Michael Senoff Shares His Marketing and Business Philosophies and Ideas to Become a Business Success (2004)

Hi I'm Michael Senoff and I like giving interviews, not being interviewed, but I reluctantly made an exception to do this 220-minute interview, which has been divided into five sections, conducted by a two-time Internet millionaire. I could then help thousands of his internet marketing students. It was recorded in 2004 and what I know best at this time of my internet business. The purpose of this two-way, fact-filled interview is to share my background, learning experiences, and ideas and philosophies about marketing and business to help you stay motivated and avoid negative thoughts as you search for your passion and niche. I will also share some of my secrets that I have not yet shared with anyone until now. By listening to the five 30-min. interviews and downloading the transcripts, you will learn about • My various income streams and how I built the businesses from the ground up • My learning experiences because I searched for the right passion and niche • How I began with buying and selling Jay Abraham tapes and leveraged the knowledge of other marketing experts • Some of my marketing and selling techniques and the importance of accessing an archive of incredible ads and direct mail letters and pieces at hardtofindads.com • How to capture ideas and file them for future reference and avoid negative thoughts. • Tips for getting people to my Web site and the importance I place on educating and helping people • Examples of student and customer testimonials of their success stores from applying the tools and tips found on my Web site,   • How I stay motivated and keep my eye on the ball • Ways to qualify customers, set pricing, and provide the right customer solutions. FREE REPORT reveals in detail how you can take your own ordinary $28 book, e-book or even a concept you have and turn it into a valuable information product you can sell of up to $3,900 or more click here. Press the green play button for each part and download the mp3 below. You can also download the transcripts and mp3 files to reinforce your learning.

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Here's are the word for word transcripts to a exclusive five part downloadable mp3 recording of an internet marketing multi millionaire interviewing Michael Senoff like he has never been interviewed before. His name is Jason Ryan Isaksen. This is an exclusive interview Michael agreed to do for Jason's thousands of Internet marketing students and customers. There are not to many people who have made money on the Internet like Jason Ryan Isaksen. He is the only Internet marketing teacher Michael Senoff recommends on his site. This interview is fast and packed--no stuffed with ideas and secrets never before revealed to anyone. Michael gave Jayson’s students everything he had holding nothing back.

Michael: Most everybody copies everyone; they don't have the courage to be original or to try new things because it’s like the blind leading the blind. They just think if someone else is doing it that it must be working so there's very few people out there really playing the game and trying to be original. Everyone has great ideas, but they discount them their little voice inside them says, nah, that’s not going to work or they hear their mom saying that’s a stupid idea and they bury it and they never go through. But one thing I’ve learned when I get an idea that pops in my head, I will capture it, I’ll write it down, I’ll put it into a little database and I won’t lose it, and especially if I have a hunch on something I’ll not even think about it and I will do it.

Jason: I have a few questions for you. I know you’re real successful at what you do. I’m curious, do you make all your money through the Internet, or is there any percentage of business that you do off-line?

Michael: Most of my income is somehow related to something online. I have a stream of different incomes and it goes into my main sources of income is buying and reselling high end marketing seminars like the Jay Abraham products and you've seen at my website at hardtofindseminars.com exactly what I do there. So I buy low and I sell high and it’s as simple as that. And it’s an item that is not readily available, and the only other place you can get it is either from Jay Abraham himself which you’ll pay 10 to 20 times as much money on some of the items, not all the items. I make money that way and then I have a pen manufacturing business that I’ve been doing since 1996, which you can read about in my bio at hardtofindseminars.com and I think you read through it.

Jason: Yeah, I read through some of it and its pretty good stuff.

Michael: Just got a call from JC Penney’s and this is one of my pen products, it's an invisible ink marking pen. And he found me through the Internet. JC Penney’s is doing a promotion where they are giving out these gift certificates to all their jewelry buyers and then their jewelry buyers have to come in with this certificate and they can redeem it either for a piece of jewelry or some kind of discount. They’re taking my invisible ink pen and they are marking the back of these certificates so when people come in they can shine a UV light on them and make sure they are genuine, so it’s a fraud prevention program. The phone will ring every day with some new source of income I never thought of. I'll give you another example. I've got another website called Hard To Find Ads. Did you go check out that website?

Jason: Yeah I did, when I talked to you there. I never have seen anything like it. I always hear marketers talk about how important it is to study these archives, ancient materials.

Michael: Some of this stuff is all the way back to like, 1910.

Jason: Really, really the most shocking education I got. Seeing how it almost looked like they were just from today, a lot of them. Like, just, you know, they were doing the same stuff.

Michael: That’s right, ‘cause you and I both know human emotions don't change, they are the same as when we were cavemen and cave women, people buy for the same reasons. We're all the same and we've always been the same all throughout time, so that's why the successful ad from back in 1910 or 1920 that is successful and written by someone who knows what they are doing will work today.

Jason: Now where do you get all those ads?

Michael: Various number of sources at the hardtofindads.com website. It all started when I was on eBay, I always look for old ads, because old ads are like a combination to a safe, if an old ad was successful in 1920 selling a diet product, I've got a copywriter who has probably spent many, many hours in researching the diet market and selling a diet product to someone back in the 1920s. Well, that same effort and work and time and editing and reediting and writing and rewriting, I get to have it for nothing. And then I can use that ad if I ever want to promote that diet product or diet related product, those words, combination of words that have been tested in publications over and over again, that have been refined over and over again could work today. That's like buying thousands and thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours worth of labor of an advertising firm’s final product.

Jason: Yeah, had a theory, while looking through your ad archives there, the older one that you often hear people say, look to see what ads are repeated over and over so people aren’t just wasting their time just as ones you see repeated over and over, are the ones making the most dollars and making people millionaires so I realized, wow, this is the longest term tracking method there is you know. I, for instance will buy an issue of Entrepreneur Magazine and I'll wait 6 months or so to buy another issue and compare what is still in there in that 6 months interval, what guy is still making enough money towards his ad and then I realized I could do that in a real long term using your website. Look at some of these ads I'm still seeing today in even Entrepreneur Magazine or some home business magazine, that's got to be proof right there that these certain types of ads that I'm seeing on your site are definitely winners--they've lasted for over 100 years, what better proof of a good ad than that.

Michael: Truly incredible, its amazing to see the influence that advertising has on our lives. I'm looking right now, sitting at my office, staring at this little carpet sweeper called a Bissell. A little carpet sweeper called the “GO”. Now this is a little kind of a mini one that plugs in and charges up. Everyone knows what a carpet sweeper is, but this thing is--it's 2004 now, the Bissell was put on the map by a man named Claude Hopkins and I have Claude Hopkins is regarded as one of the greatest copywriters of all time. And in his earlier career he worked with Bissell and promoted their carpet sweepers through some incredible and ingenious ways which you can read about in this book called "My Life in Advertising" and if it weren't for Claude Hopkins back in 1907, I think is when he worked for Bissell, I wouldn't be looking at this box.

Jason: That's incredible.

Michael: And the same thing goes for many things in your home today like Quaker Oats and Palmolive soap, Pepsodent was one of the first major toothpastes and it was all done by Claude Hopkins. His research in finding the correct appeal to promote toothpaste, and back then toothpaste wasn't something that people normally did. So he had a lot tougher job than what the toothpaste manufacturers have to do today. He had to sell people on the idea that it was a good idea to use toothpaste on your teeth to remove that film--and those were the key words "that film". He learned this through going through masses and masses of research about tooth decay and plaque and all that stuff. We owe it to him as being somewhat the founder of the toothpaste industry. I think back to your question you asked me "how did I get started." It all kind of started when I found on eBay there was someone selling a collection of Readers Digest Magazines from 1930 to 1960 and I bought them all for about $500 and they were all shipped in these big boxes to me and I started pouring through them looking at all the ads. There were just incredible things.

Jason: You mentioned you had the book you recommended by Dennie Hatch?

Michael: Dennison Hatch, yes.

Jason: Well you were saying that had a lot of archives. Was that the same sort of thing? Or is there more that you can find on your site for instance.

Michael: Well Dennie Hatch has a couple different websites. His book I think is called “Who’s Mailing What”. He did something similar, he's been doing it a long longer than I have. He has a service where he has archived tens of thousands of direct mail letters, direct mail pieces. So let's say in your company you want to create a direct mail package for a marketing seminar. Well, you can call Dennison Hatch and access his archives and for $50 or $60 he'll fax you the entire direct mail piece that Jay Abraham used to promote the Master My Marketing program. Let's say you're a carpet manufacturer and you're coming out with a new carpet sweeper, you can contact Dennie Hatch at his website and pay $50 or $60 and he'll fax you the entire last Oreck, Oreck Vacuum direct mail promotion. He archives and collects this stuff, then again what he does for direct mail pieces, I kind of do on the Internet for editorial style magazine and newspaper ads.

Jason: Back to when you were talking about Jay Abraham stuff that you sell. That's a big chunk of your business, right?

Michael: Right.

Jason: Is that how you make most of your dough?

Michael: That's how I make most of my dough.

Jason: I'm just curious now, did you ever get concerned that Jay Abraham or any of his people might try to make some sort of case that you can't be doing this?

Michael: Yes, absolutely, that was a big fear of mine and something that almost kept me from doing it, but what I was doing, I wasn't breaking any laws. What I am doing is nothing different than a used bookstore. A used bookstore buys used books and they resell it. I'm buying used seminar material from the original attendees and just reselling it. Now, I knew that if I crossed the line even once, and counterfeited or make unauthorized copies of anything, that would be the end of my business, and I was challenged by Abraham’s attorneys very early on and because of when I started, I knew I had to play it straight from the very beginning, so when I was challenged, he asked to see proof of checks that I was really buying these seminars from original attendees. So I went to my file and I photocopied about 25 cancelled checks and Federal Expressed him, a UPS Next Day envelope to his attorney the copies of the checks as proof that what I was doing was legitimate.

Jason: Then they backed off the case at that point?

Michael: Yes, he appreciated me working with them so quickly, and it was complete proof and evidence that what I was doing was legitimate.

Jason: Well if he thinks about it, if he’s a smart marketer, which I know he is, he probably realizes that as long as you are not crossing that line, as long as you are only promoting his original materials you are actually doing him a further service.

Michael: I am doing him a service, and I'm sure he's intelligent enough to realize it. I am his number one fan, I am promoting him in a big way, and the money I make from buying and reselling his seminars is really nothing compared to what he gets in the lifetime value of the customer. I may not be doing this 3 or 4 years from now, but all those people that I've educated through my audio recordings or through the materials they have bought from me that he really couldn't sell to because Jay Abraham had a price structure set where his stuff wasn't cheap and that was his niche. The very high prices--he couldn't discount his stuff, in essence I am a vehicle to get Jay Abraham products into the hands of a different market that he would have never gotten into in the first place.

Jason: And they might get hooked and they might buy some high-end, high priced Jay Abraham product that's new that maybe you don't even have yet.

Michael: I'm sure that's happened already. I'm sure it will happen in the future.

Jason: So you really are doing him a service. But when I think about when I look at your site and I think about how much emphasis there is on Jay Abraham as an individual marketer, what really made you select him out of all the other guys.

Michael: In my story I got into it, and it was all from personal experience. I had acquired a set of a $20,000 seminar I paid $50 for and I had sold it sold it up on eBay. And I sold it for $1,700. So because Jay Abraham seminars were $20,000 and $15,000 and $5,000, the price was set so high that when I came in and offered them at $500 or $600 or $700, it seemed like a steal, and it is a steal compared to that price. Someone can get the same information at 1/5th the price. Because he set the value of his stuff so high, it just made financial sense that Jay Abraham products was where the money is.

Jason: Not necessarily that you think he's the best marketer in the world, it's that there was money you smelled over there.

Michael: I think he is the best and the most complete. I think he is in my opinion the best marketer in the world. It wasn't just money motivated.

Jason: It was a perfect marriage with what he charges so much, with a high-perceived value of his products and they are kind of rare and you can get all of them.

Michael: And another reason why do I focus on Jay Abraham products. Because if I was everything to someone looking for marketing seminars and I didn't have a unique selling proposition, my niche is: I'm the guy who can get the Jay Abraham products for a lot less than what you would pay for them if you got them from him at retail. That's my niche and you can't throw too many things at someone, even though I have different products on my site, Jay Abraham is the one I want to be remembered for.

Jason: How to you rate those Dan Kennedy, my next favorite, what are your thoughts compared to him?

Michael: I think Dan Kennedy’s a great marketer. I think you can learn from all of them. I particularly like Dan Kennedy's stuff. I have a joint venture with someone where I have most of Dan Kennedy's products up on my site but you can get Dan Kennedy products dirt cheap off of eBay and from multiple resellers because Dan Kennedy sold the master resell rights to all his products to maybe 20 or 30 people around the world. So I can’t compete in price with what other people are selling Dan Kennedy products for.

Jason: I was wondering if Dan Kennedy ever studied Jay Abraham or did Jay Abraham study Dan Kennedy? He does cross over in information. You've studied Jay Abraham more than me; I'm more of a Dan Kennedy buff. I’m curious as I read more of Abraham’s material to se if they cross over and tell a lot of the same story or not.

Michael: I'm sure they do. There's one common denominator with all these guys. They are rabid students. Jay Abraham studies Dan Kennedy, I’m sure, and Dan Kennedy studies Jay Abraham and anyone who's really interested in marketing and is passionate about it studies everything they can get their hands on. They're just vultures for good marketing information, they'll devour and look and try and learn from anyone they can. Jay has endorsed Dan Kennedy products to his list. I'm sure in some ways Dan Kennedy has endorsed Jay Abraham products to his list in some way, and there is cross over. You know a lot of the stuff is rehash, but that's no big deal because you may like a personality better, you may like to learn from Dan Kennedy, you may like his style, his personality, where Jay Abraham you may not be receptive to listening to him because you don't like the sound of his voice.

Jason: That's very true.

Michael: The way he uses big words, a lot of people think Jay Abraham comes across as arrogant.

Jason: Yes I even kind of think that, but I still respect him and will listen to him any day because I know he knows more than me and he's made a lot more money than I have.

Michael: Right. Well, everyone's an individual and every person responds to someone differently and we're all different so you never know where that right fit's going to be. So that's why I tell people "you're really benefiting by learning from all of them because you may find a favorite guy you may be really open to and more receptive to their message because after all that's all you want, you want to learn the message and you want to also get it from different points of perspective and it enhances your ability to learn.

Jason: Amazing how into marketing you are and that’s why I really enjoy talking to you because I really thought I was a marketing geek and I look at your library you have, it's very impressive to a marketer like me.

Michael: It’s nice to meet people like you because it's almost like a little fraternity and we can't really talk too much to our spouses or girlfriends about this stuff. Where your center of influence, most of them don’t even care about it. But there are people just like us who are fascinated by marketing and have the passion we both have for it.

Jason: If you look at these relationships of Jay Abraham and Dan Kennedy and like Gary Halbert and the stuff they have all together and the way they cross over, and you can see that they were a little crew, a little fraternity that they grew up together in their generation and they’re different from us. We're the mostly younger bucks and we've got a new set of rules and new medium, the internet that we play by and I look at it like this, that we are going to be, me, you, and a couple of the people who are going to be the next Jay Abrahams and Dan Kennedy and Gary Halberts.

Michael: That's exactly right. There was a group of marketing people way before them that are not even alive now.

Jason: They studied them, we're studying some of these guys that are just names and I really think that eventually we're all going to have these same relationships and we're going to be talking in seminars about each other and all that we've learned from one another and feeding off of each other. And that’s he neat thing about it. We’ve talked about the camaraderie and the fraternity.

Michael: That's exactly right, if you're into marketing you meet people who are like you and there's no doubt relationships start to be formed and joint ventures and endorsements and you look at Jay Abraham, some of his earlier products when Jay Abraham did his 1990 Protégé seminar where he put 900 people through intensive week long training on how to be a marketing consultant. And a lot of his product, he paid Gary Halbert to come on board and be one of the mentors to all the students he put through. he also paid Gary Hilbert money to use in his supplemental materials the attendees got when they signed up for the $20000 seminar. In particular the product called "Sign Me Up For Your Marketing Eyes Only". You have like a year and a half's worth of Gary Halbert's newsletter. Now back then, you couldn't get it unless you paid $200 a year for the subscription but that endorsement that Jay gave endorsing Gary Halbert’s newsletter by putting it in his products is extremely valuable to Gary Halbert. Gary Halbert I’m sure has done endorsements for him, too, in those earlier days. They used to see each other and these speakers at the early seminars when they did seminars together, even when they started from the very beginning, so you're absolutely right.

Jason: I used to look at those, and am guilty of almost being afraid of telling people out of a kind of a selfish fear that they might go over there and go to them for all their knowledge. I learned that if you really want to make serious money, you’ve got to be really free and generous and super giving with your knowledge. I’ve learned for instance that just by telling people that hey, Michael Senoff is one of my favorite marketers, even though I'm sure I'm sending some people over to you that they’ll respect me because the are going to learn a lot from you and they're going to respect me as the guy that told them.

Michael: They'll remember that you're the guy that turned them onto me, that's correct.

Jason: And they know that we all will eventually will hear maybe you talked about me, and you all say that Jason Ryan Isakson is a guy that I like to do business with and they'll remember that we represent greatness in marketing, we teach certain principles that are undisputed and are proven, tried and tested and all the big dogs of the past use. How old are you? How long have you been running hardtofindseminars.com?

Michael: I'm 38 years old; I’ll be 39 March 2nd. I’ve been running the Hard To Find Seminars since the beginning of 2001. That is when I first started it. It all started when I bought that seminar. I was just trying to learn. I had a pen manufacturing business even back then I was manufacturing a pen that was a red eye remover pen. A pen that removes red eye from photographs caused by your camera and I wanted to learn how to sell more of my pens and that's what got me interested looking for information on how to sell more pens, and I was exposed to Jay Abraham through an audio tape and through a video tape and then I found this seminar that was used from a lady in San Diego that I bought for $50. But I had heard about eBay and I remember eBay’s stock was shooting up through the roof and my brother-in-law told me about it and I went to the site and I said, "This is incredible, I want to sell something on eBay". I didn't have a digital camera; I didn't know how to use a digital camera. I didn’t know how to upload a picture onto eBay. I was pretty computer illiterate. It was all very new to me. I had a big learning curve. When I started hardtofindseminars.com, I had some assistance. I had met a marketing coach, his name was Ramon Williams. Great marketing guy. I have a whole hour audio recording. You can hear what a genius he is. He is really skilled at the Internet. He took me under his wing as my marketing coach and helped me get set up my first website which was called michaelsenoff.com. He had an emergency in his family, his mom passed away and he just disappeared. I couldn't even get into my site, and I was left to fend for myself, so I had to learn this stuff on my own and that’s when it all started.

Jason: That was tough.

Michael: Yeah, it was tough, where the hell was this guy? I was disappointed. I was totally dependent on him and I just had to learn it on my own. Finally do it myself so I’m pretty self-reliant and I had late nights and early mornings and studied and through experience and asked questions and learned to do it just good enough. I’m no expert on the Internet. I can do just what I need to do just about 20 or 30% to get what I need done. I could learn a lot more but I just wanted to be able to control and do it myself. There's a big advantage to being able to understand and use the Internet and upload files and develop a website and to use Front Page. You're way far ahead of the game if you take the time and invest to learn to do it yourself, because when you rely on other people, you're hesitant to make changes, you spend a ton of money and there's just some huge disadvantages because you're relying on someone else.

End of part one.

Jason: Can you make 100% of your income from your online endeavors or are you able to totally support your family with your websites?

Michael: All my income is made through my Hard To Find Seminars business and my pen manufacturing business. My Hard To Find Ads website, my Monaco products website which is all my different pens. That's correct, my pen business and my Hard To Find Seminars business is all the money that comes in and that supports my business, my family. I don't do anything else. I don't have any other kind of job except the stuff I'm doing on line.

Jason: Which one of those two, between your pens and the Hard To Find Seminars, which one of those two is the biggest producer?

Michael: The biggest producer? Pen business has been the biggest producer because I've sold probably close to 750,000 pens since I started. Pen business is great. To make a product for 17 cents and to be able to wholesale them by the hundreds for a $1.50 or a $1.25 is great. When I figured out how to manufacture a pen in the back of my house without any equipment that was just incredible, because these things take up very little room. I'll give you an example; I just had a pen order from a company called Cardinal Brands. Cardinal Brands is in all the Office Max’s. They have a little display in the Office Max stores where, you've heard of scrapbooking, where women take photos of their kids?

Jason: It's big stuff these days.

Michael: It's a huge thing called the scrapbooking industry and I was selling my redeye pens and my ph testing pens and my vanishing ink pens to the scrapbooking industry to retail stores. They buy them from me wholesale in boxes of 100 for $150 a box. My cost is about $17 for a hundred, so I can easily clear a net of $100 every time I sold a box, but then I got a call from Cardinal Brands, they found me on the Internet. They were looking for a redeye pen that they can put in these little displays and they placed an initial order for 6,000 redeye pens. And 6000 redeye pens, I gave them a price of 67 cents, I know what my cost is, and I’m going to make 50 cents on each one. We made them up in 3 days. I've got a nanny here who takes care of my 14 month old, and when the kid's napping, she's making pens. I actually had her come in 2 Saturdays in a row, and we finished up the pens. It's 3000 bucks, and what did I have to do? Nothing, it's all set up, I’ve got all the pen parts here. She makes them, I put them in bags of 100 and off they go.

Jason: And you're producing this pen product right in your house.

Michael: Right in the back of my house. And I've got a whole virtual tour of the back of my house and exactly how we manufacture the pens right at my website at idpen.com. When I was really hustling the redeye pens a couple years back, I couldn't handle the manufacturing and I farmed it out. I found a pen manufacturer to do the entire fulfillment and all the imprinting on the pens and I would order from him 30,000 or 40,000 at a time.

Jason: Still doing that?

Michael: No, I'm not. My costs to imprint the pen was 7 cents and it was a hassle because I had to put up front money just for the imprint on the pen and if you screw up that imprint, you're stuck with the pens, you see? For my redeye pens, I don't even offer an imprint on the pen; I just buy the pen parts from my pen supplier blank. They're just black pens, and I put a different color plug on the end which tells me what pen it is and the display tells what the pen does and no one really cares if there's an imprint on the pen. What they care about is what the pen will do for them.

Jason: Did you figure out how to add ink to anything? Or are you just pretty much assembling parts that are mostly already put together?

Michael: My nanny assembles all the parts, they're preassembled. There is a process to do it, which is something that I've finally figured out on my own. If you went and tried to do this on your own, you would have a huge learning curve. So there's little things I've learned. With my pen business, I sell a pen licensing opportunity where I'll teach people how to do exactly what I've been doing. Once you know to make a pen, you can put any kind of juice in it, any kind of liquid in it that solves a problem and you have a product.

Jason: So you're actually having the chemical or whatever little soaker-upper?

Michael: Yes, that's correct. There's a little filter inside the pen, almost like a little Magic Marker. Remember when you were a kid and you took the Magic Marker apart? Then you see that little filter that looks like a little tampon?

Jason: Yeah or like a cigarette butt.

Michael: That's correct, a certain material that holds the ink and there's different materials. You need different materials for different inks. It depends on what kind of ink, there's some chemistry involved which I have expert access to with one of the largest ink manufacturers. You just buy everything separate. I buy my ink separate; I buy the tips that go on the pens separate, I buy the plastic pen parts separate. And I have my displays, which I had made. It's a real easy process once I figured it out. I was talking to my wife about this. We were laughing because when I first started in the early days, imagine these filters, and we're making thousands of pens and I didn't know how the heck do I get the ink inside this filter. I couldn't figure it out. We thought, well maybe we had to take syringes and squirt it in, and for years, and this is a true story, for years I had the girls making my pens. They would put 2 of the little filters like they're putting 2 cigarettes in their mouth, they would bend their head down into the pot of where the ink was and have to suck it in there like a straw. And we'd do it two by two.

Jason: Did you get ink in your mouth or anything?

Michael: No, you never got ink in your mouth, but what we were doing wasn't the safest thing. And it was just only until I figured out that that never needed to be done. All I needed to do was take these and soak them and they would absorb, self absorb, and I could do 300 or 400 at a time. And because I never even thought about it or ever gave much thought to it, thinking is so rarely done. Finally I did some thinking to figure out a better way how to do this and that really solved a lot of problems for me to be able to get the ink inside there without this laborious process. That's how I started doing the ink.

Jason: Wow, that is interesting. When did you first get your first Internet connection?

Michael: I'll tell you, I was one of the very first people to have high-speed cable Internet connection through Road Runner. I was single, living in Pacific Beach in San Diego, California and Road Runner was being tested in only two areas in the United States. One was San Diego, Pacific Beach and one was somewhere in New York. I think I had an AOL dialup connection back in 1995. I had the high-speed access almost just a year after that, and I've had it ever since.

Jason: So '95 was the first year you actually got on the Internet? So what were you doing before you got on the Internet, you were still doing your pens?

Michael: I was just doing my pen manufacturing business then.

Jason: What were you doing before that?

Michael: Before that, and that's all in my bio, after I graduated from the University of Alabama, I had met a buddy out there and we both wanted to come out to California and we came out to California and got involved in--we were doing multilevel marketing. I was just searching, searching for something. When I was at the University of Alabama, I had started a business where I started manufacturing tie dye t-shirts. I opened a location, it was a retail store called Tiki Tie Dye, and I was making and selling tie dye t-shirts. I started selling them at the student union building.

Jason: You actually owned a retail outlet?

Michael: I had a retail outlet, I lived in the back of my store and I had this tie dye business and I was selling and manufacturing tie dye t-shirts. I had 7 employees, college kids, I had a secretary. I had rent, I had inventory. I was selling to some of the large department stores in the south. Department stores, once they see that something's successful; they all jump on the bandwagon because they are all connected with each other. With department stores, you have to finance everything, you've got to borrow money from the bank, it was all the traditional things that brick and mortar business goes through and I saw all those negatives. I mean I worked my butt off, I made some OK money, but it was very labor intensive, the labor was killing me. I did pretty well but I didn't want those negatives. There had to be a better way to make money then all these hassles of running a business, managing employees, dealing with accountants, dealing with borrowing money, financing, and all that stuff. The entire overhead, the rent, and I wanted a better way, and that's when I started searching for something better. I got out of the University of Alabama, I closed my store. I brought all my inventory with me to Nashville, my brother was living in Nashville, Tennessee, so I went up there and lived with him for a year. I didn't even know I was going to California at that time. And while I was hanging out there, I was pretty flush with cash from the tie dye business and I was selling off my remaining inventory and I was kind of searching for something better. And then I came out to California with a buddy of mine, I was still searching, looking into multilevel marketing, different kind of get rich quick stuff that you probably experienced when you first came on the internet. Looking for the easy way. I hadn't found my passion or my niche. But I kept trying and it was a great learning experience, you know the training I got from being involved in multilevel marketing was invaluable, there was some great training.

Jason: I look back at some of the stuff I did in those days, I was just listening to a Dan Kennedy tape recently that you'll find almost every great marketer will tell you that they did some heavy duty selling like in the ditches, the trenches, some sort of selling vacuums door to door, some selling pots and pans door to door, something that was kind of grueling.

Michael: That's right, well I did. I can remember as a kid, I would hustle greeting cards door to door in my neighborhood. When I was at Alabama in the evenings during the summer, I would go out and paint address numbers on curbs.

Jason: I did that, too.

Michael: Did you do that?

Jason: Actually my brother had someone...I called my business, I named my business CyTex, I just thought it sounded cool. I think I heard Cyber at one point just as the Internet was getting going. And I called this little business CyTex, and I went down and bought some stencils at the hardware store and I just went and stuck little flyers on everyone's door right in the doorknob where I figured they couldn't miss it. It just said CyTex is coming through next week into your neighborhood and everyone's getting their curbs painted, and it was kind of like a bandwagon thing, so you'd better not miss out, or you're going to look like the neighbor with the ugly curb. Oh my goodness, that was actually a lucrative little business.

Michael: Absolutely. Now I wasn't as sophisticated then, I didn't know anything about direct marketing. You were able to leverage it by using a flyer, and advertisement to sell the service. I was just knocking on the doors, and when someone answered, I would say "Hey, my name is Michael Senoff, I'm with Safety First, I’m in the neighborhood and I'm doing the address numbers on the curbs in case of any kind of emergency where you need ambulance, fire, police. We paint a four inch letter." You know you just give them the spiel.

Jason: You probably got a better return as far as how many contacts because you had that personal touch going, too.

Michael: Yes, that's probably true. I remember a lesson in pricing. Well, how much can I sell this for, and I started out doing it maybe $3 and then I go, "Let me try $5". Then I took $5 and then $7, then $10. I would just feel it out, and if someone displayed a level of interest, I would charge him or her $20.

Jason: My average was about $15 per curb.

Michael: And you could negotiate. And then I went on to do peepholes.

Jason: That’s more involved. You have to get the drill out for that.

Michael: Oh yes. I've got a whole story about my blue Makita drill and I bought a blue Makita drill and you buy the peepholes at Home Depot for a couple bucks apiece. You go to find the neighborhoods with new houses or new homes being built where there are no windows on the side and they have wooden doors with no way to view who’s outside the door. And you knock on the door and you say, "I'm doing the peepholes in the neighborhood". They say, "OK, how much?" $20, you drill the hole, you screw the peephole in, then you're done.

Jason: You did it right on the spot?

Michael: Right on the spot, you've got your drill in your hand.

Jason: That was pretty cool; you just show them that, hey, you want to see a peephole in there in a minute.

Michael: You're here right now, and you show them. And that was all direct sales. When I was staying with my brother up in Nashville, he would go to work, he was working with a company called Anexter, and he would go work an 8 hour, 9 hour, 10 hour day and come home and maybe make $150 and when he came home, I borrowed his car. I would go into the neighborhood before it got dark and I would be out an hour and a half and come back with the same amount of money.

Jason: That's great. These things we do when we're younger, they really do build character and they set the foundation and I realize they're not stupid or trivial, they are part of almost every great successful marketer.

Michael: Back then I wanted to learn how to sell, and that's what I was studying with Zig Ziegler, Brian Trace. I thought learning how to sell was it. And that is important. You know Zig Ziegler's stuff you learn secrets of closing the sale and you learn all these closing techniques and things like that that you have to memorize. Some of that stuff was great learning. Some of that stuff is great, but then, when I got turned on to marketing, I realized marketing was really the leverage that takes your selling ability and multiplies it. And that's when everything changed.

Jason: You just reminded me of something, in the old days, I went to work for this little window shop. They sell dual pane windows and if you wanted to see a hustler, this guy was so funny. The guy had this big long ponytail, he was the owner, but no one ever sees him, he just sends out the troops. He directed us to do things that were so--I'd say, immoral. He would tell you when you're setting up appointments, they would tell you basically that the house that you're going to, you would get a list of houses to go to. I never did it; I backed out when I heard their marketing techniques. It just always cracked me up when I think about it, he was saying what you need to do and I wish I had recorded it, so people could hear what he was saying. What you’ve got to do when you're in the house, first of all, he had specific rules that were so funny. You've got to find out where the man of the house sits. Try to identify which chair, what it’s going to look like, now you’ve got to make sure you sit in that. 'Cause if he gets in his "man of the house" chair, he's going to be in the driver's seat. And he's going to. The first thing you do, you sit in his chair and you're in control. He's going to feel a little bit awkward. Everyone in the family, in the household, is going to recognize you're in the king's chair and you are in command. Before you even sit down in that chair, if the TV's on, it may sound a little rough, you say, "I'm just going to turn this TV off so we can focus and get some business done here." No TV interruptions, you just turn it off, take the captain's chair. Make sure you get a drink from them, get them to welcome you in, and then tell them your head’s really hurting, you've got a horrible, horrible headache going on, and oh, I feel like I'm going to throw up, it's so horrible. They’ll try to offer you stuff but then if they don't, "Can I get like an aspirin or something to get me through this?" Because they are going to be feeling sorry for you, they're going to feel like they know you and all of this stuff. It's so funny--these are the kind of tactics this guy used to run his company with.

Michael: This guy knew what works. He had a set of rules that was selling those dual pane windows and was successful.

Jason: He got so serious about it, if you couldn't close, cause you were like, more or less, like a little soldier ant, and he knows you're not a marketing genius yet, necessarily. He would say, "do not leave the house until you got the order." If they are saying they will think about it, they're not sure, he would say "Can I use your phone real quick?” and they would say "yeah" and you would call and start sweating on the phone and in the background you're going, "I'm sorry, I’m sorry, I know, I know, I know", then you start stuttering and making up excuses, looking like you're sweating. Then you tell the people "My boss, I'm going to get fired. I'm kind of in heat here; he needs to maybe talk to you. Could you just talk to him for a second?" And he gets on the phone and does the closing from there. This is how it's done

Michael: That’s how it’s done and there are some great illustrations about selling. There are two movies. One is called "Tin Men” with Danny Devito, and the other one is called "Glengarry Glen Ross". It's about a group of salesmen who were selling, like timeshares. It’s really, really good. Absolutely. Even Claude Hopkins the greatest copywriter of all times, he would knock on doors and do direct selling. David Oglevy was in direct sales. Gary Halbert sold encyclopedias. I'm sure Jay Abraham knocked on a lot of doors.

Jason: It is a common denominator. That’s what they had in common.

Michael: Ross Perot sold newspapers. It is a common denominator. That initial direct sales experience is invaluable.

Jason: When would you say was first moment in life was that you first realized you wanted to be an entrepreneur?

Michael: I don't know. Even as a kid, I used to sell cinnamon toothpicks and selling bubblegum. I was maybe in 5th or 6th grade. I sold Cutco Cutlery, which was a great experience. That was my first year out of college and I came back to Atlanta and I worked for a company called Alcas Corporation and they were a direct marketing company selling cutlery and it was called Cutco. The greatest cutlery in the world. It took me 15 or 16 years to really realize how great this stuff is and I finally have an entire set of it.

Jason: a door-to-door salesman just nailed me yesterday. This guy came to my door, my first reaction is I look at him and he had a squirt bottle in one hand and a towel in the other and I was starting to smell salesman real quick and I was busy trying to get rid of him and he starts...this guy, he was good, I actually got his name and phone number and told him...I want to take you out of the cleaning world because you're good. After I heard his little pitch, it was phenomenal, but then it turned a little bit ugly. This guy is going around with his bottle spraying and cleaning all these little things. I'm telling him "I don't think so", and he says, "Watch this", and he's spraying little parts of the window in front of us, little parts of the trim, aluminum trim down below on the doorstep. He ran over to my car was nearby and he's starts spraying on the rim right there. He was just like "watch this stuff work, watch this stuff work".

Michael: That's great.

Jason: I'm sitting here watching this guy and he went from enemies one minute, where I'm, like "get off my porch, you're annoying me" to where I'm watching this stuff clean and I'm looking at this, it was like magic, he turned this rust corroded stuff and it turned spotless, sparkling, shiny. I couldn't believe this. It’s not just the selling, it's watching the stuff do it's thing. You know the big trick I later find out is he puts a little bit of

Jason: Muriatic acid.

Michael: Oh really?

Jason: Yeah.

Michael: How did you find that out?

Jason: Well, I got some other cleaners and I ended up--he sold me--he took a toothbrush, first of all. And he put some of this cleaner on the toothbrush, and there was a spot on my sidewalk, or porch, sidewalk in front of the porch, and he started scrubbing in this dirty area of the concrete. And it just turned it like, white, and I went "wow", it almost made like a stain out amongst the dirty concrete, yeah, so I'm kind of like, almost "Why don't you the whole thing, there, turkey, while you're at it". You know, sucking me in on this. I bought a big, concentrated bottle for $33, the stuff's so darned impressive. And he was back cruising around the neighborhood and I got his name and number because I said "You're good with your product, this is pretty neat, I want to get you working for me. I've got some pretty big sales stuff, I do marketing stuff." I took some of that product, I just wanted to test it. My own paranoia mixed with curiosity got the best of me and I took some of that solution that he just sold me and it had a sealed top so I knew it was the real stuff, and I got a toothbrush, and old toothbrush and dipped it just like he did and I did it right beside his because I wanted to see it work. It didn’t touch it, it didn't do anything.

Michael: Really? So what did you do?

Jason: So, I went and tracked him down. He hadn't gotten far by now. I told him about it, I said, "I'm telling you, I can work with you, you're a really good sales person but be honest, that's not the same stuff. You want to come back and see, and I'll show you." No ones ever done this, gone to the trouble you did, I guess I'm a little more analytical than most, but I put a couple teaspoons of muriatic acid in there, that stuff is heavy-duty, it burns anything right off anything. You can muriatic acid on stuff, it will eat the chrome right off your bumper.

Michael: Did he give you your money back?

Jason: He ended up giving me half off, I didn't really push him because I liked the guy even though he was doing that, and even though I thinks that's really wrong and I still liked the guy.

Michael: But there is a really good lesson in that. Aside from him conning you, he didn't take your no for an answer and all he had to do was demonstrate. You have to demonstrate your product when you're knocking on the door. You have to prove it to them, you have to show them. They have to see it with their own eyes. And this is how you sell, if you're not selling in person, face to face, you can do these same things through writing a sales letter, through your website. You can demonstrate, you can prove with pictures like in my bio, in my story. Everything I say I back up. I've got pictures, of me, of my family, that I've traveled to Europe. I've got pictures of my car being towed, I've got proof. You have to prove everything, especially when you're marketing on the Internet.

Jason: Can you describe your first moment when you tasted your first bit of what you call real success?

Michael: I'm not even there yet. I think I have some success and you know how you have that growth curve, you know how they show you in multilevel, where you want to get in to the ground floor? I think that this year I am positioned at that growth stage where it's going to start going straight up.

Jason: That's great that you're so humble and you say...I look at you and I see someone so successful like myself. You probably see your goals are very lofty, you don't even see yourself necessarily getting real successful yet.

Michael: You know how Tony Robbins talks to people who are multimillionaires? You know money really has nothing to do with it, but I've found my home and my niche, which is marketing and helping people, and you know I got a call from a guy, he mentioned his name. I didn't remember talking to him but after talking to him for awhile, I did remember that he had inquired about my pen business and he didn't have a lot of money and he wanted to do something, he was in New York and he had this tourism business where he took people on these personal tours through New York City. He was born and raised there and he was passionate about it. For a couple hundred bucks, he would take you on a 5-hour private tour in nooks and cranny of New York that you would never, ever find in a tour guide. And he called and he had seen my Hard to Find Ads sign, and he called me today and said "Mike, I just want to call you and say how thankful I am and how grateful I am that you put this Hard To Find Ad site together. And for your audio recordings. I really appreciate it”, a call like that means a lot to me when I get emails from people that say they love the site or how one of my audio recordings on the site has helped them make money or stimulated ideas. That's the stuff I feed on, that's what makes it all worthwhile.

Jason: How would you say you found your niche?

Michael: I think I found my niche by just moving forward. You may not know or what you want to go or what you want to do but if you keep moving, keep doing it, it comes together. I think my niche is becoming...up on my website I had consulting services, and I had copywriting services and this, and that and that. And I just realized I'm going to take all that stuff down, because what I'm best at is interviewing people. Doing audio interviews and taking these audio interviews and crafting sales messages almost like a sales letter, but more effective, and I think there is a lot of advantages, which maybe we can go into or now about why an audio interview, in an interview style, with just two people talking to one another, providing good valuable information will outsell the best written sales letter ever.

Jason: I can see all the power that's in your site. You've harnessed something that's phenomenal. I wonder did you find this from someone else, or did you come up with this technique all on your own?

Michael: Well, look; I've always been saying there's got to be a better way. The lazy part of me, there's got to be a better way, there’s got to be an easier say. And I'm always questioning everybody, so as I'm researching all these great copywriters, and as you learn that most everybody copies everyone, they don't have the courage to be original or to try new things because it’s like the blind leading the blind. They just think if someone else is doing it that it must be working so there's very few people out there really playing the game and trying to be original. Everyone has great ideas, but they discount them their little voice inside them says, nah, that’s not going to work or they hear their mom saying that’s a stupid idea and they bury it and they never go through. But one thing I’ve learned when I get an idea that pops in my head, I will capture it, I’ll write it down, I’ll put it into a little database and I won’t lose it, and especially if I have a hunch on something I’ll not even think about it and I will do it.

Jason: I learned to not tell people about things I was doing, I kind of kept it a secret. Did you ever do that?

Michael: You don't want to share it with anybody but like-minded people. Like I share it with you because you because I know you're interested in this stuff, but it's also a good lesson because you know with your kids, you're not going to be like that.

Jason: Exactly.

Michael: With my kid, anything's possible, any idea he had I talk about it, I know not to be negative about any idea or dream he has. I encourage it because if you can dream it and you can believe it, reality is just down the road. It's just a matter of doing the steps in between to get to it.

Jason: I know you're pretty much right, there's pretty much there is no limit. Which brings me to another question. Does your wife or any others in your family assist you in any way with your business?

Michael: No. My wife does not assist me in my business at all, and I pretty much want it that way. I work out of the house; we see each other a lot. She works 3 days a week. My wife's mother and father have a tooling shop called Kahn's Machinery. They make parts for the aerospace industry and they have a manufacturing plant and they've been working together for their whole life. I don't want my wife involved in the business; I would rather just hire somebody else to help me. And she's not interested in doing it, really.

Jason: So tell me what were the early days, like when you first put up your Hard To Find Seminars site. What were the earliest days like; do you remember the first month or months after when you set that site up?

Michael: Yeah, when I set that site up, it was at michaelsenoff.com and I was selling--was a doing a lot of selling--of Jay Abraham stuff on eBay. And when I first started on selling on eBay, I was getting some great prices. I was making great money on eBay and that's all I was doing was eBay, exclusively. Putting my Jay Abraham tapes and seminars and the things that I found. I would have to hunt for the information and buy it from the original attendees and I would sell it. For instance, if I bought for, say $250 I bought everything that someone that went to a $20,000 Protégé seminar got, I would 3 sets of seminar tapes, and I would get a contract guide, an advertising guide. I would get "Your Marketing Genius at Work", I would get "Sign Me Up For Your Marketing Eyes Only". I would get this videotape of Gary Halbert, a videotape of this guy named Kendrick Cleveland, a videotape of this guy name Harry Pickens. When he sells a seminar, he loads you up on so many bonuses, so I would get all this stuff and then I would sell them separate on eBay. It was exciting. I was just doing eBay auctions, I knew when I found a set of stuff and picked it up from somebody, even if I paid $500 it was easily over $1,000 net profit in my pocket. So it was almost like hunting for gold. If I could find someone willing to sell me all their stuff that's sitting in a box in their basement or in their attic, that is over $1,000 in my pocket, it's just a matter of time.

Jason: It's funny that you did that because I used to think about more unrealistic things to do, like I once saw a documentary where they were showing some people that got lucky and they found some old people that were having a yard sale, or after they died someone else was having a yard sale of their stuff, and you find a shoebox full of baseball cards that were 50 years old. And I used to think, gosh, it shows that a kid that found that stuff, or an adult, turned around and sold some of the cards in there for as much as $10,000 or $20,000 apiece. I thought that would be a cool thing to get into. But you've found that you can track down something you can more easily find, or not easily, but it's something attainable.

Michael: That's right. What you're talking about is a great appeal, it's a great story, and as a matter of fact, you can see these types of stories of exactly what you're talking about in the National Enquirer. And I'm going to have a set of stories put up on hardtofindads.com, different story ideas that will give someone who wants to advertise, an editorial style ad, a type of angle, and that is one of the common stories that I see almost every week in the National Enquirer. It's there for a reason, it's like winning the lottery, but it's not the lottery. It's just as good, finding something at a garage sale that you buy for $2 and you turn around and it ends up being worth millions. And that is basically what I'm doing. I'm finding stuff in people's garages and basements that is not worth anything to them and I'm buying it and reselling it for a nice profit.

Jason: You've got a formula; you know how to get it.

Michael: I have a formula. Now this is really interesting and I've given a lot of thought to this. My little niche market, anyone who understands what I do, with some thinking and common sense would know that this formula can be applied to anybody. I’ve almost wanted to give it some kind of name like reverse marketing or something. Where most marketing people will try and sell a product or service to a market and will be happy with one or two percent. They invest enormous amounts of capital and advertising in lead generation, selling marketing just to get sales to that 1 or 2%. I'm going in the back door. I’m waiting for that moving parade to pass. So when someone buys, those 1 or 2% people who buy that product or service, they have a very high level of interest or they would not have bought that stuff. Correct?

Jason: Right.

Michael: Well, what I do, and in human nature, that interest goes away within time. So I'm going back to them when that interest is barely even a memory in their mind. And they'll remember it, and then I'm saying: "Hey, by the way, do you have any of that old Jay Abraham stuff from that seminar 10 years ago?" So their passion index, they're not as passionate about it anymore. Many things have happened to them. People have died, they've moved, they're not in that space of their life anymore, are they?

Jason: No, their goals more or less have just moved on.

Michael: It's just a memory. So now the value to them is not near what it was when they paid for $20,000 for the seminar. But there's always a secondary market for anything out there. Now you could take this same idea and do it with any product or service. You could go to the SRDS and find, for instance, let's say you wanted to find something with a market that you know is selling. I’ll give you an example. Remember that badge-a-minute kit where you make the little pins and you can sell them at school and make money? Well, that company's been around forever. You've seen it in Entrepreneur forever. There's people, if you go on eBay and search Badge-a-Minute, you'll see people are bidding on Badge-a-Minute kits. Now you can go to SRDS and you can rent the Badge-A-Minute mailing list. But what you want to do is rent the oldest list possible. you want to rent a list maybe from 5 years old so you can contact the list owner and say, "Do you have the list from 5 years old?" And you can buy them at a huge discount because obviously names from 5 years are real interesting to the owner of Badge-A-Minute are they? So you pick them up for nothing and you can do a mailing, the same type of mailing I do for my Jay Abraham stuff which is, I may have a buyer for your old Badge-A-Minute stuff that you bought from Badge-A-Minute Corporation. If you're interested in selling, give me a call.

Jason: That's a powerful technique, I've heard a lot about people that kind of go with the reverse angle, go with buying lists of people that were into something, like you said. They were in heat back then, and they bought a ton of stuff and now, like you said, it’s just a memory they're willing to in some cases just give it to you.

Michael: I'll give you another example of something. If someone wanted to make some quick money buying and reselling something. I have tested this. I sent a fax to businesses, it was a broadcast fax. and all it said was “I may be interested in buying your extra inventory, if you're interested in selling, please call Michael Senoff, 858-274-7851” and I had my company name and address. And they didn't know what inventory I was talking about, but every business is sitting on some kind of inventory. That passion index is gone.

Jason: Not just businesses, people.

Michael: People, businesses have equipment. You wouldn't believe the calls. My phone started ringing immediately...

Jason: Where were you putting that ad?

Michael: I had a list of fax numbers. I had a list in Texas, just playing around. And the response, my phone started ringing off the hook with all kinds of people that had inventory they had to sell.

Jason: What's your favorite technique of getting visitors to your website?

Michael: The main technique I have is by people finding me, looking for Jay Abraham, Gary Halbert, Dan Kennedy and stuff through search word, through key words. I have a Google search word for Jay Abraham where I'm always number one. If anyone types in Jay Abraham, they are going to see my ad, and that brings them there. The people are finding out a little bit more about my websites and my audio recordings and my Hard to Find Ads website. I was online last night and I saw all these people. I had over 200 people register at my Hard to Find Ads site and