Dan had called me to get some detail about how he could become involved with a barter organization – mainly to get enough cash for a fabulous tropical vacation with his wife to celebrate their tenth wedding anniversary
In this audio, you’ll first hear how we get off on a few tangents that have to do with starting a business which would be a secondary income for Dan initially but that he could subsequently build to be his primary income. I know that you’ll find this conversation with Dan about barter to be very enlightening – and you may even discover some new barter secrets that you were unaware of.
I told Dan that my ITEX broker would sign up people that I referred for no up front money. Dan would only need to pay the $20 per month membership fee – a small price to pay for all of the information about other ITEX members with products and services that he could buy at 20 cents on the dollar.
You’ll hear me give Dan some tips on finding ITEX members who may be very, very interested in selling trade dollars at a low price. The key is to be creative in what you buy and in reselling the items that you have bought with your trade dollars.
I help Dan to navigate through the ITEX website for his geographic area to see the multitude of ITEX members and what they sell. I give Dan reasons why some organizations might want to quickly sell products or services for trade dollars before year end.
The way I explain it to Dan, there are two ways that you can make money with trade dollars. The first is simple: Buy trade dollars for a product or service that you, yourself, might need at 20 cents on dollar. When you actually use those trade dollars, you are making money by saving money.
The second way to make money requires you to be creative and resourceful. Buy trade dollars at 20 cents on the dollar and then resell them to another party for profit. Listen to some interesting examples that I give to Dan about how a person could make tons of money by buying and reselling trade dollars.
One important thing to remember is that you must make sure that sellers are not artificially inflating the price of their products or services. I give an example of a seller who had increased the price of his services by an incredibly unreasonable amount. I confronted him about it and we eventually negotiated what I thought was a fair price. There are no rules – you can always negotiate Another way to buy trade dollars and then resell them for profit is to “pre-buy” a product or service from an ITEX member and then negotiate that you will buy in units that can be turned into scripts that you can sell to anyone you want and they can redeem them. This would be similar to the gift certificate cards that you see for sale at grocery store checkouts Dan was convinced to sign up with ITEX and give it a try for a few months. I reminded him that he would need to put effort into it while being creative and honest.

Michael: Hi, it’s Michael Senoff with www.hardtofindseminars.com  and Barter Secrets. Here’s a consult I did with one of our new Barter Secrets course buyers. His name is Dan. Dan called me just looking for some ways that he could make a profit using this Barter Secrets course. We talk a little bit about information products. We also talk a little bit about the HMA consulting opportunity. But then we get into some real meat. We talked about how he can get signed up in a barter company without paying the high upfront fees and we also talked about ideas and case studies that I have used personally over the years in acquiring trade dollars at a discount and being able to buy and resell items for a profit. I hope you find these case studies helpful and enjoy.

Dan: My big issue Michael is I’m working now at a big bank and I do fine. I make $50,000 a year and my wife works and she makes a little bit of money, but I’d like to do a little bit more. I have a very conservative wife, so my whole issue is I need to start out doing something as a secondary type income as opposed to my primary income and I thought you might have some ideas of what might be a good way to do it. It has to be not risky and so forth. But I’m looking for something to provide me with a secondary source of income that I can rely on and possibly build on and get out of the bank.

Michael: I understand.

Dan: There’s certainly plenty of advantages to it, but there’s certainly many things I don’t like about it, too.

Michael: Do you mind if I do a recording of our talk?

Dan: No. I notice you do that on all your deals.

Michael: It’s the ultimate leverage because if we talk about something that’s valuable and then I have your permission to be able to use it, this is how I create information products.

Dan: I’ve noticed that.

Michael: I’m talking to you anyway and just turning on the recorder and this is a good example for you. The first thing I would tell you…we can talk about the Barter Secret stuff. There’s some opportunities there, but really what I know best and do best is create and develop information products. Information is nothing but paper and ink. You have unlimited supply. If you create something or acquire something you’re interested in and it’s fun to do, there’s a market for anything. I would say create and develop some kind of information product, something that you can sell and make yourself $1,000 a pop. It’s doable, too. It just depends on what market you’re go to. There are people buying stuff every day. There are people buying cars for $30,000, $40,000, $50,000, $60,000 every day. It just depends on the market you’re going to. I don’t know how much of the audio you’ve seen on my.

Dan: I’ve listened to a fair amount, obviously not all of it, but I peruse your site quite a bit.

Michael: Well, page G is good. All those are all related just about to information product development. So, there are some great recordings on there that by the time you go through most of them, you’re going to have a good concept of how I feel about that.

Dan: That’s actually something that I wanted to get further into. The next step is setting that up either delivering that electronically or direct mail or probably you’d want a little bit of a combination of both.

Michael: You want a combination of both. When you’re selling it digitally, you want to worry about your refunds. Generally, if you deliver a great, great product, whether it’s digital or a hardcopy product…I had digital products that I did almost no returns. And I think the return issue for the most part is really that you haven’t done your job in delivery the products. If I’m getting a lot of returns, it’s tell you maybe your price is a little too high or you haven’t delivered on what you’ve promised. I’m just thinking of a couple products that are totally digital. I’ve got a product called www.claudehopkinsadvertising.com  . It’s only a $100 product, but I almost get no returns on that and it’s all digital. And I’ve talked to Yanik Silver. You’ve heard of him. He has sold millions of dollars worth of digital products and he says his returns are no more on the digital than they are on the hard stuff. If you deliver the goods most people are honest and if they believe they’ve gotten a fair shake, they’re not going to return it.

You can do a combination of both. I certainly do. I’ve got my HMA system, which is an opportunity on how to become a marketing consultant. I send a big box of heavy stuff, some videos, DVDs, but the minute they order it, they get access to the HMA University. It’s all digital stuff exclusive for the HMA people. So, it’s a combination of both.

Dan: Right. I’ve seen that.

Michael: If you have a high end product that really provides a lot of value, having it all digital, there are a lot of advantages to that. No inventory. You can deliver it anywhere in the world, anytime. Ideally, I’ve said to myself, all the products I want to do I just want digital because it’s so much easier. You’re not dealing with video duplication, CD duplication, art work…none of that stuff. So, I would tell you go with a digital product that you could sell and make at least $500 or $600 or $700 or even $300 or $400 because when it’s all digital and someone orders it, all you’ve got to do is send a link. There’s no labor involved. All your work is done upfront and then you have the decision do you create your own and develop it yourself, which is what I recommend you do. Or you can sometimes acquire…like with my HMA stuff with the marketing consulting, I did a combination. Richard, the guy I’m working with on this, had already created the whole training; all the manuals and the videos and I didn’t have to create that. So, I’m positioning him as the expert. He already had that all created. I could have just started marketing it right there just from what he had, but I increased the value by adding audio interviews and digitizing some of the stuff.

Dan: He had something in a Power Point presentation too, did he not?

Michael: He had his own Power Point presentation, but I took it a whole other level. Did you see that…

Dan: I think I did.

Michael: He took his Power Point and we put it into what’s called articulate…that presentation you saw and I did a couple of things to it just to enhance it.

Dan: Let me ask you this. We all know people in businesses. Like you, I studied Jay Abraham for quite a while and I read a lot of Dan Kennedy’s books and so forth. I feel like I can go into pretty much any retail shop out there and say you need to work on this, this, and that. And you know what it is. It’s all these people…a lot of them are clueless. They don’t know anything about customer service, the life time value of a customer, and so forth. I have a cousin who runs an auto shop. It’s a muffler place and one of the things I’d love to try to do too is ultimately get into consulting, but I wanted to maybe start out by approaching him and say let’s talk about what you’re doing and kind of go from there. How has that been going?

Michael: That’s all in the HMA system. And as a matter of fact, before you even invest in the system, I’ve got the exact questionnaire form. It’s call an opportunity analysis. I have four hours of recordings all free. You could listen to me take businesses through this opportunity analysis the same as you would be taking your cousin who has the muffler shop. So, you have all the training and the tool to go approach a business and to take them through that questionnaire process and to be able to close them. Really, if you do your job in the presentation, you’re not going to have to do any kind of hard core close.

Dan: Right.

Michael: You’re going to ask for the order, but you’re going to ask to take them through the HMA system and you use the credibility of the system to sell it. So, I’ll send you to the link, which is called Consulting Secrets. All that stuff is right there for you free. And then if you think you can do that and get a client, you charge per project. You can charge anywhere from $1,500 to $2,500 a project.

Dan: I could work on that on my own time, too.

Michael: Yes, you can do that on your own time. But no matter what, if you get into that consulting business, either do face-to-face presentations or the reason I created that Power Point presentation, that’s a tool to leverage your time. So, let’s that cousin of yours is somewhat interested and you say, look, here’s how you work. I need you to go to this link and watch this presentation. And then the HMA consultants get a customized presentation. You get your photo on there, your email, your special report. It all leads back to you. And he can watch that presentation before you meeting with him. You can make it a requirement and it just qualifies people. If they watch it, it just means they’re serious enough for me to go spend my hour and a half meeting with them. That’s the hardest thing. You’re fishing through people who are serious enough, who want to grow their business, who are in pain enough, who know they have a problem and are willing to do something about it. There’s a lot of opportunity in consulting. Absolutely.

Dan: That’s what I’ve seen. I’ve done telemarketing in the past. I was a mortgage broker for a while, too, and I’ve thought about getting back into that, but I’m not sure if that’s the direction I want to do. I’m comfortable on the phone. I don’t have any issues with that or calling people up and talking with them. And, obviously, people I know it would be a lot easier. For setting up your website, are there people you typically recommend and I have no Web presence period.

Michael: Your website for the consulting thing?

Dan: Yes.

Michael: I have a page that is a generic page. All you need is a URL. So, you come up with a www. You can order that. I can show you how to do that. You can go to www.godaddy.com  . You can get that within a day or so. And as long as you have front page extensions, I can get that presentation page set up. But you can get a web designer to help you with that, either locally or through Elance. And I’ve got a whole training on how to go to Elance and do that in the HMA system. But you can go on there and find Web designers who will work with you on that. There are other sites. One way is to model other websites. I’ve got a couple HMA consultants who have their sites set up I’ll send you to and you can just model and copy and modify. That’s no big deal for someone who knows how to set up a Web page. It could be set up within a day. That’s not an issue and it’s not expensive. If you’re not Internet savvy, you need someone who you can work with to help you out. But you don’t need a complex website. Certainly nothing like what I have.

Dan: Yours is pretty good and you have a few of them don’t you? Let’s quickly chat about the Barter deal. First just one thing before I forget to ask. I’m going to be celebrating 10 years next October with my wife, so you said you could pretty much get anything. I would love to go to some place like Hawaii or something like that.

Michael: Travel is huge. Absolutely. Now, I’ll be honest with you. I’ve mainly used barter over all these years really for business. But travel in the barter industry…absolutely. There’s all kinds of stuff. Now, I haven’t investigated it personally, but I was talking to my ITEX broker yesterday. The thing that fills the whole barter system is travel and advertising.

Dan: That’s amazing.

Michael: There’s a lot of opportunity in it. You’ve got to work at it. Like I say in the letter, it’s not as strong as a green dollar, but there’s 20,000 ITEX members. That’s one of the largest trade exchanges in the U.S. You can go to www.itex.com  and look at all of the categories and all of the things available on trade. As a matter of fact, I was talking to my broker yesterday. Remember how I talk about how most broker charge you $400 or $500 to get into the thing? My broker told me…and I was surprised about this because there’s kind of a new shift in the thinking of the barter industry since ITEX took over the BXI. If I refer you, he’ll sign you up without you paying anything. I can give you his number and you say Mike Senoff told me about ITEX. I’m interested in getting signed up. He’ll sign you up. You pay no upfront money. It’s $20 a month to stay a member, but you’ll have access to everything, to be a member of the trade exchange.

Dan: Okay.

Michael: Now, you don’t tell him you’re going to be looking for trade dollars at a discount. Once you get in there, I can help you with that.

Dan: You just tell him you want to become a member.

Michael: Yes. And there are advantages of becoming a member legitimately, too.

Dan: Well, I’ve listened to, I think, most of those CDs you sent. It’s pretty interesting. It’s not a regular greenback, but there’s still a huge opportunity.

Michael: Oh absolutely.

Dan: That’s something I could look at, too.

Michael: You can look at that. I’ll just give you an example. I was just playing around on the site and you want to search for new members because new members, they’re fresh. They’re excited about everything. There was a lady…she was in a small town and she made beaded jewelry. It caught my eye because I have two sisters who are in the beaded jewelry business and they go set up at trade shows and they go to these big beading trade shows and buy thousands of dollars worth of beads. So, about the lady…she’s new to ITEX and she makes this beaded jewelry. Now, I’ve got a bunch of ITEX dollars sitting in my account, about $7,000. Now, with barter, you don’t want to sit on all that money before the end of the year. I want to get rid of it and expense it out before the end of the year, so I’ve got another couple of months. So, I start thinking at this time, well how can I convert those trade dollars into cash? She had these beautiful bracelets and earrings and she let me record the call. I have a whole recording about how she would go set up trade shows and she’d sell…she didn’t tell me exactly how much, but she would sell tons of these things at $20 retail. So, I go how much for 175 sets of these things and she gave me a price, $30 a set. These trade dollars cost me about 15-cents on the dollar. So, $30 times point 15 is $4.50 a set. She probably can’t buy the beads and make them for $4.50 a set. So, I’m thinking how can I liquidate these trade dollars and I could and I may do it. I’m not sure. I may just go ahead and buy the 175 sets and go get a display case and then I can go put these in a couple stores around town on consignment and put a price tag of $45 each. Over time I can get my money back out. That’s one idea. It’s like having a beading business, beautiful beads that you can sell at any craft show or any fair or find someone who is already selling a fair and just hand them the displace case and work out a deal and convert those dollars. That’s a little sideline business.

Dan: Yes. The beauty is that most of those things…those people put in so much into making those.

Michael: You’re buying her labor, absolutely, going to the shows. I know how labor intensive it is from my sisters.

Dan: I just pulled up ITEX in Minnesota and believe it or not it’s about five minutes from my house.

Michael: Really.

Dan: Yes.

Michael: So, you can search the member directory and then type in your zip code and see who is available in your zip code there on trade.

Dan: One of the questions…like you said, it is kind of an interesting concept and one that takes a while to get used to. How are these people acquiring all of their trade dollars?

Michael: They’re all selling something.

Dan: Something to another member, right?

Michael: Yes, other members. Look at all the categories on the left. They’re selling advertising or clothing or computer services. They are all businesses selling a product or a service for trade dollars to the other trade members.

Dan: And so, they just have built so much that they just have this built up.

Michael: Well, not all of them, but remember the ones advertising are selling air. It’s just like cruise ship rooms. It’s air. It’s sitting there. So, things like travel and advertising, which are very popular commodities, the owners of the businesses acquire a lot of trade dollars and at the same time there’s also an incentive for them to dump some of their trade dollars before the end of the year or they’re going to have a tax consequence. So, at this time of the year that’s another reason why they may want to consider selling out some of their trade dollars for cash so they can write it off.

Dan: Right.

Michael: When I had my telemarketer call on all the advertising companies, we found tons of trade. I’m going to be doing an interview with one of the guys who bought this Barter Secrets course and this is before I knew my broker would allow you to come in without any fees. Within four calls he had an ITEX broker who let him sign up with no upfront fees and then he found trade dollars already. First he found someone who was willing to sell at 25-cents on the dollar. I said that’s pretty good, but keep looking. Then he found someone to do it at 20-cents on the dollar. So, he already found available trade dollars, up to $50,000 trade dollars a month if he needed it.

Dan: Okay.

Michael: Now, I can turn you on to this same source, as well because he called me wanting to know about this guy and I have bought trade dollars from him before. So, you can look at your travel stuff. You’re just going to have to do some work. You just want to check it out as carefully as you would any kind of vacation plan or whatever. I don’t know personally much about it. I know there’s tons of it, but I’ve never taken a travel on trade except on my honeymoon, we stayed at a bed and breakfast, but there’s all kinds of stuff. You’ve just got to look around.

Dan: I’ll check it out.

Michael: Now, you’re in Minnesota? Let’s see here. View all members. What’s your zip code?

Dan: _____.

Michael: You’ve got all kinds of stuff…air conditioning supply and parts, filters, healthcare products, lubricants. There are 50 pages of Minnesota stuff. Well, first of all, anything you save you make. So, look at some of these services and think what can you use that you’re spending cash money on already. That’s number one. Now, to make money, you would have to look for these different products and say well what can I buy from any of these ITEX members at 20-cents on the dollar and resell for a profit? Go to page 5. I’ll give you a couple of concepts that are pretty interesting.

Dan: Okay.

Michael: Click on the fourth one down, attorneys. It says contact a broker, but you’ve got some attorneys here. Listen to this concept. If you can buy legal services at 20-cents on the dollar, what if you ran an ad in your Sunday paper or something under the legal section that said something like financing available for legal help. Let’s say you found someone who was in a legal situation who got screwed and they’d like to take the case to an attorney, but they just didn’t have the money to fight it. And let’s say the case could go either way. Let’s say I had a situation where I wanted to sue someone. I just didn’t have the money, but you and I went in as partners and you financed all my legal fees to fight whatever I wanted to fight. And let’s say the case could go either way. So, all my legal fees are paid in trade at 20-cents on the dollar. So, an attorney that charges $300 an hour ends up being $60 an hour. And then let’s say that we fight this thing and we win and it’s a nice judgment and the attorney does his research and finds that the person you are suing has assets or whatever. Let’s say you win the case. You could work out a deal if you win the case…and ITEX sellers that settlement is for cash. You could invest in people’s legal cases and if the outcome is positive and there’s a settlement, you could split or negotiate a percentage of the case. You could be financing people’s lawsuits. Think about it.

Dan: That’s interesting.

Michael: What’s the upside? If there’s a legitimate case and someone has really been screwed and you can find the people who need legal help…so many people won’t fight it because they can’t afford it. But with your ability to buy legal services at such a price, you can afford to do that. That’s just one crazy idea I had.

Dan: Right.

Michael: But if you win a case…if you’re talking about the right types of cases, you can make yourself some nice money that way.

Dan: Right.

Michael: That’s just one idea I wanted to throw in there. You’ve got to think creatively.

Dan: That’s the whole thing. You’ve got to think about it a little bit.

Michael: Here’s restaurant and cocktail lounges, St. Paul, Minnesota. It’s not showing them. I think you’ve got to be signed in. I would recommend you call my broker and get signed in so you have full access to everything here.

Dental labs…I’ll give you a perfect example. My father-in-law is over here eating dinner and his tooth came out. He had a post and one of his teeth came out. His expenses for his oral surgery is $4,000 with his dentist. I go ouch. Let me go on to ITEX and see if I can find an oral surgeon. I search right in my zip code. I found a new member, an oral surgeon. The guy’s got three offices and he’s only an hour drive. That would be the only negative. And the guy can go do his oral surgery…I was going to pay for it because he’s been real good to my kids and stuff. We could have done his oral surgery for 20-cents on the dollar. But he’s real conservative. He was paranoid and he felt like, well I don’t know if this guy is good. He gave it up. But something like. Anything that comes up in life, just go to your ITEX thing, see if you can find a service.

I’m on that same page…attorneys, wills, and trust estates. Do you have your…

Dan: I’m all set.

Michael: You are?

Dan: I already paid for that.

Michael: How much did that cost you?

Dan: Actually I have a few friends that are attorneys…about $400.

Michael: I did all mine on trade. When my kids were born, I had not updated it. It was a thousand dollars on trade that would have cost me $200. So, that’s money I made…

Dan: By saving it.

Michael: Yes. I was searching here last night. There is a new member who is a Russian artist and I emailed her. She’s literally ten minutes from me. Gorgeous paintings. These things are beautiful. She was only selling them for $250 cash from her website and also $250 trade. There were some jungle themes I was thinking for my kids and I emailed her. The ones she had on her site were sold, but gorgeous, gorgeous work. Beautiful oil paintings and stuff like that. Art is so subjective. With some good marketing, those things could be sold for $2,500 if they are marketed right.

Dan: That’s interesting.

Michael: There’s a lot of opportunity. You’ve got to work at it and think creatively. I’m trying to give you as many ideas as I can. I’m looking at a newspaper. I don’t know which one it is because I don’t have full access…I do have full access, but you won’t. For some reason, a week ago we had full access. It would show you everything…the names of all the people and I don’t know if they’ve just changed it in the last week or so, but we were real surprised that without being signed in you could see all the contact information. They may have just changed it back. If you get signed up, get in there and you’ll have full access to everything.

Dan: I think maybe I’ll do that.

Michael: I’m just looking…luggage, bicycle sales. You want to make sure that the sellers aren’t inflating the price of the thing. There are sellers…probably 20%, 30%…will try and jack up the price on these things, but it’s negotiable. I’ll give you an example. There’s a national publication called Money Makers Monthly. It’s huge…about 200,000 subscribers and they cater to the multi-level marketing industry. I was considering running an ad in there using my ITEX dollars for one of my products, my joint venture products. I called them up. I go I’m interesting in doing ITEX and so they sent me this special ITEX rate and they jacked the prices up four times compared to the normal cash price. You’re not supposed to do that. I mean my broker said that if he found out what the guy was doing, he’d just kick them out. We don’t need them. But I negotiated with the guy. I said, look, you’ve got this thing jacked up and I got him down to about two times, which is still a pretty good deal on advertising for me, for a publication like that. But you can negotiate with any of these people. Everything is negotiable especially trade.

Dan: Did you do that yourself?

Michael: Well, I was going to use it for myself. I was going to advertise one of my joint venture products and the way I would make the money was through the sales of the ad.

Dan: Right.

Michael: You can use advertising to convert an ad into cash or being able to advertise so inexpensively as long as you make sure you’re not getting railed on the price, you can convert your advertising dollars into leads that generate cash sales for something.

Here’s banquet rooms and facilities in your area. Lilydale, Minnesota, is that by you, Lilydale?

Dan: Lilydale, yes.

Michael: What if you looked in the paper and found all the marriage announcements? Anyone who is getting married or engaged, if you contacted them and say, look, when you have your wedding…I know in our wedding, we rented the tables, we rented all kinds of stuff. Our whole thing was catered.That was one of the examples in the sales letter. You can approach a new bride, maybe who doesn’t have a ton of money for a wedding, and you can just introduce yourself and say you’re a wedding facilitator, broker, or whatever. When it’s time for you to get married and you need your rentals and everything, I’m telling you I can get them for you at half of what you’d normally pay. What if you did a postcard out to people? There’s all kinds of things. Anything on there that you can buy and sell, you’ll know what you’ll be able to get it for.

Dan: Right.

Michael: Does that give you an idea?

Dan: It does. That’s really good. Glad I was able to get on this website and check it out.

Michael: Like I said, what you can do…instead of taking possession of these things, you can work deals out…let’s see here…entertainers…I mean you can pre-buy stuff. Just work out a deal with the ITEX member and say I’d like to buy…I’m just giving an example…$10,000 worth of nutritional counseling script. Script is like a gift certificate. Just like when you go to the store, you see all the little cards for all the shops. They look like little credit cards where you have a gift certificate for Block Busters or whatever. That’s like script right there. That little piece of plastic is worth $50, redeemable at any store. Well, you could do your own thing like that with any of these products or services…wedding planning, decorating…you can approach these businesses and say I’d like to buy your services, but I’d like to buy them in $50 units. I’d like to create what we call scripts or gift certificates. You pay them the ITEX money and they give you a certified document. You writing out an agreement, a contract that they’re selling you $50 worth of services and you’re able to resell them to whoever you want and that they will honor and redeem them for $50 worth of services for whatever you’re dealing with.

Dan: Right.

Michael: So, you can take those services and turn them into little gift certificates and that’s a currency right there for that product or service provider. That’s legal to do and it’s called script. It’s no different than a gift certificate. In California, they passed a law for script. The trade organizations…let’s say there’s a restaurant who signs up with ITEX and they’re in San Diego. What they’ll do is they’ll say I want to be a member of ITEX. I’m going to submit $20,000 worth of script and they’re in the form of these gift certificates and then they’ll put them out on the market to the San Diego members and say we have restaurant script for Charles’ Mexican food or whatever restaurant. Those pieces of paper are sold for ITEX dollars and then I can take that $20 gift certificate and go in and eat worth $20. Well, you could set that same deal up with any provider who is a member of ITEX.

Dan: That gives me some good ideas.

Michael: There’s a lot of members right where you are. You’ve got office space rental.

Dan: Our company just bought office space. It’s quite a bit of office space.

Michael: Did it really?

Dan: Yes.

Michael: You can explore. What kind of inventory do they have sitting empty? What if you did a little more marketing than that office space rental company that probably isn’t doing shit?

Dan: Right.

Michael: And you’re able to rent the office space at half the square footage. That’s better than owning real estate because you’re buying a position in the office space for a period of time. You get the rights to sublet it out and then you’re making a monthly payment. That’s interesting. Office space rental…there’s all kinds of people who need office space. You’ve got to be the one that does the marketing and gets people in there. With a little bit of hustle, that’s doable. That’s an interesting concept right there.

Dan: That is, yes. I’ll check it out. Let you said, you’ve got to kind of play around with it.

Michael: You’ve got to put some effort into it and be creative. There are no rules as long as they’re legal and ethical. It’s doable.

Dan: Is there kind of an unwritten rule that I should stay in my own state?

Michael: Ask Kevin. He told me if I referred anyone, he’ll take care of it. Tell him even though you’re in Minnesota, Mike Senoff referred me, you do marketing consulting, so you’re not really a geographical business. You sell your consulting services nationally. Just tell him you’re a friend of Michael Senoff and we talked yesterday and that you wanted to become a member of ITEX and Mike had mentioned there’s no upfront fee.

Dan: Now, can you pay that monthly fee, too, with trade?

Michael: No, unfortunately you can’t. That’s going to cost you $20 a month. But you know, try if for a month. You can always cancel. You’re not committed to anything. He’ll take care of you. He’ll send you some paperwork and just get it back to him. You’ll be set up. You’ll have full access to the exchange and then I’ll give you access to my go to guy if you’re ready to buy trade dollars.

Dan: Okay.

Michael: All right?

Dan: Okay.

Michael: You’ll be good to go.

Dan: Well, let me do some of that.

Michael: Once you get into the system, you’ll see all the stuff available. Find something you want to buy first. Determine its value, that you’re really getting the value and just keep in mind that you can get the trade at 20-cents on the dollar, so you’ll know what your price will be before you acquire the trade dollars.

Dan: Right.

Michael: You make sure that the seller is willing to sell on trade. You do all your homework before you even do the deal. Get everything in writing and then do your deal and then get work and resell it. He’s real smart with travel. Tell him…once you get some trade dollars, you want to do a trip. He can help you out, too.

Dan: Yes, that would be great.

Michael: Has this been helpful?

Dan: It has. I appreciate your time very much.

Michael: No probably at all.

Dan: Thanks, Mike.

Michael: You’re very welcome. Bye, bye.

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