Michael: I’ve read your email and I know you’ve got a lot of ideas and you’re a little ADD, probably like me and that is the hardest part, but the hardest thing is deciding what do you want a niche in and it’s the most important thing. And I know you kind of got all kinds of ideas.

Lynn: Well especially if you’re going to build it out for awhile and spend a lot of time on it. And then also the model comes in, what kind of model, that can make a difference in whether you’re just doing little short reports or you’re doing a long term membership site with audio.

Michael: Look it all comes down to one thing you’re finally going to be selling something, that’s the end thing. I mean are we doing this to make an income personal freedom to support yourself maybe you have different reasons. What is the main reason for all of this? Does it come down to money?

Lynn: Well in a way. I would like a portable lifestyle. I love to travel. If I could somehow make enough that I didn’t have to be in one place all the time or could just meet my expenses and could take off sometimes, still be able to work from where I was if I wanted to, that kind of thing. So yeah I guess its freedom.

Michael: Are you working now?

Lynn: Well kind of. I was a Police Dispatcher for a long time in San Francisco and then started working with dogs and I kind of have been doing that off and on for awhile, but I did dog training years ago, I haven’t done it in awhile I’ve mostly just been walking and sitting and that kind of thing searching for what I wanted to do.

Michael: Which is something that totally locks you down you have to be there whether you’re feeling good or not. If you’ve got appointments and you’ve got clients that’s total [ampethesis] of what you want.

Lynn: Right. Even though I adore dogs.

Michael: Even though you adore dogs but you don’t have your personal freedom and that’s what’s so great. You know the audio interviews are really just an automated sales system, you know, that’s what’s beautiful and when you combine it with the internet that gives you the ability to deliver your sells message anywhere. I mean as long as you upload it and you have a place that anyone in the world can go to and click on that button or download that MP3 you can get the information in their head and you can be anywhere as long as you have internet access.

Lynn: Right.

Michael: So that is what I love about this so much is I can be anywhere and that we’re using and harnessing this awesome thing called the internet to deliver your sells pitch. Even though the sells pitch is disguised as an interview and even though it’s giving a lot of great information that’s the bottom line, that’s the power, it’s that leverage of the internet and being able to deliver it 24/7 to anyone in the world as long as they can listen and understand and comprehend English and as long as they fit a perspective buyer that they have money and that they do their interest in what they’re listening to.

Lynn: Yeah it’s lucky that we’re living in this time I suppose because 20 years ago I certainly wouldn’t have had that option.

Michael: Yeah I agree. So we want something that’s going to make you some money, you know, there’s people with money and there’s people without money and you could directly market to both groups but it always makes sense to go to people with money. And there’s one thing I found that always will bring in more money compared to another thing and that’s like the type of products that I sell they’re information content but they’re information content that someone can use for their life. A lot of them are business opportunities. So when someone’s considering buying into a business opportunity, a training that’s going to show them how to have a business that’s going to allow them to make ongoing revenue and ongoing income and support themselves and their family, that’s kind of worth a little bit more than maybe a course on how to train their dog or something on nutrition, even though nutrition’s really interesting, or a product on travel. Certainly products on dog training, travel and nutrition are out there and they’ll sell and there is a market for them but you can sometimes sell something that’s going to show people how to make money maybe solve bigger problems and you can sell those things for maybe 10, 20, 30, 40 times more.

Lynn: Right.

Michael: So you do 10, 20, 30, 40 times less selling, less customer service, less management, you know, less everything which is really nice as well.

Lynn: Yeah. Okay and I think I mentioned briefly that I thought about those things as, you probably noticed in my email, and I guess since we’re going kind of in that direction I would have to ask since I don’t have expertise in that is that going to be okay?

Michael: Yeah, that’s totally okay. You don’t have to have expertise. Almost all of my products that I sell, and I’ve got about 13 or 14 different products, I’m not even the expert and that’s what’s so great that the positioning. Like I’m sure you’ve seen the stuff on my marketing consulting stuff, a guy named Richard he’s the expert. He was the marketing expert who paid the big bucks to go to Jay Abraham’s training and he went out there and built a consulting practice and put together this system and he wasn’t doing anything with it. And then I found out about them. See there’s all kinds of content creators, content is out there. You can find awesome experts with huge expertise and clout and good stock for marketing. You know there’s another guy named Art Hamel, this is a business buying expert, he was huge, he was all over TV in the 80’s and he was putting on huge seminars in the 80’s had a huge seminar business and he was teaching people how to buy a business. Are you familiar with that name Art Hamel from my stuff at all?

Lynn: Only from hearing you talk about him.

Michael: Okay. So this guy I think he’s 75 now when I met him he was maybe 70, I met him five years ago, and he was selling his old seminars on eBay because they were sitting in his basement; he had hundreds of them. So if you want to go after a business opportunity there’s content out there. You can go on Amazon and you can search an expertise, let’s say its business buying and you would probably find one of his old books that would be out of print, but that gives you a clue. You can find any expert who’s been an expert in the past by looking for a published book that’s out of print. Okay, now you would have the author’s name and then you start doing a little research and see if you can contact them, see if he’s still alive and see what they’re doing with their book. And in many cases maybe it did real well for a short period of time but they own the rights to the book and it’s just sitting there doing nothing with it and they may even have books, seminar tapes, all kinds of products. Finding the products and the intellectual property to sell is not hard. There are thousands and thousands of brilliant men and women who have invested their whole lives in teaching or training on a specific expertise that just have been poor marketers and have all this great stuff just sitting there and have this great clout and expertise that you can leverage off of. Do you ever watch 60 Minutes?

Lynn: Of course, yeah.

Michael: Did you see Sunday’s edition on the licensing agent who licensed dead celebrities?

Lynn: Oh yeah.

Michael: Okay. This is a perfect example.

Lynn: I know I was thinking the same thing, that guys brilliant.

Michael: He’s brilliant. Look at James Dean, remember James Dean? Okay so James Dean died he didn’t have much of a family, he was super famous during the three movies that he did, and then he had no agent. And all he did was go in and find the errors and say “Hey, can I get the licensing rights to James Dean?” And they said “Yes” and he probably pays them a percentage, a royalty on the gross sells. This is no different than what I did with Richard or what I did with Art Hamel except they’re alive, but their products were did, they were done and completed and published and they had these careers, one in consulting and one in business buying that were huge, but no one knew about that. And then I just approached them and said “Hey, if I can position you as an expert and kind of promote you and sell your products and you give me the rights to remarket your products or private label it or brand it or what have you and I’ll pay your percentage of whatever I sell.” It’s a total win- win. I mean both these guys love it because I’m out there promoting and selling them in their name and their expertise. They’re making money really doing nothing I did all the work but I get the leverage off their lifetime of work. And it’s that expertise, that lifetime of work that they invested their whole life that I get to step in and take and use to promote and that’s what helps drive the sales. So let’s just recap here. What I’m thinking for you, if you’re open to it and I’m just giving you ideas of business opportunity because people will pay more money for it, find expertise that is untapped or not being used in a specific niche or a market and then make an agreement with that expert to license and market and sell their material and you pay them a small royalty. And you don’t have to pay them 50% like you probably hear in a lot of these joint venture courses, you know, any kind of book publishing deal the publisher will only pay the author between 5% and 12% royalty, so on a $10 book the author will only make $.50 to $1.20 per book sold they don’t get much because the content isn’t worth a lot it’s the marketing that’s worth a lot. Okay, go ahead you talk now. You’re listening to an exclusive interview found on Michael Senoff’s HardToFindSeminars.com.

Lynn: Okay, so do you feel that then it would be best to go after people that have kind of fallen out of popularity, for whatever reason, you know, it’s just been a matter of time or do you feel it’s also good or not so good to start out by perhaps approaching people that are doing something now? Well no that wouldn’t make sense. I guess I’m thinking in terms of interviews, a lot of people, for instance when you’re in the internet marketing field you find people that made their first living by interviewing 10 internet marketing gurus like that. I’m just contrasting that with what you’re saying.

Michael: Okay, yeah the now or then. Well, what’s really important is if you’re going to interview someone is this guy a big name and what has he done? Is he truly an expert? Is he credible? If someone listens to this guy, you know, if I interview a billionaire people like to listen to someone who’s really been a billionaire, you know, that gets attention, but if you interview a guy who’s planning on making $1 billion dollars what’s going to get listened to more? It’s going to be listened to the guy who’s already done it. Now this may answer your question. Even with Art Hamel he is in is 70’s when I met him he already had audio content. He had an entire seminar already produced 12 hours of professionally studio recorded training on how to buy a business which I got the rights too. Okay. So I had audio content but he was still alive and then I still got to interview him about the glory days. So I did an initial interview introducing him, who he was, what he was doing, his expertise all that stuff even though I had content from him already. I was way ahead of the game because I didn’t have to create all the content myself that’s one of the benefits of stepping in and licensing an existing product with audio or written content. But you could still interview that expert even though he’s past his prime he’s still the expert but he may not be actively out there marketing. I ended up doing multiple interviews with him probably have another 10 or 15 hours of individual interviews I’ve done with him in his 70’s that I was able to use to promote the product that I had the licensing to.

Lynn: If you were like a rank beginner and Number 1 didn’t necessarily know anything about this particular person’s expertise even though you found them, Number 1 how would you formulate questions? Would you need to go through the entire course or something in order to learn how to formulate questions? And Number 2 what particular specific niche might you approach, might there be a few ideas there, you’re saying biz opportunities is more…?

Michael: Well first of all the question thing, you know, how to get questions for your interview.

Lynn: Yeah when you don’t know anything about that interview.

Michael: That’s okay. You don’t have to know anything. Like when I met Art Hamel I didn’t know anything about business buying. I was interested so maybe my first interview was just one of being interested, you know, tell me who you are, who, what, when, why, where? You know I took him through a chronological event from his first business when he was managing a little 20 room motel in Modesto, California all the way up to his story about how he started buying these businesses in Mexico and all that. So it would start with an interview like that. Now he already had material he had a whole course which had an outline. The simple way to create questions is I’d look in his book or his course that was already produced and developed and look at the chapter outlines and then I can formulate my questions based on the structure of his course. Or you can go to Amazon.com and type in business buying and look at other books on business buying. You can look at the outlines of each one of those books, you can look at the indexes of each one of those books online and print those topics out and formulate your questions based on the order of those outlines. See you’re never going to have to dream anything up it’s already been done no matter what it is.

Lynn: Right.

Michael: And someone’s done it before and you can compile and look at what other people have done before to get ideas and to formulate your questions. You could search in the PR Press Releases, you can go in the Ezine articles look at articles on business buying or for any topic you’re thinking about approaching. You can find the questions and articles and the topics that have already been published, magazine articles that have been published on a certain subject, I mean you have archives of this stuff for the past 60 years, 70 years all online. That’s not going to be a problem coming up with questions. And another great way is going online and just searching, typing in the question. There’s other people like you who have the same questions you have and see what the most common questions are. If you have a database of customers or a database of people you can create what’s called an Ask Campaign where you can say “Hey, I’m interviewing this expert” – and I’ve done this a lot you may have noticed on some of my emails – I need help interviewing them. What’s your most important question you have about buying a business? And I did this with Art Hamel and I had 108 questions submitted to me and then we did a six part interview on answering all the questions from my students; and that’s the most powerful one if you can get access to a list of people because you’re delivering exactly what your market wants.

Lynn: And if you don’t have access to a list.

Michael: Then you’re going to do the methods I described. You’re going to look at press releases. Amazon would be all you would need. Look at the table of contents of related books and you print them out and if it says “What’s important about locating a business? Five steps for evaluating a business.” So you just turn them into questions. “So Art what’s the most important thing about when I’m locating a business? What are three things you can think would be the most important thing about evaluating a business?” And you ask the question, be quite and just listen and let the recording capture everything and you’re creating your product that way. Okay, now what type of niche? That’s the thing we’re getting back into, what type of niche? What do you want to sell? You got to look at markets, business opportunities is hot, how to make money on the internet, Web site consulting services are powerful, but that’s just the mass type thing there’s niches for almost anything. But you do want something that people are willing to pay a lot of money for that has a high passion index. Like golfers are crazy, there’s not business opportunity there, but as far as a product golfing is just a raved market.

Lynn: Yeah.

Michael: Did you mention to me about you listen to that recording about the guy with barbecue?

Lynn: Yeah.

Michael: I’ll tell you if I had the extra time I would love to do that, interview pit masters.

Lynn: Yeah.

Michael: That’ll be fun. It’s not Biz Opp but it’s got a mass appeal…

Lynn: Yeah.

Michael: …and it’s a high passion thing, you know, some products can be turned into Biz Opp. Let’s say you developed and created a collection of 20 of the best pit masters and what they do to make the best barbecue ribs, chicken or what have you, and you had this collection, you could turn it into a Biz Opp and offer resell rights to it. So you could sell the rights.

Lynn: That’s a Biz Opp.

Michael: There’s always a way to turn something into a Biz Opp. But that could be something you create the product and you can license it for resell and then you sell the licensing right for $1000 bucks or $500 bucks. There’s a lot you can do. Don’t get confused or overwhelmed but you got to come up with something that you think you would enjoy learning about, I think that’s really important, that’s fun and that there are a lot of people who are passionate about. Barbecue is one of them I really think that’ll be a fantastic product.

Lynn: Yeah that is a great idea.

Michael: Poker, you know, interviewing some of the best poker players. It’s kind of a CD type market but it is raved, I mean the lure of easy money playing poker or blackjack that would be really a fantastic product I think.

Lynn: Okay, if you jump back for a minute to the learning how to buy businesses, if you did something like that and you had several interviews put together and – let’s go with two scenarios, let’s say one he license some of his content that he already has, I guess that’s where you’re saying you’d make your initial money and then where would you make your money?

Michael: That would be a real shortcut. The licensing stuff is where you shortcut the process by not having to create this entire product. So by buying or acquiring the licensing rights to Art Hamel’s stuff you’re going to have some production work in getting it ready to be sold online but most of the work has been done and you get to promote him and all his expertise and you don’t have to mess with creating an entire product.

Lynn: Right, and if they don’t have content.

Michael: If they don’t have content…

Lynn: Well they have a book, you know.

Michael: Let’s say they have a book, that’s a start you’re going to have more work. But if they’re a big time expert and they have a book that’s a good start. And if they’re willing to work with you and let you interview them what you could do is break the book into chapters and you can do interviews on each one of the subjects. So you can take that book and do fresh interviews with them and create audio content to go along with the book or if that follows the format of the book. And then even from the book, you know, you can branch out and you can put on seminars based on that content if you wanted to do live seminars, but if you wanted to automate it you can create audio from the book. Worst case scenario you could pay an actor some voice talent to read each one of the chapters into audio and create MP3 files and create an audio book from it.

Lynn: Okay. And then you just set that up on a Web site and try to drive traffic or you go to somebody else?

Michael: If you have an expert and you have the rights and control over a product, let’s just say it’s a book, you can even start with a book. You know if you had the exclusive rights to a book from Obama about the days leading up to his presidential campaign and let’s say you had worldwide rights to it, do you think you’d have a problem making some money off that book?

Lynn: No.

Michael: Okay, because he is an expert he’s the President of the United States, so with that expertise you have more value there you’re going to have an easier time making money with that product just by having the rights. If it’s a book or a manuscript and that expert, let’s say it was Lee Iacocca, you know, some real big name you’re not going to have a hard time making money from it because it’s valuable because a lot of people know of that expert. Now if they’re not that well-known but they have a lot of credentials you’re going to have a little more marketing but still you’ve leveraged off their entire life’s work. That has a lot of value for you and it has a lot of marketing value. So if it’s a specific subject or topic, let’s say it was the 10 Time Reigning World Champion of Poker Player and you had the rights to his story and how he won, how he was the most winningness poker player in the entire world during the 80’s, let’s say it was in the 80’s - boy there’s a lot of poker players out there now in our time who would love to learn from this guy who have never heard of him because they were too young. And then you could promote the fact that this guy won more poker tournaments than anyone in the 80’s and 90’s put together. The reason most people don’t know of him is because he died suddenly in a car crash or whatever. And then you talk about all his winnings. Those winnings and that expertise and the fact that he was what you promote he was is instant credibility and will drive sells to the manuscripts that you’ve acquired the rights to or to interviews maybe that you did with him if he’s still living. You know what I’m saying?

Lynn: Yeah.

Michael: Once you let that market know you got your expert, what market is he in, and then you target your marketing to that market of that expertise there’s going to be people who want to know about that and who will pay money for that…

Lynn: Yeah.

Michael: …because their expertise is a shortcut to their problem. So Art Hamel – I’m sitting here I swear to you I just had an order come in for the Art Hamel system, I’m looking at it right here from a guy in Aurora, Colorado. I’m talking to you but he must have been listening or reading the sales letter on my site while we’re talking, order comes in, digital product, $297 dollars. So when I hang up with you I’m going to reply to it and I’m going to open a Word pad and send him the little form letter that gives him the link to the product and I’m done with him. Now how beautiful is that?

Lynn: Yeah.

Michael: And I know it takes work to get it setup but Art Valentine in Aurora, Colorado wouldn’t have sent me his $297 dollars through PayPal if Art Hamel really wasn’t an expert, if he didn’t know what he was doing. But because he’s got the credibility and I was able to interview him and deliver to Mr. Valentine Art’s story in a simple interview by recording and asking questions he now knows that he was an expert, believes he’s an expert, and his willing to invest $297 dollars to listen to his expertise to shortcut his path to buying a business. And it’s going to be no different with whatever you’re selling.

Lynn: Okay, so a topic came up as we were talking. You know everybody’s always interested in real estate, do you think that that’s kind of a – like for instance buying foreclosures in this market, now is that something where you can go back and find experts? Different scenario this time or maybe it’s not different but in some ways it’s…

Michael: Yeah, you know what, now maybe a right time. The marketers of real estate products really got pummeled because of our little recession that we’ve been going through but some of that’s coming back and you’re going to start seeing them come back. But their online businesses were devastated but they’re sitting there with products. Yeah that may be a really smart idea to go after some of those gurus who had great products, who were doing well, who gave up that business and acquire the rights to some of their stuff.

Lynn: Gave up that business just in the last couple of years.

Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah that has happened. Yep. And you may be able to get that stuff, you know, approach them with a licensing deal. They’ve probably moved on to other stuff. And the market seems to be coming back and, you know, there’s cycles in everything. Are you into that real estate stuff at all?

Lynn: Well I’ve been interested in it.

Michael: See I like the way you’re thinking. That would be smart. Acquiring and getting the licensing rights to a product already put together of an expert is a great way to go. Just think of the 60 Minutes thing that guy is brilliant what he did with dead celebrities. And Art Hamel will die and Richard Johnson will eventually die and most likely I’ll still have the rights to their stuff, it’ll be no different than the guy on 60 Minutes. And then I have rights to other older experts a guy named Melvin Powers who’s in his 80’s who is a very famous mail order man. I’ve got hours of interviews and I’ve got his entire mail order product that he’s doing nothing with now. I’m selling it online it’s not doing that great but it could, you know. I’m just trying to think of this shortcut way for you. I think maybe acquiring the rights to a complete product that’s in the graveyard right now that you revive. A lot of people don’t think you can market a product from the 80’s or 70’s. Like Art Hamel’s product is from the 80’s but it’s still all applicable today.

Lynn: And did people come looking for that on your site?

Michael: No one came looking for it. I market it. It was up there, they listened to the interviews and they were directed to it by me. I tell you if anyone’s thought about buying a business here’s a new interview with a business buying expert who has bought and sold over $200,000 million dollar businesses. And so someone may have that desire to learn about that and they tuned in and then they listened and they were sold on the expertise and the credibility of Mr. Hamel and then bought the course.

Lynn: And you found that by going to eBay and just looking around.

Michael: Yeah I was on eBay. I just typed in seminars and I was looking at what people were selling. And also, you know, speaking of poker we’re in the process of producing a video series from a guy who is putting on seminars on How to Beat the Casinos at Blackjack, he was a card counter and he made hundreds of thousands of dollars and then he was selling his little seminar. He’d fly out and teach you how to count cards for like $5000 dollars, and then I approached him and then we put a product together on that. So instead of going out doing live seminars I go “Why don’t you do this seminar in front of a camera and then we can sell it.”

Lynn: How did you find him?

Michael: I was on eBay and typed in seminars.

Lynn: Oh and typed in seminars.

Michael: Yeah. So there’s all kinds of stuff being sold on eBay you just got to look at it and kind of dig and ask yourself, well could this be turned into a product that could be sold online through digital video or digital audio or turned into a physical product.

Lynn: The other thing is that when I was thinking about the travel aspect and the dog aspect I kept thinking well, you know, what I’d really like to do is audio but you kind of need video or…

Michael: No you don’t.

Lynn: No.

Michael: Oh well yes, yeah, on your dog training you’re right. I’m sorry. Yeah you are right on that.

Lynn: The kind of stuff on…

Michael: Yeah that stuff. And you know what I’m going to tell you, you don’t need the hassle of video. Don’t do anything that requires video, it’s too much. Audio is easy. We’re doing audio right now.

Lynn: Right.

Michael: Forget it. If you ask me to do video I wouldn’t even mess with it. You need equipment time, lighting, location, no way.

Lynn: But it was okay for the poker thing but that was just because he did it.

Michael: It was okay for the poker thing. Yeah he did it, I didn’t do it. You got to keep it easy.

Lynn: Yeah. So, alright. So what I need to do is just go and do a lot of searching and looking around and…

Michael: Yeah.

Lynn: …see if I can see something that sparks my interest I guess.

Michael: And look for the expertise, you know, that’s going to be real important in your marketing. See you don’t have to do much selling when the information that you’re selling is from a true expert, and the higher his expertise is the easier your sell is going to be, that’s what you want.

Lynn: If you were looking around and you kept running across things that you didn’t necessarily know this guy, how did you know for sure that this person or that person was once really…

Michael: You got to dig. I didn’t know Art Hamel was really anything until I called him up…

Lynn: Oh.

Michael: …and started talking to him. And I said “Hey, I’m looking for seminars to sell on my site, you know, what’s this thing?” And then he started telling me, at that time I recorded that very first call and it’s one of the interviews with him. And then the same thing with Richard you don’t know, you’re going to have to do some digging and call him and say “You know tell me about yourself.” First you can start with an internet search with their name and see if you can find anything but if you’re not sure you’re can call them and find out. Alrighty.

Lynn: Yeah.

Michael: I know it seems like there’s so many different ways and it’s almost so easy not to get started you’re almost paralyzed…

Lynn: Yeah.

Michael: …put a plan down, just focus on one thing, maybe that should be the thing. Search for really high expertise information products that I could potentially get the rights to. If you want to run some ideas by me email me say “Hey Mike, check this out I found this and this lady does this or this guy does this, tell me what you think” and I’ll give you my two cents.

Lynn: Oh that’s wonderful I’d love to do that. Thank you. One more thing, you always say let me know what I can do for you and I was thinking what can I do for you? I was curious, I make these really amazing, but I’m going to have to figure out how to get them there overnight, but I make these really amazing molasses sugar cookies.

Michael: Oh really.

Lynn: Would you eat them if I sent them to you?

Michael: Oh yeah, I sure would and I got kids that love cookies. Yeah.

Lynn: Yeah.

Michael: How did you come across that?

Lynn: You know how it is in the south when you move people come over and welcome you and all that, they don’t do that out here, but one of the many, many times we moved when I was a kid somebody came over and brought those over and we got the recipe and I’ve been making them every since. I’d be happy to send them to you…

Michael: You don’t have to overnight them just send them regular.

Lynn: I don’t want them to be, you know, stale or anything.

Michael: Where are you again?

Lynn: Saratoga.

Michael: Okay, Saratoga.

Lynn: The Bay area yeah, but I’ll overnight them.

Michael: Oh you’re sweet.

Lynn: But give me a couple of days to get the ingredients and everything because I don’t have them right on hand.

Michael: That’ll be sweet I’d love it, I’d love it. And I’ll help you out the best way I can. The biggest thing you can do for me is get a success and let me interview you in a couple of months and just tell me your story.

Lynn: Yeah that would be great.

Michael: You can do it.

Lynn: Okay if you say so. I really appreciate your time and I’ll keep you abreast.

Michael: Please do and I’ll email you this recording.

Lynn: Okay thanks so much, Michael.

Michael: Alright, bye-bye Lynn.

Lynn: Bye-bye.