It’s My Turn To Reveal My Business Secrets. Michael Senoff is interviewed 2004 This is a twist for me. In this audio, I’m the one being interviewed and I rarely give out interviews. But when an Internet marketer named Jay Gould asked me to talk about my business strategies, I decided to give him the full story. Now, this isn’t my biography. For those of you who don’t know, I have a separate web page with my life story on it-- complete with baby pictures and personal information. So that’s not what this interview is about. This audio is the biography of my site and my business. It’s how it came to be what it is today. You’ll hear how I stumbled across the business of reselling Jay Abraham seminars and how that developed into the site I have now. You’ll hear about what I call hustling. Sometimes when you’re first starting out, you just need to bring in cash. So, I talk about my old pen business and how I got my son’s nanny to put together pens during naptimes. And you’ll also hear how it all progressed to the business I have today – exactly how I did it and how I’m still doing it. Here are a few of the many things I reveal in this interview… • How I record audio and get it on the Internet – including the exact products I use, what they cost, where I buy them and how I hook them up • What kind of marketing I use for my site • How I get testimonials easily and effortlessly • How I started working with Richard and HMA Consulting • Why I don’t use pay-per-clicks or any offline marketing • How I track my promotions • How I price my products • And much, much more This audio is about two hours long, broken into four 30-minute clips. It was originally recorded in 2004 for the marketing students on Jay’s website. And I don’t hold anything back. This really is business as I know it. Even though I majored in advertising and minored in marketing, college didn’t teach me much about business. Experience is the best instructor I know of, and that’s what this interview is all about -- the lessons I’ve learned along the way that you just can’t get from a university. Enjoy. PDF transcript HTML transcript download mp3 part 1   download mp3 part 2   download mp3 part 3   download mp3 part 4

Before you start, I want you to know that I believe getting a full education in Internet marketing does not have to be expensive. I also believe that in most cases you should never have to pay retail for any educational product, seminar, book or tape. You should pocket that saved money and invest it back in the MARKETING of your business. This book consist the transcripts of the only three audio interviews I have ever done. The first was a teleseminar conducted on 10-29-03. I hold nothing back. I tell all my secrets about how I buy and sell pre-owned books and tapes. You will learn how to purchase Jay Abraham marketing material at large discounts. I teach you how to get thousands of dollars worth of marketing materials for free. I reveal what I have learned from this business in the last four yeas.

The second interview is an interview conducted on 02-15-04. It's me being interviewed like I have never been interviewed before. The interviewer's name is Jason Ryan Isaksen. This was an exclusive interview I agreed to do for Jason's thousands of Internet marketing students and customers. This interview is fast and packed with some of my ideas and philosophies about marketing and business and one secret I have never before revealed to anyone until now. I gave Jason's students everything holding nothing back.

The transcripts below are from my third interview with an Internet marketer named Jay Gould. This interview has many of the same questions as the interview with Jason, but my answers are different. Again, I hold nothing back, I tell all I know.

Jay: This Jay Gould and Michael Senoff of www.hardtofindseminars.com . Michael owns and operates that website and several other websites. Michael are you there?

Michael: I’m here Jay. How are you doing?

Jay: Good, how are you doing?

Michael: I’m doing very good. Thank you for having me.

Jay: Michael, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background—how you got started with your online business and how you got started worker from home as a business owner?

Michael: That’s a great question, that’s a big question, but unfortunately, I’m going to put you off on that question and I’ll tell you why. Jay it would take a long time to answer this question properly. Because I want to provide your listeners the best material and the best information I have, I’m just going to direct your listeners to a section on my stet that covers this. I have an entire section on my website at www.hardtofindseminars.com and if you look for the section that says “Bio,” I have four or five pages outlining from my baby pictures all the way until present how I got started and the events that let me to today’s interview. So, you can get my entire story these. I took time and wrote it all out for people who want to know about me, and it’s all there for your listeners review. And it’s presented better than what I would be able to adlib and tell you right now.

Jay: That www.hardtofindseminars.com is all one word and no dashes, correct.

Michael: All one word, no dashes, hardtofindseminars, with an “s,” dot com.

Jay: Yes, and I checked that out myself and I asked you because I did see your background. But you’re right, that is very elaborate. You tell everything there is to know about yourself. Every trial and tribulation that you’ve been through it seems to be covered in your biography. Why did you do that?

Michael: Jay, I did it for a very specific reason and I’ll tell you why right now. Jay, the Internet is such an impersonal medium by its nature. With just images, text and color, you’ve got to have a better way to build trust with your customer. And people want to know who the hell they’re doing business with. So, I figured why not tell them who I am. But not some one paragraph about what I do. I wanted to go into detail about who I was, where I came from and specifically the circumstances that got me to where I am today.

Jay: That’s one of the things I talk about in my course; you’re breaking down credibility right off the bat. You’re showing credibility about yourself.

Michael: Exactly. Most people on the Internet hide behind an email address and web pages revealing nothing about who they really are. This one piece of advice will be worth thousands to your listeners. Tell people who you are in detail. Tell them the good, the bad and the ugly. Build an ENOTIOANL BOND with your site visitors. This is how you make a connection. This is how you get others to like you from half way around the world. And this is in my opinion a mandatory requirement before people will buy from you. Yes, it takes time to do and yes it takes effort. But this one thing will bring you more sales then anything else you can do online.

Jay: What if do not have a story to tell like yours?

Michael: Jay, I don’t care who you are and what you do, we all have a story. Now you may not think you story is interesting or not amazing enough to your site visitors. But that is not what is important. What is important is telling the truth. Barring your soul. Proving you have to guts to open up to your visitors and share a piece of yourself. They will identify with that and you will win the hearts of your site visitors. You may not win them all but you will win way more then not having anything on your site about you. That is the point I am trying to make. Just do it. Don’t even think about it. Just do it.

Jay: Exactly how do you tell your story. I mean, how did you do yours?

Michael: Jay you just start from the beginning. You start writing or typing about when you were born, how may brothers and sisters you have, tell about your mom and dad. You talk about what it was like growing up as a kid. You just do a chronological story of your life events. Once you get going on this, it’s a very reflective experience. It’s good for you. It’s therapeutic in a way. Get your story on your site. I promise people will love it. They will relate to it. I get more e-mails about my story and bio then on any other thing about my site. I know this works.

Jay: Great advice Michael.

Michael: So, I have my story right out front and I also provide actual proof of everything I said in my bio. I think this is another important part of not only your story but your entire web site. Back everything you up with pictures. Pictures are worth a thousand words. Prove everything you say is true. Go through you old photos or your childhood scrapbooks. When you say you lived in a corner home on 5 th St. take the photo of the house you grew up in to Kinko’s and have them scan it for you. Then pop it up on your bio page like I did on my site. If you go to my bio section, you’ll see exactly what I have done and how I back everything up with photos. As children, we grew up with stories and pictures. I think that is why we still love a good story better then anything else today. When I rock my 4 year old on a rocking chair before he goes to sleep every night, what do you think he says? He says “Daddy, tell me a story” And he would rather me tell him a story with lots of detailed visual images i.e. pictures. This is so important. If you want to build trust. It’s all about establishing credibility and establishing trust with the person on the other end of that computer. That other end of the computer is a skeptical, non-trusting human being just like you and me.

Jay: I agree 100% with that. Michael I noticed you put your phone number all of your website and on the bottom of every web page.

Michael: Yes Jay, that is right. I have a way for anyone to contact me on every page. What I am really saying it, I am 30 seconds away from you. You can call me anytime if you want. I am not going to take your money and run. I am proving again my legitimacy. People are so skeptical today. You have to have a way for people to call you if you want to build the highest form of trust with your site visitors and customers.

Jay: Michael, you also have a very professional phone recording when people call in. Everything you do is professional and you show credibility and break down the trust barrier right away.

Michael: That’s what I try to do. I say it again because it so important. We want people to trust you because if they don’t trust you, they’re not going to buy from you.

Jay: Michael, you do work from home, even though when people call it doesn’t seem like it. It seems like your calling a huge organization, but your really a small operation and you operate from home; is that right?

Michael: I work right out of my house in what used to be a two-car garage that we converted. I put carpet in here, several windows, a nice couch, beautiful desk, fan and a computer. So, it is now an extension of a single family home that I live in here in San Deigo. It’s an area in San Diego about five miles from the beautiful Pacific Ocean. And I am a one-man show right in my house. I’m sitting in my garage right now talking to you.

Jay: Can you describe to me a typical day in the life of Michael Senoff—maybe when you wake up or once you start working at home?

Michael: All right. I’ll give you a typical day and it will depend because my wife works three days a week. I have two young children. I have an 18 month boy and I have another four and a half year old boy. My wife works three days a week. Usually on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. Let’s take today, for example, it is Thursday. I woke up around six o’clock. My younger one is getting a cold, so he had a rough night and we woke up to him crying. We get the baby up and spent a little time with him. Then I usually try and sneak off into my office and to check my emails and any orders because usually I have a ton of emails. You and I both know how much time it takes shifting through all the junk mail.

Jay: Do you get a lot of spam?

Michael: Yes, I get a lot of spam. I go through my email. My other son wakes up at about 7:30 AM and we hang out. We have breakfast. Then I’ll take a shower and then Ill get my older one ready for school. I have a nanny that comes in five days a week. My wife takes off for work around seven, and I have a nanny who comes in at seven to help me with both the kids.

Jay: Is that so you can get some business done?

Michael: Yes, she’ll come in at seven. My older one has to be at school by nine and I have to take him. So, I take him to school and then I come back home around 9:30. So I’ve got from about 9:30 until about three without any interrupted time. I don’t want to say any interrupted time because I do have interruptions and crises that always happen through the day, but at least while we’re talking for the next two hours, I’ve made sure not to have any incoming calls, no interruptions from outside sources. So, I’m good until about three o’clock. My son has a play date at a friend’s house this afternoon. So, I’ll pick him up after that. And usually I wrap my day up around five as far as in the office here because that is when we have family time. We’ll have dinner. Spend some time with the kids and bet time for the kids.

Jay: That leads me into something that I wanted to ask you. Michael alot of people, myself included, when I first started, especially with the website. People will read your bio when they go to www.hardtofindseminars.com and they’ll see that you were not always involved in the Internet because the Internet wasn’t around when you first started. You were just an entrepreneur at heart.

Michael: That’s right.

Jay: Even as a regular home business owner, you can find yourself being consumed by your home business is what I found and you can put in a ton of hours, but you have to basically limit yourself. You can’t make that your obsessed lifestyle. Is that basically what you try to do? You try to set a schedule for yourself similar to going to a job except once you go into that room, that’s your job for the day and then you can come back to the family later.

Michael: Well, I know how you are. You’re probably a lot like me. You’re a total entrepreneur and we love to work on our businesses. So, we don’t look at it as work. It’s probably one of the top three things we’d rather be doing all the time. So, absolutely, I’d have to say family first. Family and friends is always first. Then my next favorite thing is working on my business. —family, friends, my business. It depends on at what point in my life I’m in. Right now I have a lot of projects going on. Things are going very well. I don’t have any crises in my life. So, whenever you have something smooth, no one’s sick, no one’s in the hospital, you’re not caring for someone; you have a smooth section in your life, I take advantage of it because life is full of crises. So, I’m going to take as much advantage of this time while things are pretty smooth sailing as I can. So, after the kids go down to bed, my wife usually goes to bed pretty early, I’ll just come back in the office and sometimes I’m up until 12:00 and one o’clock at night doing some work.

Jay: Yes, I find that a lot. Believe it or not, the people listening to this are going to say that’s not possible, but I wake up at nine o’clock in the morning. I wake up a little bit later than most people, but that’s one of the flexibilities of having your own business. And I’ll stay up working about 18 to 20 hours in a day. But it doesn’t feel like work. I’m not doing it straight like you would at a job sitting in a cubicle. I may go out to the post office, or I may stop down at Staples, or go to over a friend’s house for an hour and take a break. My day is broken up, but when I come back and I’m in the office, I’m on my laptop and it just feels like leisure time. I’m just kind of messing around.

Michael: Yes, very relaxed. You’re in your own environment. You’re not around people you don’t like. It’s great. But, obviously, sometimes it is work.

Jay: There are times that I can find myself…you get frustrated because you do come across, like you said before, a couple crises. And on a website, a crisis could possibly be like a marketing strategy that you were using is no long becoming as effective. It’s run it’s course so to speak, and you start to say to yourself, wow I’ve really got to start searching for something, or trying different routes here. This isn’t as acceptable as the ones in the past. I find that with some of my websites. Sometimes things have run their course, or maybe a market that I’m involved in, a target market, has gotten really over saturated. I realized it was coming, but now it’s time to get down to the nitty-gritty and the dirty work and start to really think again. I really run things out for a long time.

Michael: That’s great. That sounds pretty accurate.

Jay: I have a question. You have www.hardtofindseminars.com , what are some of the other websites that you are currently running and what do they do?

Michael: Let’s take them one by one. First of all, www.hardtofindseminars.com , this is my website where I do a combination of things. One, and the main focus of this site and how it originated was, I buy and resell very hard to find marketing seminars. Usually these are marketing seminars that sell in the retail market anywhere from $5,000 to $30,000 and are mainly from one guy. He’s name is Jay Abraham. So, Jay Abraham sells seminars. People attend his seminars, sometimes 150 to 200 at a time at $5,000, $10,000, $15,000 a pop. And the people who go to the seminars come home with all the audiotapes; sometimes a transcript, sometimes the CD’s of this material. Originally how I got started, which is all in my bio, I wanted some of that material, but I wasn’t going to pay the high retail price. So, I found somebody who had a set of these tapes that I wanted to listen to. I got them for $50, and I ended up selling them up on Ebay for $1,700. So, there’s some good profit in that. I think I found a good market. It’s something to hustle as long as I could find them and make some good money. And that’s how the whole www.hardtofindseminars.com evolved; buying and selling hard to find marketing seminars so people could buy that at 10-cents on the dollar compared to what the retail price was. Then I have another site called www.hardtofindads.com , which came later--and that’s hardtofindads.com--because I’m fascinated with copywriting and letters and proven sales letters or ads that work. A proven sales letter or ad that works is like a combination to a safe.

Jay: These are like the headlines and sub-headlines of sales copy, right?

Michael: Sales copy, that’s correct.

Jay: Successful ones that have been used time and time again.

Michael: Exactly. On this site, and this is a free site, you can go to the site and access over 700 classic hard to find ads; many of them from the early 1900’s all the way up to the 1950’s and 60’s.

Jay: These are basically types of sales copy in these headlines that have always been successful and they always will be. They’re time tested, correct?

Michael: That’s correct. The majority of ads were pulled from one of the largest publications during the time. And they’re also all in editorial style format. And editorial style ads will out pull an image type ad five to one just because it’s editorial because people are used to reading editorial connect like in the newspapers and in the magazines. So, I’ve focused on editorial type advertising because it’s so powerful.

Jay: You should buy that name, editorial ad.com.

Michael: Yes, that’s a good one. So, it’s a great idea. Say you want to create a piece of copy, you can go look through some of this stuff, get great headline ideas, get great openings for your first paragraph. It’s just a great swipe. It’s a digital swipe file. You can zoom in on the ad super close and read word. They’re all scanned in there. It’s just a great resource of good ideas for doing your own advertising.

Jay: It’s www.hardtofindads.com .

Michael: That’s correct. And then I have www.idpen.com . And this you will read about in my bio. ID Pen is a business opportunity website. For ten years— and we’ll get into it in a little bit—I had started a little pen manufacturing business where I manufactured pens right out of my home. I took one of the pens, which is an invisible ink marking pen, and created a business opportunity from it—just from my own experience—because for ten years, I’ve been manufacturing and selling invisible ink pens and a number of other pens right out of my house. I teach someone who wants a product to hustle. This was a product that I hustled when I didn’t have any money. So, you need something to hustle, you can make them for 17-cents. You can wholesale them by the hundred for $1.50 apiece or even more. And that details the details on that business and offers an opportunity for a license to learn how to do that.

Jay: It’s an opportunity, too, because a lot of the people out there are not necessarily looking to be their own boss so to speak a lot of times because they’re out there looking for stuffing envelopes or assembly work or something of that nature. This allows them to be their own boss because I checked this out, your ID Pen. And it’s a business opportunity for running your own business, but yet they’re doing the work. I think some people actually are still looking to work. They’re used to being like an employee. So, I think this gives them an opportunity that they can work and have a structured job so to speak. It’s a side business. It’s a business opportunity. It’s a true business opportunity.

Michael: It really is. I can’t believe that it’s been ten years and I’m still selling invisible ink pens and red eye pens. The beauty of it is I figured out how to manufacture these pens right out of your home with nothing but boxes, rubber bands, and the parts that you buy from your suppliers. Your cost on manufacturing is 17-cents, and you can resell it. You can wholesale them at ten times. You need something with margins. Margins are so important and what’s so beautiful about the pens is, I can store 100,000 pens in a corner of a room. And you have total control.

Jay: Absolutely. They’re so small. Are those the only websites you’re running right now?

Michael: No, I’ve got some more. Do you want me to keep going?

Jay: Yes, keep going. Tell us everything.

Michael: A new website that we just set up is a co-authored a book with a gentleman named Bill Bowdry out of New York. He’s a copywriter. We created a course or a book—it’s a collection of Claude Hopkins ads. The website is called www.claudehopkinsadvertising.com . Do you know who Claude Hopkins is?

Jay: Yes, I’ve heard of him.

Michael: Claude Hopkins is known as the greatest copywriter of all time. He had a career from the early 1900’s all the way to—I think he died in 1950. But there are several books out on the market that you can pick up on Amazon called My Life in Advertising, and Scientific Advertising. And these are two amazing books. I’d recommend any of your listeners to read if they want to get a great fundamental education on marketing and copywriting. The books talk about all his experiences that he went through in his life and his most successful advertising campaigns, but no one had the original ads. So, I went out and researched and with the help of a research librarian and a historian, we located and found 60 of his original print ads that he talks about in his two books.

Jay: And once again, these are basically hard to find, right?

Michael: Extremely hard to find. It’s probably the world’s largest collection of Claude Hopkins actual ads in any one place. So, we created a book. It’s a digital product that we created and that’s a website that goes over that. We created lessons with each one of the advertising campaigns, and then there are a lot of bonuses that go with that. They can check that out.

Jay: That’s www.claudehopkinsadvertising.com .

Michael: Claudehopkinsadvertising.com. Then I have www.monicoproducts.com , which was the original name of my pen business. And on that site, I have all my pen products that can be bought off the site and also a line of UV lights. With the invisible ink pens that we sell, it’s a pen that marks on valuables. You can put your driver’s license number and your identity in case your property is stolen. It replaces those engravers. So, with that, you need a UV light, a little hand-held black light to see the markings. So, we get a lot of orders for UV lights. I wholesale and retail UV lights, and then on that site you’ll find all my pen products. That’s www.monicoproducts.com . Then I have another site, which is called www.senoff.com . Now, this is really important.

Jay: That’s www.senoff.com .

Michael: Yes.

Jay: I always go to when I check out your website to see if there’s any updates, I go to www.michaelsenoff.com .

Michael: Well, I have that, too. I’ll tell you about that.

Jay: Now I can cut out the Michael; just go to Senoff.

Michael: Well, actually you could. Let me tell you what www.senoff.com is. I had all my sites with one website hosting company, and many times my sites would go down or there were problems. My websites are my business, my livelihood. So, I had my web guy reset up another domain with new hosting company and that’s where that domain www.senoff.com is hosted. So, I have duplicates of all my website at www.senoff.com .

Jay: Oh yes. I’m looking at it right now as we speak.

Michael: So, in case of an emergency, let’s say www.hardtofindseminars.com goes down, I’m in the middle of a promotion, I can instantly email out to my list saying www.hardtofindseminars.com is experiencing difficulty, go to www.senoff.com , or I’ll provide them a link.

Jay: Yes, and it says the name of the first URL .dot this domain dot com.

Michael: Yes, I have a lot of space on there. So, I’ve got everything on that site there, too, as a back up.

Jay: That’s great. So, those are all the URL’s you have is one, two, three, four—six of them?

Michael: I have two more.

Jay: All right, go ahead.

Michael: The next one is www.executiveaudioinstitute.com . Now, on my www.hardtofindseminars.com site, as you know, I have a series of over 117 hours of audio recordings, interviews, and recordings from some of the greatest marketing people around, as well as some average guys just like you and me. So, I’ve taken all those audio recordings and I’ve taken out all the testimonials about myself. I’ve taken out all the ads and anything that really promotes myself with the exception of a few things, and I’ve put all those audio recordings on that site, www.executiveaudioinstitute.com . I provide a resale rights package to anyone who wants it for absolutely nothing. So, I could say, Jay, I can give you your own custom tapes to executive audio institute. You could say, this is Jay Gould’s audio training for all my customers, and you can given them private label access to all 117 hours of my audio recordings for nothing.

Jay: Wow.

Michael: And then I have www.michaelsenoff.com , which was one of my original sites, which is really just a branding page that if anything is clicked on will take them back to www.hardtofindseminars.com . I just didn’t want to loose that name.

Jay: Now, I’m looking at all of your websites. You have a ton of information up front and ideas. You’re teaching people things in a lot of these because you’ll throw clips of interviews or conversations between yourself and other marketers or other people in the industry, and you people listen to this up front. You don’t necessarily give them the whole two-hour interview. You do give a lot, and you give, I’ve noticed like maybe 20 or 30 of these things on a website where it’s maybe 10-15 minute clips you can listen to. Now, what do you have to say about? Is that a marketing strategy that you do?

Michael: Well, it is a marketing strategy. As a matter of fact, I don’t hold anything back in my audio recordings. Those are the full recordings. There’s nothing cut off where I try to sell you on more of the recordings. It’s everything. So, like in this interview, if I put this interview up, you’re going to get the whole thing. Yes, there’s a strategy in that and that’s giving value. You want, on your website, something of value, and that’s what I wanted to do with these audio interviews; by me interviewing someone and picking their brain and getting as much information out of them as possible. I’m digging for gold. I’m looking for ideas that I can use myself. So, I’m learning at the same time, and I’m going to share that with anyone who comes to my site because if I give them value, they’ll be back to my site. And if I give hem value, it’s called the right of reciprocation. They’re going to feel like they need to reciprocate me in some way, whether if it’s I ask them for a testimonial, or whether I came out with an offer for a product I have, or what have you. But, I don’t hold anything back. Whenever I talk to someone of the phone, I give them my 100% best because that’s what I believe in doing and that’s how I believe you build the list of loyal, following customers.

Jay: Exactly, and in your business, a little bit more than my business, my customers will come to me to learn how to market and then after they buy my course—I have a couple of different courses—but after they buy those courses, I usually don’t have much more to really offer them. I give them everything. I kind of lay it all out that I have and what I know. But you offer various different marketers like Jay Abraham. So, they’ll keep coming back to you for more and more. So, you have a lifetime customer. You’re building a relationship with these customers.

Michael: You yourself, I’m sure are a tremendous student. How long have you been educating yourself?

Jay: Over eight years I have spent over $10,000 on various different marketing seminars and programs.

Michael: Now let me ask you this Jay, do you plan on ever stopping learning?

Jay: Never, F because even after I figure I think I know everything, I’ll continue to buy things even when I see a new opportunity. I told you about Jason Isaacson. I bought Jason’s course and I feel like I’m pretty good at what I do, but I still see a course and when I read the sales copy, if it kind of gets me a little bit, I say I’ve got to buy this. Maybe I’m obsessed, but I’ll still buy someone’s course just to see what he has to say. Maybe he’s doing something that I’m not doing.

Michael: You’re not obsessed, but you understand that if you can find one little idea that you haven’t thought of that can mean thousands and thousands of dollars.

Jay: I agree. And so, if it only costs me a couple hundred dollars or maybe even less than $100 for some of these little things like pamphlets and stuff, to me that’s not a lot of money. It’s a write off, first of all because it’s education and it’s research and development for taxes. It’s a 100% write off. So, I write it off taxes at the end of the year. That’s not really a concern of mine. But like you said, if you could just find one or two ideas that can make you thousands of dollars, it’s well worth the money. And that money usually is going to be residual year after year.

Michael: Exactly. Now, imagine you spend 10-15 years educating yourself and just compiling more and more ideas in your head, and know that you have 20 or 30 ideas, you could go anywhere and start from anywhere in the world and know without a doubt that you have the combination, you have the formula to an idea that can make you money at will. Why would you ever need to keep money in your back account? You walk through a airport when you go through customs and you’re going out of the country and they want to make you fill out a form if you have anything over $10,000 on you. But you can walk through an airport with ideas in your head that can produce millions anytime you want and they don’t ask you…

Jay: You can go anywhere in the world to do it.

Michael: And you can go anywhere in the world to do it. Now, what would you rather have, $10,000 on you or a head full of ideas that can produce millions anytime?

Jay: Yes, I agree 100%. I never thought of it in those specific terms and put it to those words. But that’s pretty much the gist of it. You’re learning secrets, not necessarily secrets. Anybody has access to this if they’re willing to spend the money to buy them and we just can’t get this stuff for free. These people are well renowned like Jay Abraham and to the likes of that. If you’re going to learn these things, these guys learned over a 30-year period and they’re going to throw it all together in a course for you to listen to, and you’re going to have to pay a decent amount of money for something like that. But it’s going to make you a ton of money over the course of years. Once you know it, like you said, you know forever.

Michael: If you implement it, absolutely. Ideas are a dime a dozen, but it’s the person who acts of them. But back to your question, as far as my type customer, my customers who are people who like to learn and who do continual learning. So, many of my customers will stay with me for years and come back as new courses are available. They can trade in their stuff. They can…

Jay: I remember hearing about that from somebody. You actually buy stuff back again from the customers that purchase from you. I guess you re-sell it again, is that right?

Michael: Well, it depends. This is hard to find stuff. I can’t go to Kinko’s and run copies of this because I don’t own the copyright to it. I’m like a used bookstore for expensive seminars. But I use barter. So, for instance, let’s say I find 20 of a seminar, for example, Jay Abraham’s 2003 Mastermind Marketing Seminar. I was able to get a lot of those, which I had 10 or 15 sets. Well, not everyone’s asking for those, but let’s say I’m looking, for instance, a set of Protégé tapes, which is a popular training that Jay Abraham put on in 1989 and 1990 and I don’t have it. Well, I have a list of everyone who has bought on Ebay for the last two and a half years any product related to Jay Abraham. Plus I have my own customer list of everything that I’ve sold to people. I can go back to my list and let’s say I don’t have an inventory of Protégé training set, I’ll go to my list and find out who bought one from me and I’ll say are you finished with the Protégé tapes would you be willing to trade? So, I’ll trade them for something they don’t have like the Mastermind Marketing Seminar that I’m sitting on 10 of and I’ll get that and I’ll be able to sell it.

Jay: What does something like that particular seminar sell for so people can get an idea?

Michael: The Protégé Training Seminar was a seminar that sold for $15,000/$20,000 retail back in 1989/1990. I sell that seminar for around $695.

Jay: That’s a huge discount. That’s thousands of percent lower. That’s incredible.

Michael: You don’t get the experience of going to the seminar, but you get the edited version of the actual seminar on tape.

Jay: That’s what they’re going to bring home after they leave the seminar, is that right?

Michael: That’s correct.

Jay: That’s awesome. A lot of times they say going to the seminars are great too because you get to mingle with some of the other top marketers. But most of the people who are there are not top marketers, though. They are people who are learning to try to become marketers or they’re trying to learn strategy. Listening to it at home or being there is not going to have that much of a difference or affect on you.

Michael: The bottom line is going to a seminar can be exciting, but it’s a pain in the butt. You’re away from your family, you’re staying in a hotel—maybe it’s not the nicest hotel, it’s expensive. You’re sitting all day long in maybe some uncomfortable chair next to someone you don’t want to sit by. It’s very difficult to absorb all that information in a four-day event. It’s usually in one ear and out the other.

Jay: And let’s be honest, most people can spend or splurge $600, but $20,000 or $50,000, that’s not something most people can actual spend.

Michael: That isn’t something that the masses can spend. That’s correct.

Jay: Absolutely. Well, I think one thing I wanted to ask you was you have all these different websites, you’re like me; you get into all different areas. It seems to be you haven’t gotten into too many areas except the ID Pen it seems and the other stuff all seems to be marketing, right?

Michael: Right.

Jay: But the ID Pen is something you’ve done for the past ten years or so?

Michael: Correct.

Jay: Now, you said you’ve manufactured these pens for ten years. Do you actually have workers that work for you for these pens when you do manufacture them?

Michael: When I’m manufacturing them, I’ve had a nanny every since my four and a half year old was born. So, the nanny’s here usually anywhere from three to five days a week. And there’s downtime for her. So, when the kids are napping, if I’ve got two hours, I’ve got all the parts right here in my house so everything is assembled. Some of it is pre-assembled that I farm out with somebody. They do the work out of their home and they’ll bring back, let’s say I give them 20,000 sets of pen parts. And with a pen you have a cap of a pen. If you look at a pen on your desk, you’ve got the cap, you’ve got the barrel, you’ve got a plug—that’s the end cap you usually chew off—and you’ve got the tip that goes in it. So, this is like a felt-tip pen. I buy all these parts from a supplier and then I have someone pre-assemble—put the tip in the pen barrel and then put the cap on. So, those are done out of someone’s home. And they’re all here at my house. Then the next step is you have to line them up in these boxes getting ready to insert a reservoir filled with ink. So, it’s all done through sequential steps and on downtime in two hours, we can easily make a couple thousand pens all by hand.

Jay: And you said you’re making about $1.00/$1.50 off each one of those wholesale.

Michael: Well, my cost is 17-cents. If I wholesale them $1.50, you can do the math.

Jay: That’s beautiful. Does your primary income come from ID Pen or is coming from Hard To Find Seminars? Where is the majority of your business coming from right now?

Michael: It’s a combination of both. My primary income is coming from my Hard To Find Seminars, though. It’s the profit I’m making in between buying and reselling the seminars plus other services that I provide like I do audio interviews and I generate income by promoting products on my website and doing joint ventures; a number of things.

Jay: Do you ever do consultations with people and you’ll actually help consult with somebody in how they can get setup with their own home business or something?

Michael: If someone calls me, I’ll give them my best advice, which you can see examples of all over my site. Now, I didn’t really have the confidence and know how to charge for that and how to do that. But I recently went to a seminar on that and he is probably one of the greatest marketing guys around. His name is Richard with 21C Marketing.

Jay: Yes, I saw that on your website.

Michael: He’s putting on trainings out of Utah every few month on how to do Marketing consulting. And this guy has incredible experience.

If you go to my site and where you see consulting, you can hear multiple interviews I’ve done with this man. Plus you can hear testimonials of people who have gone to his seminar. I now have the absolute confidence that I can take on a client after going through this 21C Marketing System—so, let’s say I have clients calling me every day and they want to buy Jay Abraham material or other marketing material. What they’re really telling me is I need help with my business. Well, I can ask them a series of questions and get an idea of what their business is like and identify if this maybe a good business to work with. I can certainly encourage them to let me do consulting for them now that I know I have the ability to do it and I know how to charge and I know to present an offer to a business to do this. I’m very selective of who I would take just because my time is limited.

Jay: And money, yes.

Michael: Time is money.

Jay: Even when you have a set price at what your time is worth, it’s still your time that you devote to your own business, it’s time away from your business, which is going to cost you money with your own business.

Michael: I’ve done very little promotion of any of my businesses. In the last three years, I’ve really been building the content, building the audio recordings. Just getting the roots of a giant Oak set in place. I’m almost to the point where I’m now ready to start really promoting the audio interviews and the products and services that I have. But literally, it’s been three years of putting this together and getting the structure and the foundation set and the plan and the strategy in place. And it’s just about there. So, a lot of my time has been in developing that product. Now, certainly because it’s my own products, it’s been very time consuming and there’s give and take in that. I could simply go buy the rights to other products, but I wanted it to be my own…

Jay: That leads me into a question that I been wondering since I first saw your website—the first time I saw your website. I heard about you through another marketer and when I went to your site listening to—you said I own www.hardtofindseminars.com and I checked it out. I thought it was a really great site. It’s well put together. It shows credibility in breaking down trust, which we talked about before. But basically one of the things that I was wondering is do you have a lot of competition out there? It doesn’t seem like you would.

Michael: The only competition I have would be on Ebay where people are selling their old marketing seminars.

Jay: Well, you usually call those people up and say hey listen, I’ll give you a deal.

Michael: Sometimes I can approach those people if I’m looking for something and offer to do a trade. But I won’t pay the price that they’re asking for. You’ve got to understand; they’re selling what market value will pay. It’s not going to be worth my time to buy what they want to retail it at.

Jay: Because you basically resell it.

Michael: Yes, because I’m reselling. When I pick this stuff up, I have to pick it up at a steal. I’ve got to find the stuff where the guys got a garage full of all this stuff and Jay Abraham is notorious for when someone goes to a seminar for adding all these bonuses. So, let me give you an example. Let’s say I find a set of materials—I’ll use the example that I was talking about before his Mastermind Marketing Seminar from December 2003. When someone went to that seminar, they would come home with a set of the audiotapes, which is 36 audiotapes, which I could sell for $500. So, they’d come home with a set of the CD-ROMs, which I could sell for $500 or $600. They would come home with the transcripts whether it’s on a DVD or in printed form, I could sell for $100 or $200. They would come home with a book called, Money Making Secrets of Marketing Genius Jay Abraham and other marketing wizards, which I sell on my site for $295. They would have a book called Jay Abraham Advertising Guide, which is a collection of all his best winning ads; extremely value. I sell that for $300. He would have a product called his Consultation Transcripts, which is over $50,000 of one-on-one consultations he’s done with all types of businesses; a huge thick book about 600 pages.

Jay: Transcribed?

Michael: Transcribed word for word. I sell that for $300. I’ll buy all this stuff for less than $500. So, by the time I just sell one set of tapes, everything else is profit. Some of it sits on my inventory, but over time, you’d better believe it’s going to go. So, it’s an investment. Every time I buy a set of stuff for $500, I’ve just doubled, tripled, quadrupled my money just in a matter of time.

Jay: Yes, it’s a beautiful business. It does require work, though. It’s not something that everybody can do. The reason you probably don’t have competition is they don’t even know where to get these things if people wanted to start a business like yours. Correct me if I’m wrong, you’ve been doing this for so long now, the last few years or several years that you have contacts; people who are going to these seminars and then they’ll trade off.

Michael: Here’s a story. I got really lucky in one way. Ebay was coming along. People were learning about Ebay. That was one source that sellers could offer their stuff for sale where you could match up buyers. So, you could go on Ebay and look for Jay Abraham stuff and see a list of stuff. But that’s kind of stopping now, and I’ll go into reasons why. Then there was another website called Help Talk. It was owned by Bill Myers and it was also kind of like a gathering ground of people who were looking for pre-owned material and people selling pre-owned material. On a small basis, you had Yahoo walk-ins, but it was very limited. Well, Help Talk was bought out and so there was only just once source, which is Ebay. I started my business out on Ebay. But what happened, people were counterfeiting some of the Jay Abraham products on Ebay and some of the stuff. I can’t compete with counterfeit products.

Jay: So, basically they were making clones of the packages?

Michael: They were making clones of the packages and selling them for really cheap.

Jay: That’s dangerous.

Michael: Yes, and I could identify what was counterfeit because I was seeing all this original material. I knew what the originals looked like. So, I had to set my identity outside of Ebay and that’s why I set up Hard To Find Seminars. I had to give more value in separating myself from Ebay because Ebay was not a real reliable place to pick up this merchandise because much of it was counterfeit. And now even today, Jay Abraham is policing Ebay and he has the right to stop any auction. If he thinks it’s suspect, he can end that auction and there’s not a damn thing you can do. So, if you look on Ebay, there’s really not too much stuff available on Ebay because they’re policing it and there’s only one other source for pre-owned material, which is me.

Jay: Well, listen to this Michael; I had a question about the phone system. I brought it up earlier. Your phone system is very professional. I don’t have anything as nearly as professional as that and we both work from home. So, how did you get such—because when you call just so listeners understand—when you call Michael Senoff, you hear this is going to be a…tell me how it is. You do something like: this could be a recorded conversation for quality assurance purposes, etc., etc.

Michael: You know when you call your credit card company or your bank, you hear that professional, this call maybe monitored for whatever. Someone had called me about doing some interview work with her and she is psychotherapist. And I called her and I heard her phone system. I said that is incredible. I am looking for this. What is that? And she told me about the phone system. Now, any of your listeners can go to a section on my site. If you go to www.hardtofindseminars.com and you go to the products page and then along the left side in light blue, there’s a section called Internet tools. And these are all the tools I currently use. The same tools I use to run my Internet businesses. And you’ll see the company for that. It’s called Kall8. This gives you the ability within minutes to have your own 800 number, and this is part of the service. So, on the bottom of every…

Jay: It does that?

Michael: Yes. So, you have your 800 number. It automatically lets you set that feature that you hear that this call could be monitored. So, the person is notified that the call could be recorded, which you have to do legally here in California. And you can set settings to archive your calls. So, let’s say you’re in business and you’re taking orders over the phone, you could have your 800 number. The calls are recorded so you can store them on this Kall8 company server. And if you ever had complications or you need to provide proof, you have it all on audio. You just reference the achieves and they’ll store them all for you.

Jay: Let me just understand this. When somebody calls you, as soon as they call, it says this call could be monitored for quality assurance purposes; whatever it says typically. That is recorded as well so that the whole thing is recorded because once they call that picks up and that’s start the recording, is that right?

Michael: What happens is they get that notice and then you set within the control panel with Kall8 where you want the 800 number forwarded to. So, I have the 800 forwarded to my office number. But you could have this service go online. You could be on vacation and have your calls forwarded to anywhere you ant. You can have them forward them to your cell phone.

Jay: How much does something like that cost?

Michael: Cheap, cheap, cheap and you get an 800 number.

Jay: That gets more people to call you.

Michael: It is great for me because I wanted the ability to be able to record a call without having to ask if I could record the call every time. And this way, if they’re going to talk to me, they’ve already been warned that the call could be recorded. So, that covers me on that end. Plus, I can archive them and save them if I wanted to, and plus—here’s another incredible feature. This thing has the ability to pickup the caller ID even if people have called ID blocking.

Jay: Wow.

Michael: What happens is once a call comes in, if you call me on my 800 number, within seconds it will email me the identity of the person who called right to my email address. So, how many times have people called and you missed the call and they hang up because they don’t want to leave a message. This happens to me every day. They’ll call. They won’t leave a message. So, I get the email—let’s say I was on the other line. I call them back and I say Jay this is Mike Senoff. You had just called. I was on the other line and I didn’t want to miss your call; how can I help you. It will ide