in chicken soup that really helps you feel better?

Mike: The clinical studies indicate that--well, there’s two things. Number one, it breaks up the mucus in your chest. So, it does help with the congestion and a lot of that they think just has to do with the steam coming off the hot soup. Some of the studies indicate that you can just drink hot water and get the same effects. But there are nutrients in chicken soup that actually affect your immune system and they kick up your immune system so that the k-cells, the killer cell, the white blood cells in your blood actually start to go after the common cold bug in your blood stream like a hungry shark after prey.

Michael: Oh really.

Mike: They go after these cold bugs, just devours them up. And that’s how your immune system works is your k-cells have to intervene and eliminate the virus.

Michael: I know we’ve digressed a little bit and I’d originally asked you what do you think about in your mind now with the sophistication and your experience of your marketing about coming out with a new product. And one thing I see is you’ve got something that is instead of a one-hit sale, you’ve got a consumable. Is that one of the things you thought about by coming out with this type of product?

Mike: Correct. You have to keep buying it. Buy it once, you’ll buy it once a month. Each bottle of capsules will last you approximately a month. The idea is to take them every day so that you keep your immune system up. There’s lots of nasty bugs that are coming around at us in the coming years. There’s the bird flu. And people with weak immune systems are going to pay the price.

Michael: They’re more susceptible.

Mike: Absolutely, especially if you’re old and frail and sick, you need to boost your immune system. There’s lots of products out there that can do this and mine is just one. But that’s my strategy in the coming years is to concentrate on the baby boom generation and healthcare products that they’re going to need to help relieve their pain and make their life easier, make them more attractive. It’s going to be a biggie. People don’t want to get wrinkles and get old. They’re going to buy whatever they have to buy to look good. They’re going to buy whatever they have to buy to maintain virility. They’re going to buy whatever they have to buy so they can go out and ride their bike every day or play tennis or swim. They don’t have to go around in a wheelchair. There’s so many products that you can create for the baby boomers to keep them healthy.

Michael: Are you ready to start marketing this stuff?

Mike: Oh yes.

Michael: Are you already doing it?

Mike: The website will be up next month. I’ve already got my press release written. I’ve already got space ads done.

Michael: Do you have your production done?

Mike: I’ve got my production done. I’ve got an inventory. I’ve got everything I need. All I need to do now is just get my butt in gear.

Michael: Is that what you’re going to focus on now and kind of easy off a little bit on the cookbook stuff?

Mike: I really don’t have to easy off on it. On the best of days that only takes many a half hour of my time to administer that website and make sure all the orders are filled and everything. Things go smoothly there. That’s the beauty of book publishing. You hire somebody else to do it and you just watch where the money goes. This new product will take a lot of my time at first, but like everything else, it will eventually reach a point where I just become an administrator and move on to the next product, which is a space ad course I’m coming out with.

Michael: First of all, before we get into that, I think that sounds like a fantastic product. Everyone knows chicken soup is Jewish penicillin. You’re leveraging off of all that history. That’s very smart and that’s great for publicity.

Mike: It sure is and it’s going to work great. I know it is.

Michael: I’m looking forward to seeing more about this.

Mike: You’re going to be hearing about it. You’ll wake up one morning and you’ll hear me on the radio or you’ll see me in the newspaper selling my chicken soup capsules.

Michael: You’re going to make a ton of money, too.

Mike: I hope so.

Michael: Now, let me ask you--just something to think about--I did a ten-hour interview with a guy who developed a male enhancement product, herbal product. He sold about $100 million worth of it and then the FDA came in. They raided everything. And he had not protected himself. And in the interview he said if I had known I was doing anything wrong--because there were a lot of companies doing it, still in business doing it--he would have protected his asset. Have you thought about that before you launch into something like this and you’re really starting to bring in the big bucks, anyway to protect the assets that you already have in case some over zealous regulation, ABC regulatory comes in a seizes your assets? Is that something you’ve thought about?

Mike: Sure. I’ve always thought about that. I think the way I’ve got it set up now with corporations and trusts and so on that I’m pretty safe now. I think when you get up to the $100 million range, then you’re going to have to make some alternate arrangements and there’s lots of things you can do, overseas and so on. That’s something for the future.

Michael: You have this love for space ads. Have you been collecting them all these years?

Mike: No, just recently. The last couple of years I’ve started to collect, like I said, I had a buddy who had a big collection of comic books, so I got a treasure trove of those. But so many, many others I’ve gotten from different sources.

Michael: Did you have some time to look at the www.hardtofindad.com site?

Mike: I had. I have a lot of those ads. I have a lot of the Gary Halpert and Claude Hopkins. The oldest space ad that I have is from 1790, I think, selling a smoking device; an old pipe, I guess. But at any rate, I’ve got thousands of space ads and that’s going to be one of the bonuses in my space ad course.

Michael: I’m going to give you a publication called All American Ads. Have you heard of those books? If you go searching on Amazon, All American Ads for the 30’s, for the 20’s, for 40’s, 50’s, 60’s, 70’s. This publisher, Taschen, a big publisher of all these really cool books. This book is as big as an encyclopedia. They keep coming out with them and they’re going earlier and earlier. I just got the one for the 1920’s and they’ve collected all these great space ads and they have it categorized--movies, health products, consumer products, industrial products--and they’ve re-mastered them into full color beautiful stuff. All the old car ads. You’ll probably go right there and order all six of their books. They’re only about $20 something apiece. All American Ads for the 20’s, 30’s, 40’s, 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s.

Mike: All right, Mike. Thank you for that.

Michael: Go check that out.

Mike: I will. I have kept my space ad course so that we specialize in direct response ads. I haven’t included any ad in there that does not include a call for action. You actually have to send money from these ads.

Michael: In the books I’m giving you, a lot of them are mostly institutional, but it’s still neat to see the stuff that was out there.

Mike: But my space ad course, you might find this pretty interesting, is based upon the comedy of the Three Stooges.

Michael: Tell me.

Mike: I decided to do that because, well number one, I like the Three Stooges, they’re hilarious. And number two, when you are learning something and it’s amusing, you will learn it faster and you will learn it better. The Three Stooges were geniuses at slapstick comedy. They knew what makes people laugh. They knew the core principles of what makes a guy laugh when another guy gets hits over the head with a hammer. They just understood it. The same way with my course. I teach you how to understand your customer, the very core of their soul. When your customer goes to sleep at night, the last thing he thinks of is what you’ve got to know if you want to sell him a product. And that’s what the course teaches you--how to get into the psychology of your customer so that you can appeal to that want or that need so that they take their wallet out and send you their money.

Michael: How much are you going to sell the course for?

Mike: Well, it’s gotten so big now and it’s full of CDs and free bonuses, so it’ll probably be around the $600 range.

Michael: Do you have a sales letter written for it yet?

Mike: No not yet.

Michael: Are you going to use the Three Stooges angle as your promotional angle?

Mike: Sure, oh yes.

Michael: Very good.

Mike: I think it’ll be unique; one of the most unique self-study programs out there as far as direct response.

Michael: Are you doing the audio CDs yourself?

Mike: Well, I have an option. I have a buddy who has a website called Beatle Brunch. Did you ever hear of Beatle Brunch?

Michael: Beatle Brunch, what is Beatle Brunch?

Mike: Beatle Brunch is a radio show that runs every Sunday afternoon and all they do is play Beatle song. A buddy of mine, Joe Johnson, he’s the DJ who does the Beatle Brunch show and he’s agreed to do all the narration. I’m going to give him the course and he’s going to read it and it’ll be his voice you hear on the CDs.

Michael: Just on the side, the way we’ve been doing this interview right now, you could very effectively teach and do your course in an interview style just by following the format. And I’ll tell you, you’ll get a lot more people to listen to it. Haven’t you ever heard the Nightingale Conan tape? When you listen to seminars and it’s just someone talking into the mike, sometimes it’s hard to get through that material for a lot of people. I mean maybe you and me and the ravid learners, we can do it, but I know just through over the four or five years I’ve been doing audio interviews, this format that we’re doing is the most compelling, the most believable, the most effective way in teaching because the listener is like a voyeur. He’s listening in on two people talking rather than the guy talking at him and it just makes a huge difference. And I know you haven’t spent much time at my www.hardtofindseminars.com website, but this is one of the services I provide and it’ll probably make a big difference in developing the course. It’ll just come across a lot easier and then you don’t have to write out in a script