"If You Could Buy Something For $5 And Instantly Sell It On For $75 How Many Times Would You Do It?"

Welcome to my consultation with a determined, energetic woman named Brenda. We start out with how Brenda heard about me and my web site, www.hardtofindseminars.com . It’s a delightful story that I know you will enjoy.

I investigate Brenda’s diverse employment history and discover how, as the manager of a retail store, she grabbed the “brass ring” one day and found her niche in sales. You will hear how, since that first “magical” sale, she has had not only interesting but successful sales positions in various industries. Brenda is indeed a multi-faceted individual who is a quick study as well as intuitive and resourceful.

Listen to Brenda’s current endeavor with a business opportunity in catalog sales. Not only is she developing her own business, but she is in the process of creating an information product to market to people who would do sub-selling for her.

You’ll hear my advice about the development of her business and her information product. I don’t want to give too much away in this introduction, but listen as I advise Brenda about the objective of developing and selling an information product that will free her from becoming tied to another business. Her goal should be for her information product to become its own selling machine that works 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Brenda arrives at many new ideas and a lot of things to think about as she paves her own way to entrepreneurship. Anyone listening will be able to tell that Brenda will be successful in any business endeavor she chooses. I invite you to look for more information on Brenda’s progress and success soon on this web site!

Hi, this is Michael Senoff with HardtoFindSeminars.com. Here’s about a 45 minute recording I did with a lady named Brenda. She had an incredible personality. She talked a mile a minute. She had this beautiful southern accent, and this woman could sell. She called me asking for some advice on what I would do if I was here, and listen in as I give her advice on how to create an automatic selling system. Enjoy!

Michael: So, let’s start from the beginning. Tell me first of all, how did you hear about me?

Brenda: Well, I actually bought the Jeff Paul system, and the Jeff Paul system gave me enough little food for follow-up that I wanted to do the free conference call that was included in the product. For two weeks in a row, I’ve been trying to listen to Jeff Paul, but his advertisement says he’s on every Tuesday night is not exactly true, and so the second Tuesday night that I was on there, all these people started coming online, and I can hear them talk. I was like, “Can you all hear me?” They’re like, “Yeah.”

So, we ended up spending about 20 minutes over the fact that his advertisement’s not right. Then, Gary came on, and another guy named John which you helped him, and he’s from up north somewhere.

So, you had talked to him and him and Gary had been talking and so they both came online to get each other up to date. I was like, “Who’s this Michael Senoff guy?” You all need to tell me because when they were saying, “Oh, you should go to his website. He’s got all this free stuff, and it’s so much to learn, and yada, yada.” I was like, “Wait a minute. He doesn’t do nothing for free.” They were like, “Well, you really need to go to his website.” And, they just kept repeating your website over and over and over and over. Everybody who was online got to where they would shut up and not talk.

Michael: That is hilarious.

Brenda: So, we just kind of sat online for quite a while just talking, and I was trying to get my way in edgewise, and it was hard until John hung up. When John hung up, Gary took over, and Gary wouldn’t hardly let you talk. He was just so full of information, things that he had learned from you, and when they said that you actually would talk to them at no charge, I was like, “Get out of here.”

Michael: All right. That’s great. I do and there’s a couple reasons because you saw all the recordings on the site.

Brenda: I have downloaded so much stuff you would not believe. I have copied three three inch notebooks so far, and I’m not even through because the things that I’m just scanning through and I haven’t even begun to read them yet. Information I didn’t know, and so it’s valuable to me because I didn’t know it.

Michael: Good, a lot of people want to download everything because they think it’s all going to disappear. I don’t have any plans for it disappearing, but you never know. I could wake up one morning and say, “Forget this. I’m going to stop giving away all this stuff, and I’m just going to make a membership site.” So, go ahead and download it and print it out, put it in binders, and then you have it no matter what.

Let’s start from the beginning. Why don’t you tell me your name, where you live and give me just a little background on yourself? What’s your story here?

Brenda: Okay, my name is Brenda and I am from the Alamance County area in North Carolina.

Michael: How old are you?

Brenda: I’m 39.

Michael: Are you married?

Brenda: Yes.

Michael: Do you have kids?

Brenda: No. See I used to be a three job person where I would work two or three jobs, and I didn’t matter to me what I did because I loved money, and then when I met up with my future husband, he was doing really well with what he was doing. I was like, “You know, when we get married, I don’t even want to work anymore.” He wasn’t doing that well.

Michael: What kind of jobs were you working?

Brenda: Retail management, sales management. Before then, I worked for a company called Airborne Express which I think is non-existent anymore. I had been there for ten years.

Michael: Airborne Express, the shipping company?

Brenda: Yes.

Michael: Are they no longer?

Brenda: They were sold out to another company. There may be some places called Airborne Express still, but they’re owned by someone else. I was in sales and customer service with them for ten years.

Michael: Were you outbound sales, inbound sales?

Brenda: Well, I handled all the big accounts. Let me tell you exactly what I did for Airborne. What I did was there were sales people who actually went in the car and they went and got the accounts, and they sold them and bought them or whatever. They would bring them back, and then they would hand them off to me, and then what I would do is I would babysit them. I would make sure their shipments got out on time. I made sure that the shipments that they were supposed to receive got out. I made sure that there were no complaints. If there were, I would 50 million extra miles to make sure that I just babied all their accounts.

Michael: That these guys were happy because they were good money.

Brenda: Yes, and so that’s how I got interested in sales because when I started taking some of the clients to lunch, and we would talk about the accounts, I was like, “Wow, this is cool.” So, I really liked that, and I thought, “Well, that’s getting my feet wet.”

Well, I left there and I went through a couple other jobs which were meaningless, and I ended up as a retail manager for a maternity clothing store which is not in existence any more, and I had made my way into being a retail store manager. So, until that went bankrupt, went belly-up, I really enjoyed it.

One of my stories is, and I’m going to put this in my little packet of information that I’m getting together to get out there is that when I was there what got me really interested in actually selling is it was considered a high-end maternity store. This lady comes in. She throws her hands in the air, and she says, “I’m not going to buy anything. I’m just coming here to look.”

Well, one of my techniques was to get her to walk around the store and see what she liked. So, she would walk around the store and she would look at things and pick them up and put them down, and I would memorize it. I took her to the dressing room. I said, “You have a seat.” I started bringing her stuff. Then, I started mix and matching her stuff. When I got through, she walked out of the store with almost $900 worth of clothes, and I had a high like I never had before. My employees are like, “Man, that’s like drugs.” I was like, “Well, I don’t do drugs. I never did drugs, but if that’s a high, this is legal and I’m loving it.”

So, anyway, after that I knew I had found my niche.

Michael: And, that was selling?

Brenda: Yes.

Michael: Okay, that’s great. Once you did that, and you really gave that customer a lot of attention and you saw the results. Did you continue to do that with other customers?

Brenda: Yes, obviously, that’s without even saying. We made quite a bit of money, but one store can’t do it all. But, yeah, in fact, we trained all of the employees. I got them all trained on what I was doing. My DM was pretty impressed with the work I was doing and so forth.

It was just really nice. I really enjoyed it, and became second hat. Then, the excitement went out of it, and it was just a high to get the big sales. It becomes a normal thing, and to me I had found out years later because I think I had told you in the emails that I sent to you that I had made $40,000 last year in seven months.

Michael: Okay, doing what?

Brenda: I went out on a limb to start selling water treatment systems.

Michael: Were the whole house or counter units or all different?

Brenda: They’re all different. I went for the six and seven thousand dollar ones.

Michael: The whole systems?

Brenda: Oh yeah.

Michael: Now, this isn’t multi-level, is it?

Brenda: No, just outside sales.

Michael: Okay, and how’d you get hooked up with them?

Brenda: I went to a car dealership, my next venture in sales, and became the after market sales manager. They were impressed with my telephone recording to them about trying to find out if they were still offering a position, and they had me to meet with four different people up to the owner of the company, and I sat with him and I got the job and I got through.

So, I was working with them for a while, and there was a lot of controversy over the part department and the after sales market department, and I got tired of fighting with this guy. So, I pretty much went to work for water treatment as a secretary. I was like, “You know I don’t need these sales anyway. I’m out of it.” I sat at a desk making $12 an hour for nine months and I said, “This is ridiculous. I can’t do this.”

So, I left and I did something else. Then, I called one of my buddies and told them that he got them for an interview to a water treatment facility in Greensboro, and I found out that they were being investigated by some kind of bureau because they keep leaving the state and coming back. He says, “Well, if you’re going to sell water treatment systems, why don’t you come work for us?”

So, anyway, that’s how I got there because he went and talked to the owner and talked to the general manager at the time and he was like, “Man, you all need to have her here.” Anyway, I started working there.

Michael: You started as a secretary?

Brenda: No, a couple of years ago I was a secretary for nine months. I left, and when I came back, I came back in sales. So, when I came back, in my first three weeks I had sold three systems, and that was including the training because you have to take in mind, I had absolutely no idea about money.

Michael: What do you mean you had no idea about money, how much you could make or what?

Brenda: How much you could make, how much you could talk them into spending.

Michael: You were just going to be happy to make $20 an hour.

Brenda: I was just going to be happy to talk to people because as you can tell, I’m a talker. I enjoy meeting people, and I enjoy getting out there.

So, anyway, I went through training, and I did my way through all of that. Learned the chemicals. Learned how to test the water. I went to several different homes, and for some reason something wasn’t clicking. I wasn’t selling.

Michael: Who was generating the leads, the company?

Brenda: The company, I believe. I just went out on them. So, anyway, I didn’t sell anything, and then it was a Wednesday night, and there was snow and ice on the ground and I told my husband, I said, “Well, I’ll go to these next three appointments, but then I’ll quit and I’ll find a real job.” So, those three appointments I sold all three, and I went in with the “I don’t care” attitude “If you don’t want to buy, fine.”

Then, that high came back, and after that, of course, the owner and the general manager took me to dinner because I had gotten three full sales so quickly, and they know, because normally you don’t really get sales for the first couple three months. They give you really easy sales, but then you have to work for the rest on your own. So, these three sales, they didn’t even know it was going to happen. It wasn’t something they set up.

Michael: What did you put in your pocket on each one of those?

Brenda: On each one of those, I would say $500 to $1,000 because I can’t remember. It might have been over that. You know, now that I think about it, I think one was like $1,100 and the other was like $1,300. After a while, when money’s rolling in, you don’t even-

Michael: You don’t count.

Brenda: You’re just like, “I got money.” Anyway, I did that, and I did that for seven months. My career ended with them when I got injured on the job because after a while I hired my own person to come to work for me, and we would bottle drop together. I would do bottle drops on my own.

Michael: Now, that’s what, delivering the five gallon bottles?

Brenda: No, it’s actually putting a test bottle at your mailbox and then giving you a questionnaire. You fill it out and fill your bottle up. We do the testing and we let you know what results we find, and pretty much it’s just the hardness of the water, and then if you want us to come out and finish doing the other testing for other stuff, then we’ll come out and do the testing in your home. Then, when we get through, we’ll show you how to fix the problem.

Anyway, that’s what I did because I wanted to generate more and more money.

Michael: Was that a way to generate leads?

Brenda: Yes.

Michael: Do you bottle drop to any home?

Brenda: Any home.

Michael: I’m just curious. Tell me what did you do? Let’s say you were in my neighborhood and you came by my house. What are you going to do?

Brenda: Put a bottle at your mailbox.

Michael: At the bottom of the mailbox?

Brenda: You can’t attach it to the mailbox. There’s a stake and there’s a little plastic bag and there’s a little plastic bottle.

Michael: Are you allowed to attach it to the mailbox?

Brenda: You can not. It’s against the law. You can not.

Michael: You just put it right at the base.

Brenda: You just put it right at the base so when people come home and get the mail, they can just reach down and pluck the thing out of the ground.

Michael: You attach it to a stake?

Brenda: Yes.

Michael: And, there’s a bottle there?

Brenda: Yes.

Michael: And, directions or something?

Brenda: Yeah, a questionnaire, and then a plastic bag. Then, the next morning, you have to go back and pick up all these.

Michael: I see. Basically, what does it say?

Brenda: It says something to the affect that we are in your neighborhood or we are in your area for a short time, and we are doing bottle water testing. We understand there has been some complaints about the taste of the water, and it asks you questions like, “Are you having stains, tough stains?” “Do you notice any lime or calcium build up?” “Do you have any rust?”

We do this not in city limits. We do this outside because it is against the city limits ordinance for you to test the water in city limits because I kind of got one county in trouble.

Michael: Oh, really?

Brenda: Yeah.

Michael: Do you think most cities would not like people to bottle drop like that?

Brenda: Well, the city says that all these cancer causing chemicals and all these Alzheimer causing chemicals, and all these other chemicals that are so slow in your system, does not cause any problem. They bleach your water. They do all kinds of stuff. They say, “Oh, it’s so harmless”, but look at how people are just getting diseases left and right.

Michael: Yeah, that’s true. I’m interested as a technique to generate leads. So, this was very effective, this bottle dropping.

Brenda: Yeah, I’m going to do my catalogues that way.

Michael: How many bottles would you go put out?

Brenda: I would put 500 bottles out a day.

Michael: And, you had someone helping you put the stakes in the ground?

Brenda: Yes, because you had to have a driver and you had to have a person doing it.

Michael: Where do you get these little stakes?

Brenda: Well, I got them from my job.

Michael: How long are they? Little pieces of wood with a point?

Brenda: They were actually plastic. They have a round top, and the round top has a little separator thing that you twine the bag up a little bit to fit it through there, and it just hangs from the stake.

Michael: So, it’s kind of like a plastic lollipop with a circle at the top?

Brenda: Yes.

Michael: Where’d you get those?

Brenda: I got those at work. I don’t know where they go them.

Michael: Okay. So, you just jam it in the ground. You attach the bag with the bottle there and everything.

Brenda: Yep.

Michael: So, you put 500 out in one day, and then you come back that next day?

Brenda: Yes.

Michael: How do you know that someone’s put the water in there? Is it easy to spot with your eye?

Brenda: Yeah, when you drive up and you see a stake, even if there’s no bag attached to the stake, you have to pick it up. Once they find out who’s doing it, you start getting calls from different ones that say – you don’t want any complaints at all.

Michael: So, the next day, you’ve got to pick up all the stakes.

Brenda: You’ve got to pick up the stakes whether the bag’s there or not, and that’s just common courtesy.

Michael: Out of 500, how many well you have water specimens?

Brenda: I think my highest water sample that everybody was so impressed with was like 175.

Michael: What was a poor drop?

Brenda: I was a poor drop was probably 20 or 30. What it is is because you have to take into advance that it takes a lot of numbers to make the numbers. You have to understand that there are people that are going to put Coke in there. They’re going to put Mountain Dew in there. We have gotten a variety.

Michael: Urine.

Brenda: Yeah, they’re going to do a lot.

Michael: So, they’re pissed, and they’re just messing with you.

Brenda: Yeah, and we had a poor town. Unfortunately, I had gotten into some city limits, but I did not get into trouble for this one, but we had hit some city limits, and everybody in that town was actually complaining because the people at the water plant had told them, “Don’t drink your water. We have problems with it.”

So, we had hit at that area, and that was the area along with the countryside of it that we got 175 water samples.

Michael: Because you had the support of the media. The water was on people’s minds.

Brenda: The water was on people’s minds, but on a good day, my average was between I would say 75 and 125.

Michael: So, you basically scare the shit out of them that there’s something wrong with their water.

Brenda: No, all we do is tell them that we have heard that there were some client complaints about water.

Michael: No, that’s fine. I mean, it’s sounds like an effective technique. So, you test the water. How long does it take to test? Do you just drop some drops in there and you test it and then what do you do?

Brenda: Well, several tests. We do an iron test. We do a hardness test. In the hardness test, we actually test how hard the water is, and then we actually test your water against our water. Do you have a system in your home?

Michael: No, not a home system, but in my sink stuff, my kitchen sink.

Brenda: If you were to take ice cubes from your refrigerator and put it in a glass and put Coke in it, it looks really fizzy. You can do this. Rinse out a glass out of your soft water. Rinse out a glass out of your hard water. Pour Coke in both. The one in the soft water looks like it’s flat, but the one in your hard water looks like it’s all just full of fizzy bubbles. But, when you taste the one that was rinse out with soft water, it actually has more carbonation taste and more fizz to it than the actual water because the hardness breaks down everything.

So, we test all of that. We also do the soap test. But, anyway, those are just the techniques that we use. I don’t want to sit here and try to sell you.

Michael: So, you go test the water, and then do you call the people back after you do the test? Do you call them by phone?

Brenda: Yes, because they have to sign it, and at the bottom of it say, “I authorize for you to call me back and give me the test results.”

Michael: Okay, so you call them on the phone. You give them the results, and then you try and set up an appointment.

Brenda: Right, and actually the person who does the appointment, doesn’t know anything about anything because they’re going to try to corner you into finding out everything they need to know right over the phone. The person I hired to do my calling for me would just say, “Ma’am, Sir, I don’t know. I have no idea. The only thing I know is I’m instructed to call you to let you know that we have found some problems with your water and if you would like for us to come out and finish doing the testing on your water, we are not affiliated with the water company. We are not affiliated with the city or the county. We are an independent privately owned company that does our own testing. If you would like for us to come and do the testing, we’ll be glad to come out and we’ll leave the results with you.”

Michael: So, she lines the appointments up.

Brenda: And, she lines the appointments up and then I would go out and I would do the appointments. It got to be that probably 70 percent of the $40,000 I made were my own leads.

Michael: From your bottle drops. So, the guy who went around with you, who drove the car?

Brenda: We both did until I dislocated my shoulder, and that’s what ended my career.

Michael: How’d you do that?

Brenda: I was bottle dropping, and I was bottle dropping for about six months, and I don’t know. I thought I could reach back because do you know how people decorate their mailboxes. The ones we went to at that time had big old white rocks around them. I thought I could reach back and just pluck that stake in the ground, and my arm turned the wrong way and that’s all she wrote. I had to have surgery.

Michael: So, your bottle dropping days were over.

Brenda: So, my bottle dropping days were over for right now anyway. So, I have been on recoup all this time, and that’s what got me thinking about the business I had bought.

Michael: So, let’s go into that. So, you injured yourself. Did you see it on an infomercial?

Brenda: Yes, I did. I had tried many other things. The only reason I bought it is because my husband looked at that commercial and said, “Now, that is not a scheme.” He says, “If you want to do that, I’ll let you do that.” So, I thought with his blessing, I’ll go ahead and get it.

Michael: How much was it?

Brenda: It was 300 and some dollars, but I bought it and I made $500 in the first couple weeks. So, it already paid itself back.

Michael: What were you selling?

Brenda: Just catalogue stuff, dust collectors.

Michael: You were doing this direct sales?

Brenda: Yes, direct sales. I would go out and mostly friends and people in the neighborhood. I looked at these, and when I saw the return on that, I was like, “Get out of here.”

So, anyway, I decided to do that, but then my mind is always bigger and better. I think all sales people have that problem, “How can I do this bigger? How can I do this better? How can I do this and make more money?”

So, then I got thinking website, and we weren’t making the kind of money where I could just go out and just do what I wanted to do, and I’m all or nothing. So, it all went dormant. I decided I’m just going to put it in the attic, and let it go. I didn’t decide to bring it out again until this year, and I think all and all I think I made a total of like $800 from doing it in 2000 because it happened at Christmas and everything.

Anyway, it all went into the attic, and I got to thinking, “Well, you know, I could really get this set up.” So, while I’m waiting for Workman’s Comp to go through that I’ve been doing just nothing. So, I got it back out, and all of a sudden, I don’t mean to bring religious beliefs into it, but I’m a Christian, and God was just closing doors left and right.

I had bought a website and they screwed me. I had somebody else call me to try to sell me once they found out I had a website up. They said, “Oh, let us take care of you. We can do it for X amount of money.” They did not do me right on the website.

Michael: What did they charge you for that?

Brenda: Almost $3,000.

Michael: Three grand. So, that’s to say, “Okay, you’ve got all these catalogues. Here’s all the products. We’re going to put it all online.”

Brenda: Right.

Michael: So, that’s your back-end, that website.

Brenda: Yeah, see the only problem is that the catalogue company says that they’re not affiliated, but they endorse them because the catalogue company was not helping me.

Michael: What were they going to do for you for three grand?

Brenda: Well, I was supposed to have a custom made website, and everything would be done custom made with all the sites, and I got really excited. They started showing me webpages and stuff, and I thought that was custom made until I had a custom design website company give me a call and say, “They’re not custom made. They’re templates.” If you wanted to shoot across the page, you couldn’t do that. You had to pay them even more money.

What they were selling me was a custom one set and it was nothing more than-

Michael: But, did it have all their products and catalogues?

Brenda: It had all their products and catalogues, and from what I understand, any website can send money to them and they will allow you to download it because of course they want you to sell their products.

Michael: All right, they got you on three grand.

Brenda: They got me on three grand. I finally got it back through about three months. My bank took over and got it back for me. I had sent emails to the president. He may have even had an influence on it because he said he would look into the matter.

In any event, I got that money back, and then I said, “I’m not going to go the website way right now. I’m not even going to let that be on my mind because I’m so leery about doing anything over the computer anymore.”

Then, I talked to Gary, and Gary informed me that any contract you do you do it over the mail or over the fax. You don’t do it on the Internet. It’s fine to talk to people. He gave me a little bit of information that I needed with really listening to that.

So, here I am, and what’s really a killer is when I set up my website, I took all the extra money I had, and I bought a business fax/copier/scanner. I went ahead and opened up a business account, got a business credit card. I got a business post office. I went and got my little business stamps. I mean, I’ve got everything I need to be set up to start this business.

I do want to do the catalogues. I’m not into making a billion bucks in a week. I’m into making a lot of little money because there’s a lot of people without a job and I want to do two ends on this.

Through talking to Gary, an idea popped into my head. I decided I can also sub-wholesale which means I can get you to sub-wholesale through me. You’re selling the catalogues. You make 60 percent. I make 40 percent. You can take your 60 percent right off the top after you get the money from your customers, and you can send me just the shipping and all that. That’s all shown in the process, and then everything will be direct shipped to you to give your customers.

Michael: What do you find so attractive about the whole setup? What attracts you to that type of business?

Brenda: Because everybody has to buy something for somebody.

Michael: Is it the variety?

Brenda: It’s the variety. They’ve got tons of variety. They’ve got for Christians. They’ve got for Indians. They’ve got things for African Americans. They’ve got things for all different types of people to meet everybody’s needs.

Michael: So, we know there’s something for everybody. What else do you like about it?

Brenda: I got my license through them, and of course, I also got my sales ID, too.

Michael: What do you mean you got it through them?

Brenda: Once you sign up with them, they give you a license to sell number.

Michael: I see.

Brenda: You pay for that license every year. It’s just all easy in one, and what’s really cool about it is the fact that everything is just done in one place and one phone call, and you don’t have to go far to get this item.

Michael: What’s the biggest margin that you can make? You can sell something for X amount of dollars, and you could make in your pocket this much.

Brenda: You can sell something for $12, and your actual cost is like two or three bucks, and then the rest is yours. It’s high enough margin where I’m satisfied. Listening to the ones that I listened to on the phone selling something for $849, and then only have to spend $12 to make it, it’s a rip-off. It’s a 300 percent mark-up on everything.

Michael: Everything?

Brenda: Everything, and through seminars that I’ve listened to, a lot of people mark things up even higher. They open up their own stores. Some people started out in the trunk of their car getting stuff out, and people just come by and buy them. Some people go to places like little trade markets or trade shows on Saturdays, I forgot what they’re called, but they’ll go there and they’ll set up a table and they can charge whatever they want to, but a lot of people charge actually higher than just 300 percent because they’re just eager to make more money.

You can charge it, but you can’t show the catalogue because the catalogue shows the 300 percent mark up on it. So, that’s what I do, but if you have overhead, of course you’re going to be tempted to mark up.

So, anyway, with that in mind, what got me into getting it out this time was that the surgery that I had for my arm got screwed up really bad, and my arm was shaking on its own. It had its own life. It had its own little way of doing things and I had no control over it. I couldn’t go Christmas shopping. So, what did I do? I went to the ABC catalogue, and I got all of my Christmas from not my catalogue mind you, but my VP because I hadn’t signed up back up with mine. They give you really good prices as well. They’re not quite as low, but they’re good.

So, anyway, I had to do my entire Christmas shopping through a catalogue because I could not even go out and do my own. That’s what got me and I was like, “You know, there are a lot of people in my situation.” So, I renewed my license and I just kept going because the good thing about a catalogue company, whether you do it now or you don’t do it now, they hold all of your records forever. If you even go ten years, and you don’t want to do it and then all of a sudden you want to, they’ll have your records.

What’s really cool about that is it was so professional, they had the exact money I spent. They had the exact money I spent on the system. They just have everything. They send you statements, and they send you promos. They send you emails and they send you all kinds of stuff. They send you little tidbits of helpful information to help you sell and get started and do this, that and the other thing.

So, it’s been really, really cool all the way around. So, that’s where I’m at. See, now, I want to go in two directions. One, I want to do direct catalogue sales where people can actually do mail in orders. I don’t have a Visa/MasterCard system set up yet, and I don’t have a post system set up yet. Those are two things I want to do, but I want to get money in first to do that.

Michael: You don’t have a way to accept Visa and MasterCard?

Brenda: Not yet.

Michael: Have you heard of PayPal?

Brenda: I’ve heard of PayPal, and I don’t know if that’s a Visa.

Michael: Yeah, that’s more for online though.

Brenda: Yeah, and I’m not doing anything online right now because I’m going to teach myself how to do a website and I’m going to do my own website.

Michael: Okay, you’ve got a great skill. I mean, you kind of remind me a little bit of myself. I got into sales. I thought selling was it. When you sold that $800 worth of clothes to that sale, you said, “Man, this is awesome.” If you could sell, you could make the money. And, you can sell anything if you’re passionate about it, right?

Brenda: That’s right, and that’s the word, “passion.”

Michael: That’s right because that’s what sells, your enthusiasm and your excitement about something that comes through. It’s more than just the words. It’s the pitch of your voice and your attitude and everything, and they believe you.

When you’re like that, you’re selling yourself. You’re selling your confidence in the product, and that customer believes you and that’s what really makes them buy. Do you know? As long as they’re a potential prospect.

But, the problem with selling is, and especially the selling you’re talking about, is you’re going to be limited. You only have so much energy. There’s only so many hours in a day. There’s only so many swap meets or so many hours you can sell out of the trunk of your car. You’re limited by your time. It’s like you can only put out so many of those bottle drops everyday, and look, you got an injury.

What happens if you get another injury and you’re unable to work? Then, where does your business go? Nowhere, because it’s reliant on you and your energy, and I’m sure you have a lot of energy and you love getting out and meeting people, but you’ve got the most important thing – the ability to sell and the passion, but to create something that you can sell where you only have to sell it once, but have an automatic system.

So, let’s just kind of look at my website as an example. We’ve never talked. How many hours have you listened to?

Brenda: I have listened to three CDs, and I have six CDs total.

Michael: So, you’ve listened to a few hours of audio, and we’re talking for the first time. I haven’t invested any energy except the energy when I did the original recording and set that audio up. It was a lot of work from the beginning, but that website has got me talking to people all over the world to maybe there’s 20 or 30 or 40 people listening to me on these audio recordings, or they may be reading a transcript, and they’re all over the world. Michael Senoff is selling all over the world.

What am I selling? I may be selling my joint venture course. I may be selling a system on how to do marketing consulting. I may be selling the person on me and my credibility. I may be selling them on a site that is designed to capture a name and an address and a phone number – contact information. Everything I’m doing, I’m always selling something. We’re always selling.

I’m selling automatically. I’m not locked into my selling system. I’ve got a system that is selling for me 24 hours a day. I mean, when nighttime comes, that’s when Australia’s waking up and I’m getting emails from Australia. It is a worldwide economy now. Half of my business is International – England, UK, Singapore. It’s unbelievable, and what’s opened that up really is the Internet. The Internet is amazing. The computer and the way you can communicate with people. You can sell through the Internet. I’m selling through the Internet. The Internet is just a way to deliver information.

I’m just telling you based on my experience what I’m into right now and what I mainly do is I create and develop information products, and I asked you about margins. I know you said, “I don’t want to rip anyone off.” Maybe you’re referring to that website guy where you paid three grand and they sold just some digital bits of a template that really wasn’t custom designed, and that is a rip off.

But, there are things that sell for huge margins that people value that aren’t a rip off and margins are where it’s at. That’s probably one of the attractive things about the catalogue. Those margins are pretty good. They’re better than being a retail store where you buy something for five and you sell it for ten because you’re never going to get anywhere that way with overhead and your cost of employees and all that.

So, I would personally advise, play around with the catalogues, but I would think ahead and create an information product.

Brenda: That’s what I’m doing now.

Michael: Okay. What’s your idea for an information product?

Brenda: I don’t think I even got into that. There’s two things I want to do. In talking to Gary, I came up with the idea to create an information packet, and that is about sales and marketing, not in high big words, but Brenda’s ideas, Brenda’s way of doing things because I always ABC people to death.

Well, I want to do sales and marketing and talk about how to get involved in sales and how everybody who gets out of bed, they’re a sales person and marketing person. I’m doing this information packet and getting it together. That’s going to lead into the sub-whole selling packet.

What I’m going to do is I’m going to put an ad in the paper, somehow, someway, somewhere and I want it to be creative enough, and I want it to be catchy enough to get people to look at this. Or, I’m going to send them a letter, “For your free information letter, please call 1-800-blah.” And, once they listen to the recording and leave their name and address or whether it’s a place that’s set up to do that sort of thing, then I’m going to send them a letter talking about the information packet for X amount of dollars. They would get into Exclusively Yours, that’s the name of my business.

Michael: It sounds like a lot of work to me, and the thing is you can only deal with so many people. You can only deal with calling so many people. Let’s say you put that ad in the paper, and you get a hundred calls. You’re going to be busier than hell. You’re going to be on the phone calling these people back. You’re going to be filling out applications.

After a while, it may be exciting like you said when you first made that big deal of selling in the maternity store, but then it becomes work.

Brenda: But, by then there will be enough money for me to do the website I want.

Michael: All right, but doesn’t the catalogues provide all the literature to recruit people sub-wholesalers and everything?

Brenda: Yes.

Michael: So, they’ve got all that stuff. They’ve got proven stuff that works. What’s this website that you want?

Brenda: The kind of website that I want, my sister and I are designing, and it’s actually got a shooting star and behind the tail of the shooting star has got the name of my company.

Michael: You want a site designed that’s attractive that you like, right?

Brenda: Yeah, something that people will look at and I say, “Oh, I like this” and they’re going to want to look at it.

Michael: And, you don’t know how to do that?

Brenda: I don’t know how to do that.

Michael: So, why don’t you pay someone to do that? You could go onto a website called Elance. You’ve probably heard me talk about, and you can pay some guy from India $15 to do that for you, and screw learning how to do it yourself. Your time is the most valuable commodity. You don’t have to learn how to do everything yourself when there’s experts that can do it much better than you, and you’re going to come out ahead just paying them to do it.

Brenda: Let me ask you this. I have a problem with trusting over the Internet.

Michael: Because of your situation?

Brenda: Because of my situation, and I don’t just want to hand out the money and then be screwed.

benefits. If you go to Elance.com , that is solved. You’re never going to lose out. People are screened. There’s a rating like eBay. Do you know what eBay is?

Brenda: Yes.

Michael: There’s feedback ratings. You’re not going to get screwed on Elance. The only one who would get screwed is the person doing the work. You have the upper hand, and you have people bidding on your project. It is fantastic. You have experts that can do anything and everything from you, bidding on your job from all over the world within an hour of the time you post what you want done.

There’s your workforce. All your expertise is right at that website, and other sites like it – design a site, do this, telemarket. My team – I have a transcriber. I have someone who edits my audio recordings. I have a webmaster. I got them all through Elance who originally bid on my jobs and then we built relationships, and I kept using them. My whole team has been found through Elance. So, there’s your workforce.

Now, you know you can push a button, type something in, get someone to do anything for you, anywhere in the world for cheap, cheap, cheap, and I’m not saying cheap is always good because sometimes when you’re working with someone in another country, there’s time barriers and language barriers, but you have total control.

I would spend an hour or two on that site. Just go get signed up. It doesn’t cost anything to get signed up. The people who bid on your projects are the ones who pay.

Now, you have access to an entire workforce working as independent contractors to do anything you want, anything you can dream of. They’re ready and willing and ready to work for you. Now, is that powerful?

Brenda: That’s powerful.

Michael: No employees, none of that crap, none of that. They’re ready. They’re ready to work for you for cheap.

Brenda: Do they do the stuff for you?

Michael: Do you think I’m sitting there typing all my transcripts out? Editing every one of my recordings? I have a team. You can’t do it all yourself. That’s the thing. you’ve got to learn to let to go, and get a team. Build a team to do these things for you. Your most important asset and the thing that’s going to pay you the most money is your ability to sell, that passion. That’s what you should be focusing.

Now, finding something that you can create, an information product that you don’t need a warehouse for, that you don’t need trunks of your car. Information – it’s digital. It’s audio. It’s a CD Rom. It’s a cassette tape. It’s printed pages that you can print on demand. You could get a company to create and ship. You don’t even have to touch this stuff.

I’m giving information for free on my website, but there’s other information that I sell. So, you may pay $300 for a course that I sell on how to do joint ventures. You pay me the $300, and I send you to a link with all your information. I don’t ship you anything. All I do is send an email, and there you have access to my information. You get a user name and password, and boom, and I’m done with you unless you need help. That’s called leverage. I didn’t have to ship anything. All that stuff is just going to make you get older faster. I want you to do it the easy way.

So, right now, I’m really on information, and not only that, if you can create valuable information that people want or that you know people want already, they’ll pay a lot of money for it.

I’ll use an analogy. If you’re in the desert and you’re dying of thirst, and there’s a guy who knows where the water is, how much are you going to pay for that? You’ll pay anything and you’ll thank him upside down. You’ll give him everything you have in your pockets.

Now, do you care how you get the information? Do you care that he says, “Well I’m going to give you the information where the water is, but I want to do it on this website with stars and it’s going to be purple.”? Do you care what the website looks like? Do you care if the information or the map to where the water is on a scribbled up, gross, ketchup stained, bar napkin? Do you car what the information is on, how it looks?

Brenda: If I’m looking for water, no.

Michael: Well, that’s how you should look at information because if you have a market that’s hungry like that or thirsty like that, using the analogy of the water, they don’t care. They just want the information. They want to know how to do it, where is it, what do I need to do, and your information doesn’t even have to look that pretty.

So, if I’ve somewhat got you interested in information showing you how much easier it is, and how you now can sell something internationally, as long as they speak English, you can sell information. But, you can even get it translated. The margins are there and it’s something you control, and you’re not tied to a catalogue.

Here’s an idea, just from talking to you from the beginning. I’ll give you a simple idea of something you can do. You had a great system for generating qualified leads for selling water softener systems. How many companies are selling water filtrations systems around the country?

Brenda: I have no idea.

Michael: There has got to be thousands of them, and you have a system that really worked, your bottle drop system. It’s a proven system. You just outline that system. Now, if I was in the water filtration business, and I guarantee you there’s thousands of filtration businesses out there all over the country manufacturing and selling and looking for a system to sell home units.

You just outline the system that someone can go out and implement in a day, and start having leads pouring in, you’ve got a system to sell water filtration units.

Now, did they train you on the bottle drop thing?

Brenda: Yeah, they’re the ones who told me about it. They’re the ones who bought the stuff for it. If you’re in the water business, you’re going to do it. Everybody does it.

Michael: Bottle drops. I’ve never seen it out here in California.

Brenda: Well, that’s surprising.

Michael: Well, you see? You think everyone’s going to do it, but it’s a big world out there. Go do a search on Google on the Internet for water filtration systems, and go talk to some of the sales people and ask how they generate leads, and this is just an example. That’s valuable to a company who’s selling systems, who’s selling units. You could sell that system for $1,500 just in the way you describe. You gave me the outline of the system, but you can sell that entire system for $1,500.

Now, you can outline that system, and we can do an interview on exactly how to do it. You could have a little list of the suppliers – where to get the stakes, where to get the bags. You outline in detail how they need to do it. It’s like a training. Do a video of a training of exactly how to do it – when they place it in the ground, what’s the best time to go, what houses don’t you want to drop on, do you want to make sure the next day, what time do you go to pick up the stakes, how do you keep from getting in trouble with the law, where do check to make sure it’s legal to do it, maybe it’s a good idea to go to surrounding city limits.

This information can all be put on audio recording. It’s all in your head, right?

Brenda: Yes.

Michael: You can have someone interview you or you can write down all the important aspects of dropping bottles to sell ten systems a month, guaranteed, and you can sell that training to water filtration companies. You can go call their marketing manager, their sales manager and explain who you are and say that you have a proven system for selling full house units that works like you wouldn’t believe and you just tell them your story.

I can interview you. Someone can interview you, and you can get your whole story on an audio recording or on a CD or on a tape, and you can mail that to these companies. Then, it’s your passion, your sales skill, your excitement, your enthusiasm selling a thousand times a day if you wanted, if you sent out a thousand tapes or a thousand CDs. You could have multiple people listening to your sales pitch on this system. That’s automatic selling. Do you see?

Brenda: Yes.

Michael: Isn’t that nice?

Brenda: It’s a very interesting concept.

Michael: So, all you’re doing, you’re selling once. You’re capturing and canning it and cloning it, like we’re recording this call. I could design an interview with you on your bottle dropping system, on how to sell ten units a month guaranteed. “Brenda’s Water Filtration Training System” guaranteed to sell you ten full units a month, or your money back, $1,500.

Then, in the interview, we’d just go over your story. We wouldn’t give away all the secrets. You couldn’t give it all away, but you could do lead generation, and take them through a process and you could sell that information. And, that system can be used by the owner of that company over and over and over again. You just guarantee it. You back it up. You can offer a consult over the phone, if you wanted to. Most people won’t take you up on it, but as long as they know what the system is, the formula, the recipe, they’ll pay you big money for that, and I’m throwing out $1,500, but what’s it worth to a company who uses it? What could that be worth? That could be worth tens to twenty, thirty, fifty, sixty thousand bucks for a proven system that sells unit that may sell units more than what they’re doing.

Even more than that, they may be wasting money on ineffective advertising that’s just if you work out the cost of their leads. How much are they spending on advertising on television, the Yellow Pages? They can eliminate that large cost of advertising, then you can give them a more cost effective way in generating qualified leads, you’re going to save all that additional money. You can actually show them how it won’t cost them anything for your system because the money you save on advertising will more than pay for your system. Do you know what I mean?

Brenda: Oh, yeah.

Michael: So, you have experience. You have some success. That’s why when I ask a lot of questions at the beginning, I like to know what you’re good at, what you’ve done successfully because everyone has a product in them that’s really valuable, but usually you don’t recognize it because it’s just something that you did, but that is valuable to someone else.

Not, only that, I used to paint address numbers on curbs. I used to knock on doors and install peepholes, door viewers in the doors. This is years ago in college, and I’d go out and make a couple hundred bucks a day. I’d knock on doors. I’d paint the address numbers on the curbs. I’d have my Mikita drill. I’d drill the holes, but I was reliant on knocking on those doors, which was hard work. You’ve done the direct sales thing.

But, this bottle dropping method, now I would do it totally different. I would use direct mail or a method like the bottle dropping to get people to put a red sticker on the door right where the door viewer would go if they wanted it. I would just drive by and look for the red sticker. So, if I had someone drive around and put a little envelope or note on their doorstep saying that I’m going to be in the area tomorrow. We’re installing the door viewers in the doors, or we’re resurfacing the address numbers on the curb. If you’d like one, take this sticker, put it out there, and that’s a lot more effective then just knocking on doors cold.

Brenda: Because they’re by sight.

Michael: Yes, and I don’t want to burst your dreams and stuff with your catalogues because it is an opportunity, but I’m just saying if you found a better way to go, it’s something you should at least consider. It’s a lot less headaches.

You’ve got to take your passion. That’s your most valuable asset is your ability to sell, your ability to be passionate about it. If you found anything that was exciting to you, I’m sure you can sell it. You probably could sell anything to anyone if you’re into it.

Brenda: Oh yeah, because when I worked at the dealership, in one month, I brought in thirty grand for aftermarket sales. So, that’s just really impressed the president.

Michael: So, you did that by following up with customers, right?

Brenda: Well, our customers were directed to my desk once they buy a vehicle. I would dress it up, and I would put their vehicle and their color on my computer screen and then I would add things to it to show them what it would look like.

Michael: So, you had a specific method in selling aftermarket products for the dealership. Here’s another idea. That was a successful system, right?

Brenda: Yes.

Michael: You had a special way of doing it, and that’s intellectual property. That’s your ideas. That’s something that you came up with that really worked. That’s another system every care dealer could be interested in improving their aftermarket sales. That’s another information product that you could create.

So, anything you’ve sold very well could be packaged into a how to product or a training or a system that you can sell. And, again, the information could be nothing but all set up on a website, no inventory, just a website, just a user name and password. There it is. It does take working getting it transcribed. You can have the audio.

All the information I have on my site is delivered. It’s audio. You can download the mp3. You have the ability to burn CDs.

Brenda: I’m pretty impressed with all that.

Michael: I am selling right now all over the world. Right now, my voice is being heard. It’s being read. It’s just amazing, and it’s only going to get more and more as time goes by. So, I’m building a selling machine, an automatic selling machine. It’s an automatic Michael Senoff information vending machine is really what it is. It’s so cool.

Brenda: Yeah, it is cool.

Michael: I’m not stuck, and I don’t like wasting time. We’re recording this call, but there’s something in it for me. I’m giving you my best advice at what I know now, and I get to use this recording with your permission, and I’m going to use this to share with other people. I also give back to a lot of people. So, other people will hear these ideas, and hopefully it will impact them, and someone will thank me down the road. Or, someone may hear it and say, “I want to talk to that Brenda girl, the one selling those water softener systems.”

Brenda: That’s a great idea. The commission on that, I even had commissions of over $2,000 on the system. See, the keyword there is “passionate”. You have to be passionate because people see your eyes. They see your body language. They see your expressions. They see everything there is to see about you and you’re on the platter, and if you don’t deliver.

Michael: That’s if you’re face-to-face, but you can hear my passion in the transcripts and in my audio, can’t you?

Brenda: I can hear your sincerity. I can hear that you’re really deep into passing this on to other people.

Michael: So, that’s the passion, but you can do this just on audio without someone saying. I’m saying take yourself out of the picture. Get your passion and capture it on audio, or it can be on a video tape, and then if someone watches a video tape they can see you.

I’ll give you an example. I got an email this morning. I’ll just read you a little bit. “I’m 27 years old accountant with Tyson Foods, Incorporated. I’m married, two five year old daughters. My goal is to eventually work from home and still provide my family a very comfortable lifestyle. Okay, enough about me. The reason I’m contacting you is because I have a couple of questions I was hoping you could help me with. I’ll try to take as little of your time as possible. Number one – you interviewed a guy named Allan Miller who was making a great living buying and selling old trailer homes. Did he ever put together a product outlining this? Do you know how I can get in touch with him?”

So, this is a guy who listened to one of my recordings with this guy who makes all this money selling trailer homes. You may not see that on the site. It was on my CD. Allan Miller is a guy, we were going to create an information product. I did a great interview with him on how he made money buying these beat-up trailer homes, flipping them and turning them. It was a great interview. The guy never did anything with it and never created an information product, but every month I’ll get emails like this about Allan Miller. I say, “Well, I don’t have any information on him”, because this was years ago I did the recording.

But, these recordings are designed to sell. So, just for example, we could do your system on how to bottle drop for profits. “Hey, I just heard this recording with Brenda on to bottle drop”, but that’s what you can do. That’s an automatic lead generator without me being in the car, putting stakes in the ground. I don’t want to do it, but other people would be willing to do it.

Brenda: Oh, there are tons of people that will be doing to do it, especially if they don’t have what it takes to go out and do information products.

Michael: Did I give you something to think about?

Brenda: You have definitely given me something to think about, and I’m definitely going to take advantage of everything we have talked about. Michael, I have really enjoyed this, and I really am thankful that you spent doing it. I know that you’ve got something out of it, but I’ve got something out and I think this has just been really great.

Michael: Call me back and we can do additional recordings if you want to follow through on some of the advice or whatever you’re doing, if you want to bring me up to date, and tell me of any successes and we’ll just keep adding on to it.

Brenda: I will definitely do that, and again I really appreciate everything and thanks for taking the time.

Michael: You’re very welcome. Have a great weekend.

Brenda: All right you do the same, bye.