Michael: Hey, Bartley. It’s good to talk to you. It’s been a while. So what the hell have you been doing all this time?

Bartley: I went through the marketing stuff that I got from you.

Michael: You went through all of it? You got the Protégé Training tapes from me. And you started listening to those.

Bartley: I started listening to those and actually, one of my roommates got really involved in it also. He listened to the whole program with me. The one thing that kind of hooked me was the copy writing. I was fascinated with it, especially learning what I could learn from Gary Halbert; that made it even more appealing.

Michael: Okay, tell me about Gary Halbert. There wasn’t much on copywriting from the seminar I gave you. Did you get a Gary Halbert copywriting seminar?

Bartley: Not just the copywriting seminar but also a couple of his mail order programs. The most beneficial was the stuff from his newsletter.

Michael: Did you get to his website to check out his newsletter?

Bartley: Yes, that stuff is really valuable.

Michael: It’s very valuable. I think that’s a great direction for you to go with. If you’re passionate about it and you’re willing to learn, pay your dues and do everything that he outlines that you need to do. He’s a big advocate, you could wish all day long but if you’re not willing to do the work and do the exercises that he recommends, if you want to be the best in the world, you’ve got to do that stuff. Are you the type of person who is willing to sacrifice and do that?

Bartley: Oh definitely. I’m not even sure necessarily if my direction is to try to be a Gary Halbert. In any venture that I’m involved in, whether it’s my own business or not, it seems like such a valuable tool to have in your arsenal.

Michael: Oh absolutely, if you can master copy writing for both salesmanship and print and really do it well where you’re able to sell from a piece of paper, the written word, and you had a big enough market. Let’s say you had a letter to the diet industry and tested it to a thousand people and it was like the letter you wrote that you sent me. Let’s say you had a product that cost you a couple of bucks, you were selling it for $29, and you tested the letter to a thousand people and produced enough sales through a direct response letter. They sent you money and you sent out their diet product and it made a small profit on a thousand people, you’re set. You’re a millionaire. If you test it again and make sure it wasn’t a fluke, you are there. You’ve got a successful piece of copy that has made a profit on a small scale, and then all you’re doing is multiplying zeroes. The next time, it won’t be a thousand; it will be five thousand, then ten thousand then twenty thousand then fifty thousand then a hundred thousand then two hundred thousand then a million. You can go as high as mailing out ten million letters a month if you want to because the market is that big. You see?

Bartley: Right.

Michael: You just add the zeroes and you’re set for life. You could build a multi-million dollar company from one letter. One example is the most successful letter of all time has produced over a billion dollars worth of sales, and that’s the direct mail piece that originated for the Wall Street Journal, a billion dollars and it’s still being mailed today with some slight changes. But the main concept is still the same.

Bartley: That’s amazing, isn’t it?

Michael: I just got a rare book, it’s not really rare, you can find it. I’m sitting here reading it. I was reading it last night and this morning. I’m not even near complete. It’s by Denison Hatch, and it’s called “Million Dollar Mailings.” You can go on Amazon.com and search Denison Hatch or “Million Dollar Mailings.” This is 60 or 70 of the all-time greatest copy written letters in the world. The copywriters were interviewed on what gave them the inspiration and how and why they did it. You can pick this book up for $150, and it is gold. Another aspect, when you want to be a great copywriter, one of the easiest ways is to emulate what other successful pieces have done. You can work through books, look at proven successful million dollar mailings, and borrow from that to create any letter in the world for any product in the world. Not only that, one of the most interesting things that I do is collect this stuff. I collect proven successful sales letters and ads because one ad, imagine the expense that went into developing a proven successful ad. Just one page in this book of one successful ad that has produced millions and millions of dollars worth of sales to their company is like a combination to a safe. For example, if you have a successful ad selling a subscription to Newsweek or one of the business publications, you can take that same concept and format and change some things around. You don’t want to plagiarize it; change it to a subscription for a gym membership or a subscription for anything. You can fit it to a different market very easily, because it’s not the product you’re selling that made it work that appeals to human emotions; it was the words that were used in the headlines and in the opening and closing of the piece that made them move. It was the author that made them act. Every single one of these can be molded to a different product or market that you see fit. You don’t even necessarily have to be as skilled as what Gary Halbert says unless you want to be a hero and do it all yourself. Why would you want to take risks when you can borrow proven formulas? I think all great copywriters, to an extent, do this. I’ve heard Dan Kennedy, you’ve heard of him right?

Bartley: Sure.

Michael: He’ll talk about how he can count on one hand the amount of original copy he’s ever written. He goes back and researches great copy and some of the best stuff is back in the 20’s and the 30’s and the 40’s. This is when the real masters were around. There’s a website I just learned about that has all the Claude Hopkins archived Pepsodent toothpaste ads. Claude Hopkins, you’ve heard of him?

Bartley: Sure.

Michael: He was the master, the granddaddy copywriter and advertiser back in the 1920’s. He was responsible for putting Pepsodent toothpaste on the map, and they have archived the full-page ads from the 20’s and 30’s that were responsible for building that company. They’re pure genius, they could be changed around just a little bit today, and they could be marketed. Instead of toothpaste, it could be cream that prevents acne, or a deodorant. It could be anything.

Bartley: Isn’t it amazing that something that was done so long ago could still be used today and the wording could still work?

Michael: That’s what’s so great about marketing, you’re studying human nature and human nature doesn’t change. We all operate the same way. We’re all human beings. There’s greed, lust, love, sex, all the major emotions that make up a human being have been the same forever, and they’re the same anywhere around the world. You only learn more and more, and the more you learn it compounds on what you’ve already learned. You get to use a new year and cross reference with the other ten years you’ve already learned. So you’re never wasting time studying human nature or studying copy writing, which is to motivate people to action, to buy your product.

Bartley: I’m curious, Mike. I sent you the letter I had written... I didn’t spend a lot of time on that; maybe three or four hours. I wanted to know, since you’ve read a lot of this stuff, I was curious what you thought about it. I didn’t borrow anything; that was just all out of my head and I’m curious what you thought.

Michael: I thought it was good. Some of the main things were great. You had a headline; “Finally, The Real Secret to a Lean Healthy Body is Revealed.” Those are powerful headline words and a headline is eighty to ninety percent of your ad. Those words have been proven in the past through all the successful ads. Gary Halbert is a big fan of the word “secret.” It’s a great word that gets people’s attention because everybody wants to know the secret. “Finally” is a great attention-getting word also. It’s a good headline, but guess what? My opinion and anyone’s opinion isn’t worth shit because the only people’s opinions it’s worth are the ones who are going to open their wallet and give you their credit card for the product. Let me ask you this. Maybe you would be better off researching and finding some very successful diet promotions, like one of the all-time successful diet promotions that Gary Halbert worked on for Berry Trim, Berry Trim is still sold today. It was a hugely successful promotion. As a matter of fact, I have the letter for the Berry Trim promotion. One way it was done other than a letter was a full-page newspaper ad. I’m not sure how else it was promoted but I have the actual ad word for word. So what would that be worth to someone writing a diet promotion, to mold your diet promotion after that? Another thing I do is subscribe to the National Enquirer. Some of the very best top-paid copywriters write for the National Enquirer because they have to write simply and clearly and they do it very well. That’s why they sell so many copies. Their headlines are incredible, number one. You can learn from those. I get them, look through them, and tear out all the good ads. I tear out all the full-page ads on their diet products and their weight-loss products. Not every one is good, some are bad, but there are some very good ones. Here’s another source. I was telling you about Denison Hatch; he has a service, it’s one of the largest archives in the world of over 600,000 direct-mail pieces, and he has a website you can go to. He catalogs, saves and archives every single direct-mail piece that comes in whether it’s on diet or fitness or financial or whatever, magazine subscriptions and you can go to his site and search for a company’s mailing list. Let’s say you found a company that had a very successful diet promotion. You’ve heard of SRDS?

Bartley: Yes.

Michael: It’s Standard Rate and Data Service. You could go to the SRDS and search for mailing lists for rent, and search under diet. You can look at the different lists that are for rent for different diet products. Let’s say you found the Berry Trim list. I don’t know if it’s still available, but let’s say you found that list on the market for rent. Why are you looking at the SRDS? You’re looking at it because you’re going to get the idea if it’s a successful diet promotion. You’ll see that Berry Trim has 250,000 new names every year that they can rent out. They have say 60,000 quarterly names and say they have 30,000 hotline names, which is a name that is fresh from the last thirty days that you can rent. Assuming your list owner is honest and those are true and accurate figures, it tells you that Berry Trim is selling 30,000 units a month, and it tells you how much the direct-mail offer is for. Let’s say it’s $29 for the bottle of Berry Trim; you multiply the cost of the product times however many they’re selling per month and you’ve got a good figure what that company is bringing in on that product for that month. That’s going to determine if it’s successful. Then you call the list broker and say, “I’m interested in the Berry Trim list. Can I see the direct-mail piece that brought these names?” They are obligated to send that to you, so they will send you the exact mail piece that produced these names for rent.

Bartley: Wow, I didn’t know that.

Michael: Now you know. So now you have the exact piece that’s produced the results, and you have the number of sales it has generated. The only thing you don’t have is how much they’ve spent on their direct-mail campaign. Do you see what I’m saying?

Bartley: Yes.

Michael: You’re ninety percent there. Let’s say you find three or four other diet promotions and you do the same thing for each of them. You have five different diet promotion letters and their figures. Do you think you could come up with a good diet promotion using some of the key phrases and headlines and words in those five diet programs?

Bartley: Well you’d certainly think so.

Michael: A little bit better than dreaming stuff up out of your head?

Bartley: Yeah!

Michael: So stop dreaming stuff out of your head. There is no need to be creative. Creativity is shit; it doesn’t mean anything. It’s a buzzword. We all want to be creative because it’s human nature. You want it to be your idea; there’s satisfaction in that because you did it, it was your idea. I’m like that, everyone is like that. But if you can get your ego out of the way, wouldn’t you rather have results with sales and money in your bank account than have a great idea?

Bartley: Absolutely.

Michael: Especially if you’re on a tight budget. You want to stack the odds in your favor the best you can, and that’s by finding things that have worked and that are proven, rather than taking chances with ideas.

Bartley: I agree.

Michael: If you become a collector of proven sales letters like I am, and proven copy and do your homework and research with the SRDS, I can’t think of a better investment than spending time on the SRDS researching markets and mailing lists.

Bartley: Tell me again, how do you know when you’re looking at the SRDS, which ones are producing?

Michael: You can look at the SRDS online service or you can also go to the library. Any main library will have the SRDS. It’s like a telephone book of direct-mail lists that are available for rent. Let’s say there’s a news magazine coming out and they say, “Okay, we have this news magazine, now who are we going to sell to? We want to sell to people who like news magazines,” so they’ll go look for all the mailing lists that are owned by the news magazines, who may want another news magazine, and they’ll rent those lists and mail their offer to those people. Each list is owned by a company, so at Newsweek, they own all their subscribers’ names and addresses because it’s their list. A very large source of income is renting those lists, and that’s when you call and put it on the market for rent with the SRDS. They’re a service that catalogs all the list renters and all the list brokers. They’re like a hub for the list market. So Newsweek is the owner of the list, but they don’t handle the details with all the people interested in it. They’ll have a broker handle it. Newsweek will say, “Okay Mr. Joe Broker, you’re going to handle and manage our mailing list.” So the broker is the guy handling all the details with people who are interested in renting it. Are you with me?

Bartley: Yep.

Michael: The broker doesn’t know for sure if it’s a legitimate list. It’s like if you’re going to sell your house and you get a real estate agent or broker to handle the sale of the house, the agent or broker doesn’t know that your basement’s foundation is cracked. Well, I guess they could. They can inspect some things. In the list market, the broker has to pretty much take the word of the list owner that it’s a legitimate list. There’s a lot of fraud out there in the list market so you really have to be careful and do your homework. That’s how it works. There’s a list owner, he hires a list broker to put it on the market and then the list is rented and the broker keeps forty to fifty percent, the list owner gets between fifty and sixty percent of whatever the list renter pays. Are you with me?

Bartley: Yep.

Michael: Just like a real estate broker, it’s split. It’s big money. There are companies out there who make their income, millions of dollars, on renting the lists. It’s a very interesting field.

Bartley: You said something about a hotline.

Michael: I think I got off the subject. If you are interested in your list, you’ll call the list broker and say, “I’m interested in this list. Send me a rate card.” A rate card is the information about the list. There’s a description of who the list owner is or who the broker is. It’s a general description. These are lists of people who have paid this much money, and they’ll say how much they’ve paid, if they paid $29, or whatever they paid for the Berry Trim product. The list was developed through a direct-mail letter. Then they’re going to tell you how many names are available to rent, and they will tell you how many names are in the total file. They’re giving you the breakdown and details of the list. They may say they have a quarter of a million names for rent for the whole year, but people want a recent name. You’re much better off mailing to a list that has bought something in the most recent timeframe. Wouldn’t you mail to someone who just bought some diet products within the last thirty days?

Bartley: Sure.

Michael: Those are called hotline names, and they are a little bit more expensive but you have a better chance of selling them because they’re hot. They’re in heat, they’re on a diet, they just spent their money, and there’s a good chance they’re not off their diet yet. So those names are more valuable than names that are six months old, or three months old.

Bartley: Right, because they might not be interested or they might have moved.

Michael: If they’ve moved, you don’t have to pay for the stuff and usually the list broker will farm the data, the actual handling of the data with service bureaus who handle large databases. Some of these files can be huge. It’s pretty sophisticated; they can run the list and compare it with the United States Post Office “Change of Address” list, and they’ll get rid of all the people who moved. It’s called “cleaning the file.” Your diet ad that you wrote, if you found it was a winner on a small scale, and down the road four or five years from now, you’re mailing out to hundreds of thousands of people, there are real sophisticated ways to take that list and to better your chances of sales. For instance, there’s some software out there that can do statistical spreadsheets on all the data. Let’s say you have 250,000 names; when you’re mailing 250,000 letters within that list, some customers in there are better than others, and there is software that will compare each one of those names and addresses with geographical locations within the United States. They’ll have income information and demographics on the area. If you have a zip code in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Louisiana where it’s mostly poverty level, you may have 3,000 people in zip codes like that and may not want to mail to them. If you ran the statistics on it, you probably will have a lot better chance mailing to a zip code like Bel Air where there’s a lot more money. We want to mail to people who have money. There is sophisticated software you can pick up for $500. That can save you big money as you grow and start mailing to larger and larger people. I think it would be a great career to get into. There are not that many people doing it, at least doing it well. Once you get good and you work smart like what I’ve been teaching you it’s like a secret weapon. A client comes to you, I had a guy call me and he was doing Arbitrage on Wall Street for thirty years; he was overweight, he had diabetes and a friend told him about this bread that was an ancient bread recipe that would cause you to lose weight. He and his wife would bake some up, and he lost all this weight. And he couldn’t fucking believe how much weight he’d lost form this bread. This is true. He’d tried everything he could think of to lose weight, and he was really at risk for heart disease, but he lost all this weight, and it worked, and he fell in love with it. He was so excited, and he called me. He had a food manufacturer to produce the bread. He was ready to hire a marketing company to do all the marketing. He didn’t even want to tell me what it was. He would just tell me it was a weight loss product. I probed him a little more and a little more. When he told me it was bread, I said “Oh I know what that is. That’s the no hunger bread.” And he wanted a promotion for it. From my knowledge, there’s a guy named Ben Suarez. I don’t know if you’ve heard his name. Gary Halbert probably talks about him. He wrote a book called “Seven Steps to Freedom,” which is a book I have up on my website in the photo section. You can see what it looks like; I’ve got the whole outline. It’s one of the greatest direct-mail books of all time. In that, he has his life story, what he went through in the direct-mail business and all his trials and tribulations, and Ben Suarez, the same exact thing happens. Ben Suarez was an unbelievable direct marketer. I had a full-page newspaper article of the exact story that this stockbroker was going through that had already been done, and I have the whole history of everything that happened with that bread. I had the sales, how he sold it, how he made it, everything. When I told the guy I knew exactly what he was doing and told him I’d fax him a couple of pages from the book, he freaked out. He couldn’t believe that someone else had already done everything he was getting ready to invest tens of thousands of dollars into. After he read everything, Ben Suarez had such problems with the FDA, they railroaded him, they ceased and desisted, they took it off the market, and they took it to a landfill and burned it and dumped it. They went through the whole story. I had the exact words that sold thousands and thousands of this exact bread that he’s talking about. It was all from research. So let’s say if a guy comes to me if I wasn’t as honest, I could say “Yeah, I’ll create your promotion for this bread. I’ll give you a full-page promotion.” And I’d have it right there in front of me. There are services and products, but for the most part, we’re all selling human nature.

Bartley: What ever happened to the guy and his bread?

Michael: You know, I have to give him a call. He was really bright. He was doing all of the Arbitrage stuff, he was the founder of some Arbitrage deals on Wall Street to the tune of billions of dollars and he was really interesting. I wanted to do an interview with him. I have his name and number. I just need more time to call these people back. I still want to interview him but I guarantee you he’s not doing anything with the bread. I would advise to research all the great ads and stuff and I can help you out with that.

Bartley: I think you’re absolutely right. I always have the tendency to do stuff the hard way!

Michael: We all do. I still take the hard way on other stuff too because of my ego and that’s human nature. Sometimes things are so simple but we want to take the hard way or we want to keep busy, but I’ll tell you there are multi-millionaires right now, not necessarily that the journey is over but half the fun of reaching a goal is getting there. That’s most of the fun. Once you’re there, it’s like “Okay what’s next?”

Bartley: You’ve given me some really valuable information here.

Michael: It’s up to you to use them. Since I’ve talked to you, if you go back to my website, I have a couple of things. Number one, I have audio clips like what I’ve done with you. I’m going to put your audio clip back up on the site. You know, a talk with Bartley Jones nine months later. I’ll put that in there if that’s all right with you because people do listen to it. I have about 50 hours of audio. I’ve talked with some really cool people, some interesting stuff. You may want to listen to it. If you don’t want to listen online, I’m putting together a CD with all the audio clips on it, so you have my entire website on CD with the audio clips. You can sit there and listen to these interviews. There’s some great stuff, especially on joint venturing. I had a talk with this guy from England named Vanish Patel, it’s number 54, on joint ventures. This guy has been kind of like my mentor. You’ll learn a ton of stuff. I wish you’d just start listening to some of stuff, take notes, and get a plan of action together. The biggest thing is deciding what you want to do. What’s the goal? Then once you have that, you outline how you’re going to do it then you follow your plan.

Bartley: That is the key.

Michael: You have to know where you’re going. You have to have a goal. You have to have a picture of how you want your lifestyle.

Bartley: Jay Abraham talked about that a lot too. Unless you have to have a clear and concise picture of what you want your business and your life to be, you can’t possibly figure out a way to get there.

Michael: You absolutely can’t. I had a guy call me the other day saying, “I want to learn all this Jay Abraham stuff.” I asked him what he’s doing. He said “I’m running this gentleman’s club.” I said “What, a strip club?” He said “Yeah, yeah, a strip club but I don’t know if I want to stay in it and you know I did this and I did that.” I said “Man, what do you want? I can’t help you unless you tell me what you want. You have to know what you want to do and you have to have a clear picture. Do you know what that is?” He said “No.” “Do you want to be a big business, do you want to be busy as hell, do you want to have lots of free time, do you want to spend time with your kids, do you want to work two hours a day, three hours a day, five hours a day, do you want a secretary, what do you want?” Once you get that, it’s doable. That’s ninety percent of it right there. You have to have a clear picture. It helps to write it down too. Then you create you action plan. You ask yourself “How can I get there”? Then you start writing all the ways. Then you have to get off your ass and do it.

Bartley: Right, and have some faith. That’s probably one of the biggest things that stops people; they’re scared this isn’t going to work.

Michael: Right, that’s terrible. Unfortunately, I’ve talked about it before, you can’t get the faith without doing it because as you do and as you succeed, the more confident you become. It’s nothing more than a level of confidence, but you’re not going to get it unless you make movement. There’s no free lunch, that’s just how God worked it out. If you make movement, you have results, whether good or bad. With the good results, your confidence goes up, you’re willing to try new things, and you believe more. It is a level of faith. If you absolutely act as if you cannot fail or act as if you are already a millionaire or an expert copywriter, who is to tell you that you’re not?

Bartley: You’re absolutely right. When I think of things in my life or in my occupation that I’m extremely good at, a lot of times I’ll start a project and I honestly have no idea how I’m going to do it, but I am one hundred percent confident that I will do it and it will come out perfectly. Because of that, a lot of times things will just click and the next thing you know it’s done and it is perfect.

Michael: Right. As I study more and more of this stuff, I have absolute confidence that I will be one of the greatest marketing men around. It may not be this year, it may not be next year but I’m confident of it. I’m confident that if you stick with copy writing and do the work and the research and really enjoy what you do and are passionate about it and think with your head, think smart and always keep educating yourself and following through, you can be one of the greatest. Once you have one big success, the floodgates open. You may want to listen to an interview I did with this guy named Herschell Gordon Lewis. He’s written twenty books on copy writing. I didn’t know much about him. You can read the description. I think he’s about number 55, but he talks about how this guy was in the business of selling these collector plates, you know the ones you see in the Sunday paper those plates that have a baseball player on them or angels and stuff? That’s a huge business that this guy worked in for twenty years, working as a copywriter for one of the biggest manufacturers, and original manufacturer of these collector plates. Then he wrote this piece of copy that outsold anything they ever had that beat what’s called a control. A control piece is the piece that brings in more sales than anything else does. There are always people trying to beat it. In fact, I just read that Dell Press, one of the largest direct-mail firms that sells books on health and all kinds of stuff, Bartley Jones you could call them and say, “I would like to try to beat your control on this book.” And they will let you. You could be a nobody and they’re constantly testing, they’re constantly looking for a guy, whether he’s a nobody or an expert or whatever to come in and beat their control. You could call any major publisher and say “I’d like a shot at beating your control, at putting together a piece to try and beat your winning direct-mail piece.” And they will let you, and if you could crack the code and beat a control, that’s all she wrote. Everyone and their mother will know about you, and you will have so many people calling you to do the writing for their project that it would make your head spin. Then you would become untouchable and you can work with only who you want and you can charge whatever you want.

Bartley: Boy that would be great.

Michael: You’d be up against some stiff competition. Study what they did and stand on their shoulders. Get a book like the “Million Dollar Mailings,” and they tell you what’s going on in their heads. They tell you how they did it and why they did it. You could take three or four concepts and change them a little bit, and one idea may break the code.

Bartley: That’s a possibility.

Michael: It is.

Bartley: Will they let you know how you did?

Michael: Of course, you’ll hear from them. If you beat their control you’ll hear from them, don’t you worry.

Bartley: I mean even if you don’t?

Michael: I don’t know. I haven’t called them. But I’m sure you can call them and say, “Look, I’m a copywriter. I’d like a crack at trying to beat your control piece.” Find out who you need to talk to. These people are in business for the money, to sell more and more and more. If a guy comes in and says he’s willing to try to do it without risking anything, why would they even turn you down? As far as marketing consulting, that’s the same thing. You go to a company and say “I think I can help you make more money. It won’t cost you anything. I’ll do all the work. Can I try?” Who is going to turn you down unless they’re just a jerk? I had a guy call me about an aeration service. That’s when they bring a machine and poke holes in your yard. I remember I used that service almost three years ago, and he called me back and said, “You used our aeration service a few years ago. Would you like to have your lawn aerated again?” I go “No, because my yard is disgusting and I don’t want to put another penny in it.” I said “Let me ask you a question. I haven’t heard from you guys in about three years. How many customers do you have?” He told me they’re doing $60,000 a month in sales just calling on old customers and new customers. The only thing they do is aeration. They don’t do anything else. And just for the hell of it, because I’m going to start joining a lot of people in joint ventures, I said “Hey I have an idea. I’ve got a product that I think will fit your customer base perfectly. How much would it take, if I could bring you in an extra $1,000 a month would that get your attention?” I had asked him this question before I knew he was bringing in $60,000 and it didn’t get his attention. He said “Well you know $1,000 is no big deal when we’re bringing in $60,000 a month.” But if I had done my research a little bit more and said “If I can bring you in $5,000 a month would that get your attention?” That may have gotten him to talk a little bit more. He’s like “Well what is it?” He wasn’t the boss but I was just practicing. But I got his attention and I said “Well I’m not at liberty to say but if you guys want to talk about it we’d sign a non-disclosure and I’d tell you.” Now I didn’t have a product for him yet. But let’s say he’d said “Yeah I’m open. I’m doing $60,000 a month; I have 10,000 customers in the San Diego area.” He already told me he never mails to them. Obviously, he doesn’t call them but once every three years. You see some opportunity there?

Bartley: Absolutely.

Michael: That was a fluke. But if you call ten people and make that offer, you’re going to get something. And that’s when it comes to joint ventures. That’s what this Patel guy, number 54 explains. You don’t have to have a product. You don’t even have to have the customers, but you can bring those two together and create a letter. Let’s say you were the guy who made a deal with the aeration service and you research your customer and find out what he’s like, then you go and research successful mail pieces for say a tree trimming service. You find the most successful tree trimming service in the country and go to their website or get on their mailing list and get their pieces that sell millions dollars worth of tree trimming services. Take that letter, introduce it to the aeration guy, and set up a deal and then pay for the mailings and start mailing to his customers. It’s a can’t fail thing, and all you did was some research and find a successful tree trimming sales letter. With some of your skills, you could tweak it and maybe make it even better. You know what I mean?

Bartley: Yep, I know exactly what you mean.

Michael: It doesn’t have to be hard.

Bartley: You’re starting to sound like Jay!

Michael: I’m trying to give you as much good stuff as possible, and anyone who is listening.

Bartley: These are the same things I hear over and over from him. It doesn’t have to be so hard. Everybody makes it too hard.

Michael: The hardest thing is just doing it.

Bartley: The work isn’t hard.

Michael: It’s just getting over that confidence level.

Bartley: Exactly. That’s exactly what I was going to say.

Michael: That’s only going to come with action. There’s just no free lunch.

Bartley: I know. I think one of my favorite sayings I picked up from Jay is “You don’t have to try that hard; all I ask you to do is to try.”

Michael: There are so many people doing things so poorly that you don’t even have to be that good. There is so much poor marketing and poor effort in everything. Even if you give it a half-ass effort, you can still succeed.

Bartley: I agree.

Michael: It just shows you that there are so many opportunities around you.

Bartley: Absolutely.

Michael: It’s exciting.

Bartley: I think that’s one of the things that I noticed the most. After listening to the Protégé mentor training it was like I didn’t even see all of this stuff.

Michael: It’s a mind set; it’s like opening your eyes.

Bartley: It’s hard to believe that the school system and the education system in our country is so naïve.

Michael: Right, it took people like Jay Abraham, and that’s what I’m trying to do. I’m going to build a library of great advice that’s going to be available to anyone for free.

Bartley: Is that what you’re doing with all of these interviews?

Michael: Yes, it’s kind of moving that way. As it evolves, who knows how it’s going to evolve. We talk about taking action, the most important thing is to keep moving, and it will evolve into something. If by constantly growing and evolving, this volume of great advice and great information, no only from me, from the people I talk to like you, this is real-world stuff. This isn’t textbook theory, and it’s available on the Internet for anyone who wants it. When some people come across it, they’ll listen to every single one of these audio clips. You can read some of the testimonials on how it impacts people. The nice thing is that it is available to anyone who wants it, just like a library is. You have to do marketing to get the information to people. But it is available for them.

Bartley: How many clips do you have now?

Michael: This will be 57. I do a few every week and inch by inch, it keeps adding up, and it’s captured there forever.

Bartley: It will be interesting to see what happens with these clips.

Michael: It will be. I think the biggest thing is I have to make them as accessible to people as possible and I’ve made some changes on the site where if you have the slow 28.8 modem or high-speed connection you can either download the clips on an MP-3 file or you can listen to them, most computers have the Real player, like a media player so if you press it, it will pop right up. You don’t have to wait and you can listen to it online. But I’m also taking all the clips and putting them on to a CD so I’d be able to send you the CD. You put it in your computer, and my web page pops up just as if you’re looking at the audio clip page. You click on the audio clip with the description you want to listen to and it will pull it right off the CD and start playing it instantly.

Bartley: You could also possibly do a CD that people could use to stick in their cars.

Michael: Unfortunately, there’s so much content you can only fit a couple of hours of audio clips on the CD. It would be too expensive; there would be multiple CD’s. Down the road there will be, as technology evolves and memory capabilities increase, a way to do it. There is software program that you can have on your computer so you could take my MP-3 files and have them burned onto an audio CD if you have a CD burner and you can bring it in your car. Or the MP-3 files on my site can be downloaded digitally into like a Real MP-3 Walkman and you can listen to it that way and that’s getting popular too. The important thing is to capture the data.

Bartley: Exactly.

Michael: It’s digital so it can be reformatted anyway. So that’s it, it’s exciting.

Bartley: Absolutely.

Michael: It’s evolving and who knows what’s going to happen.

Bartley: I’m excited to see what’s happening with you and your site with the audio clips and all that.

Michael: You’re one of the first ones on my audio clips.

Bartley: That’s kind of exciting!

Michael: Just for the hell of it, I’m hand autographing the CD’s. I’m hand numbering them. I got the idea from the collector plate guy because I said, “Why do people buy collector plates”? He said they buy them on the speculation of their increase in value. That’s the fuel that drives the collectors’ industry. They look okay, you can display them and show them off but the real reason people buy them is based on speculation. Just like Beanie Babies and Pokeman cards.

Bartley: I always wondered why people bought all that stuff!

Michael: I did too, now I know. You should listen to this guy. I don’t think I got into it but what happened was he wrote the control for this collector plate company that he was the copywriter for then he was introduced to the President of Omaha Steaks. You should hear this guy; he’s like a namedropper! He’s dropping names of all these big players I’ve never even heard of. It’s really interesting. The President of Omaha Steaks called him and wanted him to do this and he said once word got out, his phone was ringing off the hook, and that’s all she wrote.

Bartley: Wouldn’t that be nice?

Michael: It’s doable, Bartley. I want to interview you when you’re there, okay?

Bartley: Oh, absolutely!

Michael: Well look, I think we’ve had a real good conversation. I will get it back up on the site and you can re-listen to it and take notes.

Bartley: Okay.

Michael: I have your phone number now. Keep in contact with me and I’ll email you once I get it edited and up there.

Bartley: Okay.

Michael: All right, and pass the word along. If you want to get all this on CD, there’s a place you can go on my site, fill out the form, and get it to me.

Bartley: Sounds good.

Michael: Okay, Buddy. Take care.

Bartley: All right, you too.

Michael: Okay, bye.

Bartley: Bye.

Michael: I want to thank you for listening to this audio clip. If you’re having any problems at all listening to this audio clip on line, go to the bottom of the page and fill out my form for the free CD. I have all of these audio clips on one CD for you to listen to at home without being on line. Enjoy the interview, which originated for the Wall Street Journal.