One thing I have been thinking about lately is how many entrepreneurs will do just enough to please the customer instead of really wowing them. The same entrepreneurs wonder why they don’t get many referrals.

Today I have a short interview with Melody Trantham who owns WeScribeIt. Melody handles my transcriptions for me. She is one of the entrepreneurs who gets it. When I hire her and her team to transcribe my interviews, they are done VERY fast.

Here are a few questions I asked her about getting transcriptions done. Enjoy and consider trying out her company for your next job.

David: Can you tell us a little bit about what you do?

Melody: My name is Melody Trantham and I am the CEO of WeScribeIt.com.  WeScribeIt provides dictation and transcription services to a global client-base at an affordable rate without sacrificing quality.  We provide transcription services to many areas, many fields, many companies.  From small business owners, journalists, fire investigator, author, all the way to doctor, lawyer, ER physician, physical therapist, home occupational therapist and many more.

David: How did WeScribeIt come about?

Melody: WeScribeIt was founded in 2008.  It started as an idea to provide a service from a genuine person to genuine people.  I was annoyed and irritated at those companies who were “fake” to their clients.  They didn’t care if the client returned; they just wanted what money they could get out of them and move on to the next client ready to spend their money.  WeScribeIt was started to be the opposite of what I had encountered myself.

David: Who are the people that inspired you and why?

Melody: Honestly, the people who inspired me during the start-up of this transcription service are the businesses who don’t live up to their word, who don’t provide excellent quality, who don’t put their clients first (or even their transcriptionists), and who really look at the business as a dollar sign.  Through experience, we learned that relationships and providing top-notch service is what will bring clients back and make sure they talk about us to others they know.

Through experience, we learned that relationships and providing top-notch service is what will bring clients back and make sure they talk about us to others they know.

David: What should my readers ask before hiring a transcriptionist?

Melody: This is an excellent question.  First, I think you should determine what it is you need.  What do you need out of the service?  Before you can ask anything of anybody else you should know, first, what you need from them, and second, your expectations on the completed transcript.  Next, you should ask the transcriptionist if they can meet your needs, schedule, budget, or anything else that you need for that project.

David: What are some problems that our listeners should be on the lookout for, and how can they be avoided when it comes to hiring a transcriptionist?

Melody: Look out for services and/or companies who use International transcribers.  You get what you pay for.  If you don’t mind spending unnecessary time correcting the document after you spent money to have it transcribed, then using offshore transcribers may work for you.  Most people can’t afford to spend the time to do this.  Of course, time is money.  Look on the Internet for bad feedback that may have been posted about the service.  More importantly, be up front with what you need.

David: What is the difference between you, and all the other transcription companies doing the same thing that you do?

Melody: Number one, to me, would be the caring for our clients and transcribers.  WIthout either, we wouldn’t be in business.  We don’t take either for granted.  Each client, no matter how big or small, they matter to us.  They get in a bind and contact us for help, we will do everything we can to make that happen.  Their boss has dropped a project on their desk with expectation of having it completed in 2 hours and they’re frantic to make their boss happy, we do what we can to help out in any way possible.

David: What do you think makes the difference between a good transcriptionist and a great transcriptionist?

Melody: A great transcriptionist will take extra time to proof their work.  A great transcriptionist will sacrifice their per hour rate to make sure the client is receiving an excellent transcript.

David: I noticed the projects I send you get done very quickly, usually I am really shocked, do you have a secret for such a quick turnaround time?

Melody: Oh, I’ll never tell our secrets.  No, we just really try hard to find transcriptionists who have the same thoughts about business as we do.  The clients matter to them and they want to work.  We screen each candidate carefully and make sure they’re a good fit for our company and clients.

David: What special offer can you make for our listeners?

Melody: We would love to offer our affordable and quality service to your listeners.  Our rates start at just a penny per word.  We do offer 500 free words just to try us out, because we are confident you will be pleased with the transcript you receive.

Andrew Perlot took his passion for raw food and turned it into an online business. This is a great example of someone turning a lemon into lemonade. Andrew had some health issues that cause him to go searching for solution.

He went from being a underpaid reporter to becoming an online entrepreneur teaching people about raw food health.

As you go through this interview, ask yourself “What life experience could I turn into an online business?“.

I just got through interviewing Andrew on how he did it.

You can read about his success here.

It is Febuary 2010 as I write this post and America is in the middle of a massive change. Many people are losing their jobs although they are more than qualified for the positions.

Others have been laid off for more than a year and have no hope for the future.

If that is you or you know someone that is looking for a job right now, then have them go through this
interview I did with Dan Miller who is author of the book 48 Days To The Work You Love.

David: This interview was taken from the book I authored called Internet Empires. Enjoy the interview!

I was completely honored when Dan Miller agreed to be interviewed for my book. Dan helps people find the work they love as well as find ways to make creative income. I told Dan the biggest reason for me wanting him in my book is because I want you, the reader, to take action and start an online business. Please do not just let this book sit on the shelf. Take Dan Miller’s advice in the interview and take action. I believe you can do it and so does Dan.

Dan Miller

David: Alright, Dan, I’d like to thank you for taking the time to do the interview, I’m really excited about it. I don’t know how long I’ve been on the newsletter but, I told you this the other day that I probably subscribe to probably fifty newsletter, but I probably read about five to ten that I read religiously. You have such good content in helping people find the work they love and teaching people how to make the extreme come from their passions.

I’m going to give some background, so people if, I’m from Nashville so I’ve heard about you for a long time through Dave Ramsey, but I’m going to go ahead and give some background for people who may not know who you are yet. You are the owner of 48 days dot com. I don’t even know where to start as far as your credentials. On the Internet, you write articles for the Christian broadcasting network. Your articles from there, Wife Way, the huge Baptist bookstore, I know you write articles for Sovim.

You are Dave Ramsey’s career expert and that’s how I heard of you for the first time. The www.crosswalk.com is one of the to Christian websites on the entire Internet, and some of your articles are posted there a couple of times a month and as far as, you’ve been in several magazines including new man magazine and the Baptist press. Also, television, Chris Matthew’s hardball, you’ve been really busy over the past couple of years, so just go ahead and get started.

Let’s talk about the change you talk about in 48 days to the work you love. Also, talk about 48 days and your creative income you talk about because it’s just a different model nowadays. I’m twenty-seven and the people fifty years ago, right out of high school. Then, you actually go and get a job, and you work somewhere for forty fifty years. You get your gold watch and talk about how that has actually changed and where we are at today.

Dan: Sure, it’s changed dramatically that model you just described is pretty obsolete; the average job length for someone in their twenties right now is one point one year. Thirteen months, so that is pretty radical if we looked overall. Your standard job length is about three point two years in length, so even using that as a guideline and looking at the mathematics of a working lifetime, someone can expect to have fourteen to sixteen different jobs.

That’s changed dramatically, so that means you have to really understand what it is that you do well. So, you have clear set of areas of competence, and you can continue on a positive career path even as you go from company to company or rather than start in the company. We used to hear the old stories, if I could just get into this company, then eventually, I’ll be CEO. It doesn’t happen anymore.

David: No.

Dan: People, if they need an upper-level position are likely to go out of the company and bring somebody in as promote somebody from internal who’s already been there. Than declare what your skills are ready at any given time to put the skills to the test in terms of finding out what your market ability really is by encouraging people rather than having the old employee mentality to keep self-employed as the person chooses to have one customer.If they are working for one company that’s okay, but as soon as you really understand that you have to be in the driver’s seat, you have to take responsibility as we see the demise of pension plans, medical care benefits, and all of those things going away, just coming back to the individual.

Anyway, now once you understand all of this, then it’s not a quant leap to even look at the new work model, so to go from being a employee to being a consultant or even a contractor or contingent or whatever you want to call it. You have to realize there’s a whole lot of opportunities out here, but the new work models may not even look different from what we were used to for the previous generation.

David: Absolutely. What type of information do you have as far as people really despising their job? Their boss? I’ve read in your newsletter before you talk about the quote where you were talking about heart attack, 20% higher on Mondays.

Dan: 33% increase in heart attack in Monday morning between eight and ten o’clock and it’s clearly related to people going to jobs they hate. We hear various stories and statistics.

David: Sure.

Dan: You want to usually hear somewhere in the area of 70% of people say they’d change their job if they could.

David: Wow.

Dan: That’s pretty startling. Pretty alarming. In the greatest country in the world with more opportunities than we’ve ever had with that many people, still, feeling like work is some kind of a bitter pill that we just have to tolerate. Rather than being our greatest sense of joy and pleasure in what we do.

David: I was talking to you the other day about doing this call, and I don’t think people realize how many times they go around one time. I told you what the purpose of this book is, I hate the fact that people settle in life. I talked to a guy the other day. He’s been working on lawnmowers and tractors for like eighteen years, and I’m telling you Dan; I said, his name’s Ricky, an expert. He did not even see himself like that. He’s just kind of stuck in this type of mindset. I said, “you could capitalize on what you know, whether it’s in writing, CD, putting a CD together, a book together, just various different situations. So we understand that there is a problem.

Okay, so obviously the heart attack problem and people not liking their job, therefore, let’s go with talking about you have a checker in your forty-eight years of creative income called seizing opportunity. Let’s talk about some of the opportunities out there as far as people have to make money. This obviously is an online, and the book is really about online opportunities. What are some making money online concepts? Obviously, you have a really good success stories as well that we’ll get to later, but talk about seizing opportunity.

Dan: One of the easiest models to just get into is the eBay model. You don’t have to get merchant card, credit card approval status. You don’t have to open up accounts anywhere. You don’t have to do anything to start a business. You don’t have to rent a building, buy inventory, hire employees; you could be in business this afternoon, legitimately in business. You can even have the appearance of being a big business if you position yourself right. There have been thousands and thousands of people that simply decided; I’m going to specialize in baseball cards, or I’m going to specialize and gift item web store, home decorating item, or cookie, etc.

There is no limit to what you can choose. I encourage people to become a specialist in something, don’t be a generalist. I know you can do that one day, and it’s a good way to learn too. You are going to have to be a specialist in something, when you do and if you do it right, you can be very successful in online business. I like not even dealing with physical products, but just dealing with information. Absolutely where the sky is the limit, because if you created a eBook on “how to” or have an audio product that’s uploaded as an mp3 file, you can have one person buy it or ten thousand people buy it and it makes no difference. You don’t have to scramble to go find more. Why? It’s inexhaustible because of the technology that you use to deliver it.

David: You’ve created it well, you talk about what an eBook is, so what are some of the people in work? You probably have a thousand stories, but what if you talked about some of the people that you’ve come across over the past several years that have seized opportunity and have made money from their passing, “cause I know you’re a big believer in actually taken your passion and make money from it.” Therefore, what are some of the stories that you’ve heard?

Dan: It’s interesting the way you phrase that question because people, a lot of times, assume that if they really move towards their passion and what they really enjoy—they are going to see a reduced income. Where it’s so ironic that we look at it like that, I ask all this all the time: do you think it’s easier to make money making something you love or something you hate? Yet, people with that old idea about what work is just something we have to tolerate. There’s still the assumption that if you enjoy it, surely you can’t make money. When we have people move into, what they truly do enjoy, and what their passion is, etc. Not only is there a sense of relief in terms of accomplishment, fulfillment, and peace to know what they are doing, sometimes the money just breaks in on them. They were surprised!

David: Wow.

Dan: I know a young guy who is a painter. He is actually a pastor trying to make that work and starting off what pastor’s typically do, he was working at a holyday during the weeknights to try and keep the lights on. As I started to work with him, it was clear that his passion was painting, and he had never done anything to generate income. I helped transition him into that by first doing coat finishes, for four years. He did coat finishes on people’s walls. It had a dramatic effect, and it gave him the freedom to do the grand painting that he does today.

Today, he doesn’t do coat finishes anymore, for he does his paintings. His average painting sells for about eight thousand dollars, and he’s making just multiple income that he’s ever dreamed of making as a pastor. I have a lot of stories about people who moved into what they really love and have seen the fruit explode their success in multiple areas of their life. But if we are talking about how to make money, he has a very active website. He has two scenes in his artwork. His art is in the finest galleries all across the country, in Atlanta, Miami, Chicago, etc.

David: That’s a niche. I mean, so he’s narrowed it down

Dan: Very narrow. You’ve been hearing in Nashville when somebody talks about his art, he’s the guy.

David: Wow.

Dan: This guy is amazing. He’s going to find restaurants around town. He’s already been there, so he’s done very well. Also, he has a strong Internet presence because once people recognize his name, and they can go directly to his website and get additional pieces, so he sells a lot, direct from his website.

David: Awesome, he doesn’t understand what it means like where to start.

Dan: You do that because people who are creative, who have really good technical or artistic skills, a lot of times don’t understand the marketing that’s required.

David: I’m glad you brought that up, yeah, that’s so huge.

Dan: Good question. It’s just like I work a lot of writers. People who want to write a book and the process. You make a lot of money writing books, and you continue, but I tell people, here’s the formula. You want to make money, regularly, okay, write your book. Now, you’re ten percent finished, ninety percent. How you going to position it? How you going to promote it?

David: Yes.

Dan: Where are you going to market this? Who’s going to buy it? Without that, you make nothing, so it’s not just the matter of having the talent. You also have to understand how this is going to transfer into a business, but then if you do that, I don’t care if you are introverted and shy, you can be extremely successful because of what technology allows us to do today. The Internet opens doors unavailable to people ten years ago in any form or fashion.

David: Absolutely, one of the stories I just got through an interview with a guy, John Nelson, interviewed him on Saturday. If there’s anything that might be obscure that you could make money from, this would probably almost classify. He makes about a hundred thousand dollars gross on juggling supplies. Juggling! How many jugglers you know out there in the world? The Internet creates the world as your market place. It really is true. It’s not just in Nashville, Tennessee, or Cincinnati, Ohio, you open up to the world. So, there might only be twenty thousand people that want to juggle in the entire world, but all twenty thousand people are going to know about juggling: www.jugglenow.com.

Dan: I have a client who wanted to stay at home. She’s a registered nurse. She wanted to be primarily available for her children, but still saw the responsibility to contribute to the family income. So it’s the way I work, looking at what kind of life do you want. First, we can find plenty of opportunities to create income; it just depends on what you want to have in place. Therefore, we are looking at those characteristics and seeing what she enjoys, and she likes quilting.

I thought, “oh my gosh, that’s something any mother would want to do.” I was blown away from the popularity of quilting, now if she was to open a little shop on the queen street on the plain front of Tennessee, a logical kind of thing to do, she would really have her work cut out for her. She would have to find those few people in a five-mile radius who were going to be willing to walk into her store. Then, she has to be there on weekends and evenings. This is when her kids are home, so what we designed for her personal life. So, she has a site called www.realwomenquilt.com. She probably has ten different methods of churning the income.

David: Wow.

Dan: She has the electronic product, and she’s a distributor for multiple books. Therefore, she can spend two hours a day on her website, doing something she absolutely loves with ladies all over the world through the Internet. See, she has an obscure hobby area, and she’s absolutely knocking it out of the park.

David: It’s interesting about this kind of a niche—you become an expert. You are viewed as an expert, and you are going to make more money; even though, you are limiting the people you are selling to. They see you as the go-to person. There’s nobody else, so it’s kind of him versus these other websites. Then, you can see they are desperate to make money because they have every product known to man, and there’s no theme to the website.

Dan: Yeah, they don’t like to be too transparent. They just try the hot products.

David: Exactly and I hate to say it, but you see, they mean well, but at the same time, they are not helping. You really have to give something with quality, and at the same time, believe that you are doing it. You give, in your book, the five predictors to success, let’s go through each one of those five and talk about them. The reason why I put this structure together is because people are so blocked by fear, and they are not an expert and feel like they can’t find the passion. After reading this book, people realize and discuss that you actually put this into a forty-day plan, so we are going to get into that here in a little bit. Let’s go back to your five predictors of success: number one, you talk about passion, let’s elaborate.

Dan: Okay, people often have the worst system for business were the trends make the hot thing and those have nothing to do with what you use to start looking for a business. You start with what are you already interested in. You start with what you already know about. You start with what you find is a recurring theme. Then, if it’s growing dandelions and if it’s growing dandelions, then make that your niche. In contrast, you have opportunities in computer science. Why don’t you do that? Go were your heart is and let’s see that play out. You’re just like the guy who’s juggling. It doesn’t interest me, but that’s his passion, there are plenty of opportunities to find what it is that your heart is already telling you.

David: That’s good, let’s talk about determination, number two.

Dan: It takes a plan. It takes more than just flirting with an idea. I tell people: everybody has wishes and dreams, but to turn it into reality by making it into a goal. Then, you got it! If you want to do something, tell me your time line, you want to drive an M3 BWM? Then tell me how much it costs? What date you want to have it, and we can break it down. I can tell you what you need to do today to make that a reality, so it’s that kind of thing, determination. It means you got to have a plan from the list of desirables. You need a plan.

David: Gotcha, so we are still talking about determination, about the get rich quick mentality and you see that online.

Dan: Plenty, I see people who get domains, and they put them up based on one product, and they are just chasing a quick hit with their product. Then, they are gone, and they reappear somewhere else. It’s so bland when I see that because it’s so transparent, and you can see that people stay away from this kind of activity, even the Bible say that a quick success can become a failure essentially. It doesn’t work, there’s no point.

Even in having an electronic newsletter. It’s so tempting to spam people, and then somehow claim to have a big mailing list, yet you are spamming people, which is so negative. It’ll just come back to haunt you. I started with fifty-seven people on a mailing list, and I wanted it to grow. I wanted it to grow so badly. But, we just went over 71,000 people, and every single person had to request to be on there.

That gives me a whole lot more power with what I’m able to do with world subscribers rather than if I had somehow tried to jam people on there. So, quick is not the best option; however, you can get to that level today, so much quicker today, with the use of technology. If I open a bookstore in the town where I live, it takes a long time for the word to spread. But if I put that on the Internet, even if I get a tiny, tiny portion of people interested in my particular topic, I still can knock it out of the park. The numbers change so dramatically when you have an online presence.

David: You can literally come out with your own product within a day, so and maybe making money by the next day. Therefore, do like joint ventures with other website owners and various other options. I’m going to tell them about myself because I want people to think about my mistakes and actually to say David, “he realized he made a mistake.” I might go down that route. I did a website about all the ways that people are searching about on the Internet. You find a hot market, and then you give them what they want. Some searching found all these people putting car videos in their vans and SUVs and Yukon.

I was like wow, let me see, so I searched and I’m never going to own a DVD player in my car. But I put up a website, and I got people to write articles. Then, I put an ad hire for people for web design. After about a month, a month and a half, I just stopped. The reason why I stopped, I could care less about car radio. I could care less. I was all in it for the money and that was just the wrong. You cannot start like that, so it’s the word. You cannot do that because you are not going to want to work. When you write your newsletter, on Mondays or something, it takes two hours or something; you do it because you enjoy it, because you actually enjoy helping people. You found work you love, so it’s not really work anymore.

Dan: That’s right, that’s when you turn the corner where it’s not worth, it’s an old sales print to follow. If you’re trying to sell Mercedes, but you drive a Chevy truck, you’re going to have a problem. You can’t sell something well that you don’t totally believe in yourself. It’s not just the mechanics of selling, but it becomes true selling, sharing enthusiasm. If you go to a great movie, if you tell twenty of your friends, and you tell the people you see that’s the most authentic form of selling. Everyday, we manipulating the economy. Even if it’s online, you can’t do that well. For you to tell, it’s so much easier with everything, if you just do something you really enjoy and build from there.

David: Awesome. Moving on, step three of the predictors of success, talent. Just elaborate on that a little bit.

Dan: Well, just like that guy I mentioned who does these beautiful artwork. He never had an art class or went to art school or anything.

David: Wow.

Dan: He had just a God given talent. Recognition! Where does your talent lie? What is it that you know about and build from that.

David: Gotcha. Self-Discipline.

Dan: Self-Discipline is really what makes all the others work. Without that, the best ideas don’t persist. You have to believe in something that comes from a true interest of your own already, without that you don’t have enough steam to carry you through this period. Self-Discipline is just what it means. It’s a person that needs to be micro-managed needs to have someone to tell them when to get out, when to be at work and take a break midway through the morning.

They are probably not even capable of this kind of business that we are talking about. You have to be someone who is self-motivated and who is encouraged by the prospect of what is going to happen. The thrill of taking an idea and putting it together. Without that, just finding the best application is what you can do in a traditional job, don’t do this.

David: You have an interesting number five that some people just leave out. I don’t see how people do—because it’s so crucial to face.

Dan: Yeah, no matter how well intentioned and designed the plan is, there comes that point where it really takes a step of faith. I don’t mean whether it’s in the spiritual sense or in the regular sense of what faith is, it’s making that step: “Oh, I don’t know what’s up ahead step.” There’s a wonderful scene in a Harrison Ford movie where he and his Dad were searching for this special treasure, and they had done all these things right, gone through the gauntlet, and boom, they come to this canyon.

There’s no earthly way you can get across, if steps off the edge. Then, he’s going to drop to his death. It’s clear, and yet he’s so confident that somehow he’s on the right path because all the acts that preceded getting up to that point and that the beautiful point where he just puts his foot out and then boom the path appears. Because he came across under his foot and supported him under his path and the next step. People do the kind of thing that we are talking about, entrepreneurial leaps, for we deal with people all the time.

David: Okay, Yeah.

Dan: That’s what keeps us going and gives us the juice that keep going, but that’s what stays and somebody not able to pull that trigger at that point, is going to have a harder time doing it. I’m a big believe in a careful plan and a clear sense of where your going—then do it. If you can see everything that was going to come, then it be easier. It separates you from the pack, once you can say, boom, this is one. We are getting to launch a new website.

You could say, a coaching network that connects coaches around the country to help them not in the profession of coaching, but in the business of coaching. Now, we are building an all technology-driven infrastructure. We have personal landing pages for people, and some technology that is brand new. Just awesome, just on the cutting edge, all in place, and got a team of people working on that, requires more of an investment from me than anything I’ve ever done in my life.

David: Wow.

Dan: Now, I wouldn’t do that unless I had some background knowledge of what of the future predictions. My vision.

David: That’s good, yeah.

Dan: Because of my experience and what I’ve done already, I am totally convinced for the need and very confident of the response that we are going to get. Now if we don’t get the response that I want. I will have boo-booed. But, I’m willing to risk, and do what it takes and what we are going to do and get my toe in the water. We’re going to launch this, with the most sophisticated features and website that I’ve ever seen in my life. Better than what we are doing now, with our website, which is very profitable for us. It’s done extremely well, but I would consider that presence about a three.

David: Wow.

Dan: We’re getting ready to launch a ten!

David: My goodness, and as anyone that I know that has been to www.48days.com, there’s tons of resources, not to mention the newsletter signup. Therefore, you do have a coaching program, but we’re going to get into that in a second with 48 days. I’ve talked to Joe Elliott the other day, mister fired dot com, and he was steered or stopped me because I was terrified of HTML. I thought, the code that you use to make websites, and I didn’t do anything.

I kept reading and had to buy another book, and all it comes down to a need to build a website, and then I finally did it. I got that, made some money, and I put out my own CD and then it took me another two years to put this book out that I’m putting together right now. I should have done this two years ago because I didn’t need anything else. Fear was stopping me, but luckily I’m passionately passionate about what I’m doing, so that’s carrying me back through it. Also, I have a plan, but it definitely starts with a passion. You have determination.

Dan: Well, I am very much a novice when it comes to how the technology works, but there are people that understand that much better working for me. So if I have the idea, I can get people and make it work. I don’t have a clue about how some of the technically features work, but I’ve surrounded myself with people who bring their skills to the table. They go to places that I could never reach on my own. We do talent seminars that’s another application of technology, totally electronic. It’s promoted electronically, people register, auto responders, sign up, when the time comes on the day of the teleseminar—the people will get a downloadable PDF.

David: Now what is a teleseminar? What is that?

Dan: A teleseminar is where we simply have a topic, and I’m going to talk about that topic on the telephone.

David: Wow.

Dan: We are going to register for a class, but they are simply going to put on their headset. The last one we did was on starting your own business, something that is very hot on the Internet, starting your own business with people from Singapour, Seattle, Australia, England. Next, we didn’t have 3000 people—we had 246 people. On that telephone seminar!

David: This is on the phone together?

Dan: On the phone, but we didn’t promote in that we are going to do this in the renaissance hotel, in Nashville, Tennessee. You have to arrange and all they had to do was pick up their phone for seventy minutes and participate. To allow, again, a small group of people from a broad geographic to participate, but it was a hundred and thirty nine dollars and if you got the MP3 file and the transcript, You can do it for an extra ten dollars. For a hundred forty nine, which virtually everyone did. Over thirty thousand dollars, I’ve never done that in a live seminar.

David: My gosh! I’m going to stop you real quick because you said something really profound. In this conversation, you don’t get anything out of it, at least get this—what you are saying about it right here is hundreds of thousands of dollars, an idea, a topic. Overall, your passion, and you rented a phone line, a bridge line, or whatever it is that you can actually have people call in on the same number and be on the same line.

They used to call them the party line or something like that it was a long time ago. I’ve heard about it, anyways. People actually paid you to be on the phone, with you, a hundred and thirty nine dollars and then the MP3 was just a downloadable audio version of the phone call as well as the PDF adobe, which you just got for a hundred thirty nine dollars. So, you got a product right there that you can sell over and over and over again, and you can do that on any topic known to man.

Dan: So, it’s not only the immediate registration fees, you’re right, we created an instant product, which is then available, again, electronically.

David: Yes.

Dan: We don’t have to create a physical product at all. I did one recently called right to the bank: how to turn writing into income. We had about two hundred fifty people involved, and you can work on the numbers. Then, the product on the website on the day we had it on the website, but it was an all electronic product. People downloaded sixty three copies.

David: My gosh, again people still don’t understand the technology. There’s hardly any cost in this right, maybe credit card processing, which is a little bit different than pay by hits.

Dan: Yeah, and they’re like the bridge line. I use bridge lines so much that I pay a flat fee. Now, it’s like five hundred dollars that covers us no matter what. We use them for whatever.

David: Also, people are starting out and get the mortgage payment and the grocery and put shoes on their kids feet, etc. Their just broke, so you can go to free conference dot com and will get you started. You can also be the Marlin Sanders, the huge marketer, and he said that the other day, there’s this thing called Isle River. You can go out and get yourself Isle River for a hundred twenty bucks.

Then, you attach this device to your cell phone, and it records almost with the quality of being in a studio. You can say, he has literally sat at a Starbucks, just him and a buddy or assistant, made a product, a marketing product at their favorite shop, Starbucks in Houston, Texas, and he did it from his cell phone. He’ll send that up on his computer and sell that for a downloadable file for like thirty bucks and so. You can get started with your own product for a hundred and twenty buck, if you want to go that way.

Dan: Absolutely.

David: It does not take a lot of money at all.

Dan: I’ve done those from fancy studios, and I’ve discontinued that because there’s really no difference in doing that than on my own home phone.

David: Stick at that, this is what we are doing.

Dan: I use my own home phone. I just put the headset on. It’s just as good as anything else we’ve done so far.

David: If you’re a fan of quilting, if you’re a fan of juggling, if you’re a fan of painting, all these different venues, people will pay you for your information. Don’t think that you can’t make money from your passion. You know Dan. We’re talking about stories that you’ve actually helped, but you have a story. We’re going to go and transition into now, which is forty eight days dot com, and you have forty eight days to the work, which is a book.

Now on page, like, seventy-three, I don’t know if you have a copy in front of you, but on page seventy-three of your creative income, you tell a story about how you actually started your own online business. I’d like to start talking about that you actually came up with the forty eight days to the work. You started that in Sunday school. Let’s talk about that a little if you don’t mind.

Dan: Okay, I love sales, and I had a sale training company and was doing fine with that, but I agreed to be part of a group at our church. Well, actually, I was just teaching at Sunday school class on career, white planning, and we started to have so many people. Some people from other churches came, and I realized that how much of a vacuum there was for this kind of material.

It’s something I love because I love career and business ideas. Since I was a little kid, I liked a sport that makes sense and have fun doing it. So, we moved the Sunday school from Sunday afternoon to Monday night, so we could have two uninterrupted hours and allow people in the community to come. I did that for almost ten years. It was during that period of time and using that group that I had a wonderful format for just testing ideas and developing the material that turned into the initial group.

Initially, I didn’t have anything to hand out, and I may take in weekly notes and hand them out, but people would say how can I get what you are talking about and give it to my uncle Harry. I have a brother-in-law that needs to hear this. It was out of those repeated requests that I finally just put it together and literally did on our own printer, hard cover that we ran through the cover and took to Kinko’s and had them spiral bound. It was unsophisticated, and then I went to a friend’s house one Saturday morning and this was years ago, and we hung a blanket on either side to block out the sound’s of his kid’s playing, and I did the first cassette tape.

David: No way.

Dan: Then, made it into a spiral bound book and cassette—one cassette was my first product.

David: This is a long time ago, but was there a fear factor. Were you scared in this new territory?

Dan: It was scary, but I had so many requests for it. I was always, and my business developed. I was behind the curve for what people were already asking me for. That kind of removes the fear and again is the best way to start a business. A lot of times, people are being asked for their advice on a topic or for a product or service that they provide beyond their ability to produce or deliver.

Then, it’s just a great way to find a business and frankly that what we did. I was spending thirty or forty hours a week just meeting with people and helping them through the career transition and business ideas in my life. I said look, you are helping all these other people do this, if there’s that much demand for it, why don’t you make that your business rather than just a ministry area.

David: Wow.

Dan: It really kind of surprised me when I got to the point. When I did—it was like a dam broke. Next, I started charging for services instead of just giving it away. People were lined-up at my door. They thought it had more value at a critical point because there’s a real connection between cost and perceived value and sometimes when it’s free, people will assume that it’s not worth much. If it costs them, then it’s worth more, and I saw that immediately going out, so my work has really evolved from doing volunteer work.

I was doing initially at my church, but once we opened the door for making money, then it was a concept process of developing and trying to leverage my time. At one point, I was seeing clients to help them with these kinds of issues. I was doing the coach thing six days of the week. I could keep myself booked as much as I wanted to. Today, I see people one day a week. Because I’ve come up with so many other ways to leverage my time, so I can spend two hours doing something that has the potential to help thousands of people rather than one.

I hope that doesn’t sound snobbish, I’m hard to get to, and I struggle with that because we get hundreds and hundreds of requests for my personal coaching. At this point, we have a network of coaches, and I refer those out, so we have a system in place to handle that. I just have some overrides on everything that happens there. Lots of coaches doing coaching—I can override them in what they’re doing, but I’ve built in systems. Therefore, we have multiple streams of income or helping people get through to the kind of information. Most of it driven through my technology.

David: Wow, speaking of that, let’s talk about how you drive traffic to your website. You have your electronic newsletter. The newsletter grows, right now, it grows at about a hundred and fifty subscribers a day and only with people sharing it with other people. Now do want some things to nurture?

Dan: We don’t do anything that costs money, hard for some people to understand, but you got to pay for search engines and pay for ads. Now, I don’t do any of that. I’ve never paid a penny for any of that. But, as you mentioned earlier, I write articles and submit them to our supply CBM, Crosswalk, Lifeway, lots of others. I write for magazines, and a lot of those I’m actually pay. Now, that’s not my focus, because what I want is the constant exposure that comes from the article. The exposure costs me nothing and drives thousands of people to our website.

David: For the listener and for the readers, what you just said is a million dollar strategy. Another guy that I know in the book is Willie Crawford, just one of his websites makes fifty thousand dollars a year selling a cookbook. His name marketing strategy over the past eight to ten years has literally been writing articles and submitting them at: you got articles dot com and article directory dot com, places like that that are free. Also, the search engines pick them up, and he says, he probably has three hundred articles written. Now, he couldn’t even turn the faucet off as far as visitors if he tried. He could stop right now. He gets visitors, hundreds of thousands, just from ten years ago.

Dan: That’s why I laugh because we get messages like that all the time. We get somebody referring to an offering on the software, and oh my gosh that was ten years ago. Where are they seeing that? As much as I try to turn those things off, it’s an incremental event, once you start, it just multiplies itself. Truly what we call viral marketing. Where it’s not traditional by billboard. I don’t do any of that, in the yellow pages, frankly I’m not even sure I’m even listed there.

David: Yep.

Dan: Now, I depend totally on that kind of viral marketing. Another point, people are obsessed with how they come up on the search engines, and again I’m not very sophisticated in my understanding of how that works. But, I’ll tell you what I do know. If you put in career coaching into Google, coaching you come up with over fifteen million, I’m probably in there somewhere, but I have no earthly idea where, but if you put in forty eight days, any day of the week. I’m going to own it in seven of the first ten to connect, no matter what.

See, don’t just be a landscaping guy, don’t just be an interior decorator, come up with something that brands you something that sets you apart and gives you a unique selling position. You have the top without spending money on the search engines. The key is not to force your way in using generic terms, and come up with something where people know what they are talking about.

Forty-eight days has worked extremely well for us. Present a proposal by my publisher now because of the success of forty-eight days to the work—you love, which is now on hard back. Then, we’ve got a workbook with CDs to accompany that we’ve got a DVD coming out. We’ve also got a proposal for six more forty-eight days to titles, which speaks volumes about what they see happening with those products in the mass media.

David: You build a brand.

Dan: They want everything I write to be forty-eight days.

David: Okay, someone says, I’m not Dan Miller. I don’t have publishers calling me, but you didn’t either. You didn’t either when you first started. You started out with Sunday school. You worked with what you got. Then, you started selling it up to the ten to sixty thousands copies amount, and then after several years, somebody started calling you, like a publisher called Haltman, started calling to talk about that success. What happened there?

Dan: A lot of people, look for traditional paths, they really don’t need because there are so many ways to visualize an exciting and creative path. This gentlemen has been trying to call me or writing me by email. I want to write a book: how can I get it in Barnes and Noble? If that is your only method of marketing that you have in mind, I encourage you not to write a book. Because that happens so far down the path and to make that happen is not even something that I can help out. What I do know and told him, I sold over two million dollars worth with of “Forty-Eight Days to the Work You Love,” without ever selling to a bookstore or through a bookstore.

David: Wow.

Dan: I was just selling them myself, and what happens then is just what you described, once you do that, you better believe it, you get people’s attention. I got publishes knocking at my door walking over each other because it’s like that old ironic getting a loan at the bank. They loan you the money if you don’t need it. If you really need, they don’t want to loan it to you. Publishers are the same way, if you don’t have a track record of success, they don’t want to talk to you. They don’t want a list on you. You already have the expense to show. Overall, what we are doing right now is electronic publishing because the margins are so incredible.

David: Absolutely.

Dan: Even at this point, with the success we’ve had with Costcos and Barnes and Nobles, and commercially published products, I still make way more money on what I sell myself. Way more, the publishing is nice for image, but that’s not where money comes from, and the way I make money, the very non-traditional way, behind the scenes. We don’t have a storefront, no place to drive up to. I have one employee. You know when I talk about having a team and all, thus I have lots and lots of independent contractors. People whose service I use. I don’t have a company, meetings in the morning, and incidentally that one employee is my daughter.

David: Wow.

Dan: Two sons and a daughter, and they all work for me full time.

David: Man, that’s just a blessing

Dan: It is.

David: This business provides for your family too? You get to do things that you love?

Dan: My son, just had his fifth baby yesterday, they live in Divide, Colorado. I live in Nashville, Tennessee. They love the snow. Snowboard and skis and all these things. I don’t find that appealing. The cool thing is we work together. We work together on every project. He’s my marketing director, but because of technology, he’s able to on the other side of the country, and it has no impact on our ability to work together.

David: Putting this book together, there’s a lot of things that I don’t know how to do, and I farm out. I go to rent a code dot com or e-alliance dot com, and I’ve got people, actually two people right now in Romania transcribing for me. I’ve got a lady. I’ve got a lady transcribing two audios because I don’t transcribe, so I just paid somebody twenty bucks to transcribe my audios, so you don’t have to do this. I can get graphic designs done, software design done, which is all-coming together from an idea. You distill the idea, and then you can get it done. You don’t have to know everything.

Dan: Correct, the pieces are easy to pull in together. I’ve got a company in Hong Kong to do the printing on a series of inspirational quotation book we are going to have. Forty-eight days to hook back into life, and forty-eight days to outstanding people skills, forty-eight days to future vitality, and so on, all being made into books. I found them through an online source. I’ve gotten quotes from them. I’m seen their product samples, and we are ready to go.

David: My goodness. It’s awesome, this phone call is huge. This only interview is worth an entire chapter for the entire book because I know the stuff works because I’ve done it, and you’ve done it. A lot of people in my book have done it, so I’m interviewing them all a bunch of time. Therefore, just to wrap up what is something that you would like to leave with the audience as far as for the newbie that’s starting a line, or the person that doesn’t even know that this stuff exists. My transcriber, one of my transcribers is saying, I had no idea that this thing even existed.

Dan: In one of the magazines that I got from the store, just got a note from one of the editors. I write for a magazine, and I have a great relationship with him. I got a note about a month ago that he would be leaving, within the next two weeks. I certainly congratulate you on moving forward in a positive direction, if that’s what it is for you. I enjoyed working with you, but I’m going to tell you that it’s been a pleasure reading your material. Overall, I’ve made the right choice and moved on.

David: So what happens when they read the material and move on? They don’t do the same work for you anymore.

Dan: A couple of things, one thing is, I tell people, as a conclusion, I tell people you can become an expert on anything if you read three books on one topic it doesn’t take much to set yourself apart from the rest of the pack. If you do that, just read three books, on many streams of income on the Internet, you are going to know more than ninety-nine percent of the Internet. What everybody knows about this kind of business, so there’s people asking a lot about forty-eight days. Why forty-eight days because I talked to so many people that say, “geez, some day, I want to do this. Some day, I want a better job, some day I want to start my own business” and I see them two years later, and they haven’t done anything. They are exactly at the same place.

David: Yep.

Dan: It breaks my heart, and I’ve identified forty-eight days as ample time to take a fresh look at where I’m at now and where I want to be in the future. Get the advice from a number of other people, look at multiple options, narrow it down, choose the best one and act. Be strong with that model, take forty-eight days, make a plan and act on it, and you will be amazed at the window of opportunities that will open up.

David: Wow, awesome, well thanks again Dan for taking the time to do the interview, this is a thousand dollar call right here with the information you gave. Thanks again and God bless.

Dan: All right, thank you Dave.

Joe is one of the trainers from the movie, The Secret and has been featured on Larry King.  Be ready for an amazing interview.

Joe is the author of way to many books to list here but I will tell you a little secret. Joe was once homeless and sleeping on the steps of the Houston post office! Wait until you read about how he now has helped several people “attract” a new car. Truly amazing!

David: Alright Joe, thanks for taking my call and doing the interview. I’m really excited about letting people hear your story because I would call it like a kind of “rags to riches” type story. When you were younger, you had so many different types of jobs like a ditch digger, so let’s start out with just like your background, for the people who are not on your list. Maybe give them some insight like where you come from, before the Internet.

Joe: Okay. Well, I’ll try and give an abbreviated form of that. I was born and raised in Ohio. I decided when I was a teenager that I wanted to be an author, but I of course was not an overnight success. I dealt with a whole lot of rejection, a whole lot of persistence, a whole lot of self-education, and always had to take a lot of jobs that I didn’t particularly like, while growing up in Ohio. My brother had been on the railroad all of his life, and he put all his family on the railroad, and when I was five years old, he was doing labor on the railroad. Building railroad tracks and maintaining them.

I did that every weekend, virtually every weekend, and every summer, growing up, going through school, and going through college, basically hating almost all of it, hating just about every moment of it.

At the same time, I was always focused on being an author. I wanted to make a difference with my writing. I wanted to help people, inspire people. I had dreams of writing some lighthearted type of work and novels. Then, one thing led to another, mostly unemployment up in Ohio, caused me to move around a bit, and I ended up in Texas, which were very hard years.

When I was first in Dallas, I was actually homeless for a while. I still remember sleeping on the steps of a post office. I don’t know which one at this point, but waiting for what I hoped would be checks. Then, I migrated to Houston where I was in poverty for many, many years, a long series of struggles. I had a poverty mindset; it was very difficult for me to break from it. I was pretty much on my own until I met somebody and got married, and then we just struggled together, which was a long time. I was a taxi driver, which I absolutely hated. I remember crying because I was so frustrated by my life and my experiences.

I was a reporter. I was a laborer. I was a temporary worker who had worked for Manpower and some of the agencies that get you these simple jobs. I ended up being hired by Exxon, in their oil and gas department, because I was sent there one time as a Temp worker, and they liked me, and they kept me on for a long time. Also, I stayed there for a long time, like five years, while writing, while beginning to speak a little bit about writing.

During that time, I got my first book published called “Zen and the Art of Writing.” A great learning experience because I did not know what marketing was, I’m not sure I knew what copywriting was, but I quickly learned that publishers did not know how to publish books. They know how to print books. I quickly became a student of copywriting and marketing and publicity, and I used it for myself. I was my own first client.

As my book became successful, I even had a letter from the publisher saying, I sold more books than anybody else. I started to hear from other people who were authors, and would-be authors, and speakers, and entrepreneurs who wanted to write, and they said, “How are you doing this?” I would explain it to them.

At that point, I was doing it free because I was just sharing. Somebody said, “You know, you can go into business doing this. You can charge an hourly rate.” So, I started charging like $25 an hour to give people consultations on how they can do marketing like I was doing marketing. Of course, I laugh now because my hourly rate is through the roof. People can see it at www.mrfire.com, under the “Hire Joe” section on the left.

So I started to do fairly well, nothing to brag about, but I got my first book out, I started to do consulting, I was still working for Exxon. I was still giving night classes and weekend classes for Leisure Learning, which is an adult education facility, a continued learning experience. I continued to do that, and I did pretty well, started to get my name known in Houston, which is where I was living. Still struggled, but was out of poverty, and certainly wasn’t homeless, but wasn’t in the best home.

It was really the Internet that blew everything up in the most positive way. I actually began as an Internet skeptic. I didn’t think you could make money on the Internet. Everybody was bragging about it in the early mid-90s. A lot of people were spamming, but we didn’t call it spam, and it was just mass e-mailing, and it was a fun thing to do, and some people would hit rich, and some people just didn’t make a dime.

Then, I started to slowly get on the Internet. I started to make relationships, and what I was doing in Houston with my writing and with my speaking, I would put online, which meant the world had the capacity to see it. I started to get hired from people in countries I’d never heard of before like Sylvania and Sylvania, that’s a country?” Yeah, it is a country, and there were other ones like that I didn’t know existed. So, the Internet was really taking me to a new level. It wasn’t until my first eBook came out that things really began to become much more lucrative. I can’t remember the exact date, but that would have been eight years, nine years ago, somewhere in there.

David: Okay.

Joe: Mark Joyner haunted me for two years. He was a fan of my work. He had listened to my program, the power about marketing, and my early books, I wrote one of the first books on Internet marketing called “Cyber Writing.” It’s out of print now, and he kept writing to me, saying, “Give me something I can turn into an eBook, anything.” I thought, “eBooks? Who’s going to read an eBook?” I love books, but I want to see the book. I don’t want an invisible book, a text file.

Finally to shut him up, I gave him one of my old books that I used to sell back in Houston, called “Hypnotic Writing.” He put up a website for it. He wrote a sales letter for it. I read the sales letter, and it was so good, I wanted to buy my own book. He put it up for sale for $30 or $29.95. Overnight, there were about 600 sales for that book. Now, you’ve got to remember that 600 times $29.95 with no printing costs, no shipping, no postage, no warehousing, no fulfillment in any way shape or form, there was almost pure profit.

Boy, I tasted blood. I wrote back, “Mark, what else do you want?” Then, I ended up writing “Advanced Hypnotic Writing,” about excelling stories, the Hypnotic Writing (swipe file); it became a whole brand. Afterward, I had numerous eBooks out there. I’ve lost count of my regularly published books as well as my eBooks. So, that began a turning point experience by just selling digital information. From there, it’s gone up, I created one of the first eClasses because I wanted a BMW sports car, a Z3.

David: Talk about that because that was awesome, I just got through reading the article again. I bet you that I’ve read it ten times it’s so amazing, but yeah, I want people to hear this.

Joe: Well, it’s an interesting story because I don’t really pursue money, I pursue dreams. I pursue my passion. As a result, I often receive money, and this is one of the secrets to making money anywhere, is you don’t pursue money itself, you pursue your passion, whatever is pumping through your veins that says, “This is exciting.”

Well, I never was a car guy, but one day, I saw this car being delivered somewhere. It was a BMW Z3, the original James Bond sports car. I fell in love with the car. I went, “Oh my God, that thing is just beautiful!” I had a lust for this hunk of metal, so I set an intention, which I talk about in my book “The Attractor Factor.” I said, “I want to get that car or one like it. “I knew what the color was. But, I wanted to generate the money from some surprising, unexpected way. I didn’t want to pull it from current savings or from the money I was currently making, I just set the bar a little high for myself.

Because I wanted to create some new way to bring that car into my life, I started to play with possibilities, there was a contest someplace in front of a store where you could win a Z3, and I filled it out, and of course, I didn’t win it, but I was doing everything that I could think of to manifest this car.

Then, I had the idea to do a seminar near Austin, Texas. I said, “Well, I’ll do a seminar in Austin. I’ll rent a hotel room. I’ll invite people to come.” I had an unpublished book at that time called “Spiritual Marketing.” I would promote it to my list, which was very small at that time, it was like 500, 600, 700 names, which is relatively small, and I thought, “I’ll just do a seminar, and I’ll charge enough, and I’ll raise enough money, and I’ll buy the car.”

Well, I also talked myself out of it. I thought, “Oh, doing a seminar’s a lot of work. I rent the hotel room and guarantee the money. Then, I have to promote it, and there’s printing costs, and there’s postage costs. Deal with all these people, I get up and speak and get some other people to come.” I just thought, “This is too much work, this isn’t the way I want do it.” So, I shelled that idea.

Because I was online so much, I was living and breathing e-mail, so I thought, “I wonder if people would sign up for a seminar, much like the one I was going to do live, but by e-mail only?” It was a pretty wild idea at the time, now this was different from an autoresponder, which even then was relatively new, a lot of people didn’t understand. I just divide up my materials using the unpublished book I had, there were five chapters to it, I’d turn them into five lessons. I’d send them out by email, so once a week. They would get a lesson by email. I would put homework on it, and if they did their homework, I would review it and give them feedback.

It was a seminar by e-mail. Now, all of this was bizarre, I thought, “Naw, it’s not going to work,” but that’s the beauty of the Internet, you can try anything. I remember, “Okay,” I remember thinking, “How do I charge for this?” Again, I’m making all of this up, which is an important lesson. I was making all of this up. I thought, “Okay, well the car, the Z3 probably costs $35,000 to $40,000, if I get it fully-loaded, brand new, everything I wanted on it. Also, I didn’t want a whole lot of students because I thought, “Well, if these people actually do their homework and return it to me. I’ll be answering all these e-mails!” So, I said, “Well I only want like 15, 16 people.” Which then, I’d have to charge like $2000 each.

So, I wrestled with that a little bit, and I thought, “You know, again. I don’t know what’s going to work. I don’t know if these people are going do it.” I wrote a sales letter. I remember sitting in front of my computer with my finger over the Send key, and I thought, “Jeez, I’m going to send out this note telling people I’m going to send them five emails, and they’ve got to pay me $2000.”

David: No cost, hardly at all. I mean, there’s no cost, really.

Joe: There was no cost at all, but it was like a preposterous idea, and I thought, “These people could write angry messages. They might all unsubscribe from my list. They might be really into the flaming, ‘destroy Joe’ mentality, who am I to charge $2000 to send five e-mails out?” But, I thought, “What if it works? What if it works?” With that question in mind, I hit send.

Well, overnight, again, this is overnight, this is the beauty of the Internet, most things are instantaneous. You find out if something’s not going to work quickly, and you find out if something is going to work quickly, the beauty of it, it’s just the beauty of it—overnight, 16 people said they were going to pay me that much money. 15 of them paid me almost instantly, one ended up backing out at the last minute. I ended up raising all the money I needed, bought the car, I still have it, it’s downstairs in the garage.

It’s still beautiful like a trophy because it’s such a beautiful car. Now, they don’t make the Z3 anymore, it’s even a collectible car. I did it all from an eClass, which was a preposterous, wild idea to send five e-mails with homework, and charge people $1500 to $2000 each for that experience.

David: For the people not totally involved in Internet marketing, it’s still to this day, as much as there’s so much about Internet marketing, having an eClass or eCourse is still fairly like obscure.

Joe: Most people talk themselves out of doing the very things that could work for them. They think, “Oh, the eClasses have been done before, or Internet marketing has been done before, or the market is saturated.” It’s ridiculous. I wrote a book called “There’s a Customer Born Every Minute.” They’re born every second. There are millions of people who don’t even know what the Internet is yet that are not online yet, and even the ones who are online are not saturated in any way, shape, or form.

David: No.

Joe: The Internet has not hit the breaking point in any way, shape, or form. It is still new. There are so many things that are still untried. I marvel at the people who are coming up with brilliant ideas and raking in money. One of my favorite stories that I’ve told at a couple recent talks is about the college student over in England who put up a blank website. The website had nothing on it, and said, “I’m selling pixel ads on this website.”

David: Yes, yep.

Joe: His friends bought ads for, I think it was $1 a pixel. You can’t even see a $1 pixel, so you have to buy at least $100 worth of pixels on a blank website. So he raised $300 or $400, he sent out a news release, which caused a lot of traffic to go and see, “What in the world was he doing? He’s selling ad space on it for $1 a pixel that you can’t see unless you buy a hundred of them?” Well, it was such a brilliant idea even I bought $100 worth of pixel ads on his website. The last I heard, he made over one million dollars selling space on a blank website, and he did the major “cherry on top,” the last ad space on that website, he put on eBay, and I think it sold for $38,000.

David: $38,000?

Joe: This is happening all the time, and it’s happening from nobodies. Over in England, the college student who was broke, who was thinking, “How do I raise money for tuition?” There are so many stories. Another one that I can tell you is Pat O’Brian, a struggling blues musician outside of Austin, Texas. He came to my first ever Spiritual Marketing Super Summit event in Austin a couple of years ago, which was his introduction to Internet marketing. He went in as a skeptic. He went into see what he could learn, and thought, “This is kind of strange, but maybe I can make a difference.” He found out that it was very easy to make money online. He could create an eBook. He could create digital music. He could sell all kinds of stuff. Within a year, he came out with 40 products.

David: 40 products?

Joe: 40 products. He was doing it because he would get an idea, and he would act on it instantly. He wouldn’t talk himself out of it. Now, keep in mind, this guy’s not nothing, he’s got no list, no experience, not a single name on a mailing list. How he’s starting as an idea for something called the “Think and Grow Rich Workbook,” now Napoleon Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich” has been a classic, it’s been around since the 1930s, millions of copies have been sold. Millionaires have been made from the book.

Pat read it, liked the book, and said, “You know what that book’s kind of dated, what we need is a short version of it, maybe something like a workbook.” Well a workbook’s real easy to do, it’s basically a lot of blank pages, you say, “Here’s what happened in Chapter 1,” then ask a bunch of questions that people have to answer in their workbook. So, he created a workbook, and he wanted to sell it, and came to me to see if I would help sell it. I said, “Well, you know what, you don’t have a list right now, why don’t you give it away in exchange for e-mail addresses?”

David: Hmm…

Joe: He was able to build a mailing list from nothing to almost 10,000 names by putting up a website that said, “Think and Grow Rich Workbook, yours free, all I ask is your name and e-mail address.” I sent people because I thought it was a great idea. People go there and they say, “Yeah, here’s my e-mail address, give me the book.” Well, he built a mailing list. From there, whenever he comes up with a product, he tells his list. Well, in May, he is going to do his first ever seminar in Austin.

Now, you’ve got to remember, this is another newbie, this is somebody that didn’t understand the Internet, barely knew how to get around with e-mail, now has a lot of websites, 40 products, a mailing list, and is doing his own seminar, and some people look at him as a kind of guru in the Internet marketing business. He started with nothing!

David: Well, I’ll tell you what, let’s do this. Okay, I want to get into your seven-day eBook, and then your article that you wrote about personal experiences. Before that, I want you to talk about “The Attractor Factor.” These people had intent, the college student, you did, Pat O’Brian, all these people. So, talk about that, and give some of these stories. Like Bill Hibler, talk about some of these stories, I mean these average people and talk about “The Attractor Factor” and where to get it.

Joe: Well, thank you. “The Attractor Factor” is one of my recent, most well received books. The subtitle is “Five easy steps for creating wealth or anything else from the inside out.” Now, this is very powerful because the five steps are getting you to focus on what you want, and getting yourself clear within yourself, so you can attract it and receive it. Now, a lot of people say, “Yeah, I’m clear, I want money.” Or, “I’m clear, I want to make money on the Internet,” and that’s not quite enough when it comes to your intention.

It’s much more powerful to declare exactly what you want, or exactly how much you want, or exactly what you want it for. Write down the details. When I said that I wanted that BMW Z3, I knew exactly what model. I knew exactly what color I wanted, and I knew how I wanted it. I wanted the money to come from an unexpected source, something I would end up creating. So knowing your intention is profound, and some people might get to that point. But, something else that I think is a missing secret in the world, and I talk about it in “The Attractor Factor.” You have to get clear within yourself, in order to have, do, or be the thing you say is your intention. Now, getting clear means, all of that self-sabotage, the doubt causing you to procrastinate and about how you talk yourself out of taking action.

There are people listening right now saying, “Yeah, that was good for Joe and good for Dave, or good for the college student, but it won’t work for me.” That’s talking yourself out of the very thing that could work for you. So, getting clear means, getting clear within yourself, of all of that self-sabotage type material.

Now, I have seen, by-God, miracles happen when people do get clear. They know what they want. They’re clear about receiving it. They take action for it, and they’re not attached to what happens. There’s a woman who called me one day from, I think she’s in Canada, and she told me I had to sit down. She was so excited. She was just about out of breath. She had read “The Attractor Factor,” and she wanted to earn something like $50,000. She wanted the $50,000 to pay off her debts, and to take care of her kids, etc. She also knew that there was no way on Earth that she could get that much money. That’s what was in her head.

But she did her clearing, so she thought, “Well, maybe there is a way. My ego can’t see what the way is, but the universe might be able to see what the way is. So, let’s not limit ourselves.” So, she had the intention, the very next day, she got a phone call from a child support office that said, “Are you sitting down?” and they told her that her husband, who had been on hiding for like, 10 years, owed her all kind of back support, wasn’t paying anything, wasn’t responding to e-mails or searches for him—he showed up. He owed her around $50,000. He had already written a check for like $35,000 that was waiting for her. He was good for the rest of it.

She got her money from a source that she never thought that she would get it. So, you never know what’s going to happen.

There are so many people that tell me that they’ve found the love of their life, or they healed something, or they found the money that they needed, or they created a product and it was a turning point for them, there’s lots of stories in the book itself: “The Attractor Factor.” It’s actually the third chapter is nothing but stories of people who have used this and manifested stuff.

A while back, I used “The Attractor Factor” for something specific, and I created a website called www.attractanewcar.com. What I did there was, I thought, “Let me show people how powerful “The Attractor Factor” method works: “A lot of people aren’t real clear about what they want, and I thought, “Well, if you can attract a new car, that’s pretty concrete.” You look in your driveway one day, and you don’t have a new car, and you look in there another day and there is a new car, well you just proved to yourself “The Attractor Factor” works. So, I put together a four week tele-seminar. I didn’t charge anything for it.

Now, there’s a lesson here, because I came up with the idea, and I decided to give it away. I believe in what I call Karmic marketing, you give now and you receive later. So, I put together this “Attract a New Car site.” I announced it; I said you can attend it for free, no charge to be on the call, but of course there’ll be a limited amount of people that could be on the calls because I didn’t have a giant phone line for it. I was going to record the calls, and I would sell them later. That’s how I would make money. I was guaranteed an audience by doing this.

David: Yes.

Joe: People that got on the call were fantastic. Not only did a lot of them end up getting brand new cars, including Pat O’Brian, who was very reluctant to get a new car, he was driving a beat up old pickup truck that he loved because he felt indestructible in it. So, he had to do his clearing within himself to find out, “Oh, he did deserve a new car. He can afford a new car that there’d always be more money coming in.” We don’t live in a limited universe. We live in an abundant universe. He had to do all that clearing. He ended up getting a new car. Actually, he ended up getting two new cars. He got a Mercedes, and then he ended up getting a BMW Z3, maybe because he was inspired by seeing mine, but he’s got a beautiful car, which he absolutely loves.

Another thing that happened during that whole experience, beside a lot of people attracting new cars, is I attracted a new car. I wasn’t even trying to. I had my BMW Z3, and I live at home on my estate, work from home on the Internet. I don’t need to go that many places. I’ve got UPS, FedEx coming here every day, so deliveries are made to me. But I was going through the experience of the Attract a New Car, working the five steps in “The Attractor Factor” process, and I started to play with: “Well, if I wanted a new car, what kind of car would I want?” , which began the whole playful process, which led to me discovering this BMW 645CI, which is a luxury sports car. I went looking at them and fell in love with it. I wanted a particular color that they didn’t have here, but they would make for me in Germany at the BMW plant.

Well, I ended up signing on the dotted line, and then I thought, “Well, this is a $90,000 car. How am I going to manifest this to come out of thin air?” Well, remember I was doing the whole Attract a New Car series, I did it for free. I let anybody go on it. I recorded all the call. I transcribed all the calls, and I put the website up. So when I announced that you could now buy the audio, you could now buy the transcripts; I made almost $90,000 almost instantly. Enough to pay for the brand new BMW 645CI.

David: All using your five-step formula?

Joe: All using the formula. Not talking myself out of anything. It’s so easy to do that, and this is one of the lessons. I want people to take away from this call, is that when you have an idea for something, jump. Jump on it! Ride the energy that’s right there in the birth of that idea because that’s exhilarating: money likes speed.

David: Yes.

Joe: Money likes speed. So, if you have an idea, work on it right now because money will be attracted to you. That idea is coming to you from your connection to the Universe, if I can sound a little metaphysical or spiritual for a second, and that connection is connected to the good that will come your way. But, you’ve got to act on it! If you plug that hole, the energy’s gushing through, coming to you, and you put your thumb in it and say, “I’m not going do it,” you’re blocking the flow of wealth that’s also trying to come to you. So when you get ideas, act now.

David: Joe, like, you’re so right on what you’re saying. I’ve been on the Web for several years now, and I didn’t do anything. I was terrified to build a website. I didn’t know HTML. Then now, I didn’t realize it was so simple, and I waited that literally stopped for two years. If anyone knows anything about HTML, it’s very, very simple that stopped me for two years. Even this book, the book that I’m about to put out that you’re included in. I should have done this two years ago. I should have done it two years ago, for it was sitting there. I had the contacts.

Joe: I should have done the eBooks two years before I did them. I told Mark Joyner, “no” for two years, which was money I could earned for two years. So, that’s the negative way of looking at it. The positive way of looking at it: I did finally come out with the eBooks. You did finally write the HTML. You did finally start doing these calls. You are coming out with your books. So, that’s the whole point.

David: Yes.

Joe: We didn’t do it before, but we’re doing it now. The people listening may not have done something before, that’s fine, you learn from it. Now, take action. Don’t talk yourself anymore, don’t talk yourself out of it anymore.

David: It’s so true. My goal of this book, as far as on my end, is paying off student loans. But, I told you even when I wanted you to do this interview, I want this book. I don’t want this book to sit on the shelf with somebody. I want someone to pick up, and pick one of the nine or ten stories that go in this book, and say, “I’m going to do it. I can do this.”

Joe: There are people making money online that are selling socks or selling herbs, selling magic tricks, etc. I read a book called “505 Weirdest Online Stores” and “The 505 Weirdest Online Stores.” It’s funny and weird, but you’ll find little things in there like, there’s somebody who is selling golf cart tires, which is a niche. Now, he’s not selling golf clubs. He’s not selling golf carts. He’s only selling the tires to golf carts. Niche marketing is really a great way to make a lot of money.

You find a market that needs something, and it could be really small. It can be like a tire for a golf cart, and if you can become the supplier to it, you can make money.

People listening probably have a hobby or a passion, or an interest, or maybe it’s a past experience, or past education that they can turn into an online business. I just hope nobody overlooks it because it’s too often to take our own expertise for granted.

David: Yes, right before we get into one more thing about “The Attractor Factor,” you were the first person or first author to knock Harry Potter off the list.

Joe: Oh, right! I used marketing for that, and it was all Internet-driven. But it was last April, the latest Harry Potter book at that time had not been released, it was all through pre-orders an #1 on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and just about everywhere else. I was releasing “The Attractor Factor” in early April while Harry Potter was #1, and the Pope had just died. I can get on a Best Seller List, but I’m certainly not going to get #1. I’ll try for it, and this is important, I still tried for it.

The very first day of the book’s release, April 5th, and I told my list. I told other lists. I had a radio show, an interview, and other promotions and the book went to #1. It sold out in 24 hours! My publisher called me up and did the most ridiculous thing. They asked me if I could turn off my marketing, it was working so well they were completely sold out of books.

David: The publisher?! Oh, man.

Joe: The publisher called me. I laughed, and said, “Man, you guys don’t know what it’s like to live in the streets. We’re not stopping the marketing, when you’ve got something that works—you keep going. Go print more books.”

David: That’s awesome. Well, cool. Now, let’s get into what you were just touching about. You wrote an article about, like, turning your personal experiences into an eBook. Can you tell me about that and then give me some examples. You’ve got several friends that are not even remotely close into the Internet marketing niche, but they took their personal experiences and stuff. Can you just elaborate on that article?

Joe: Well, I don’t have the article for today. I’ve written so many articles, and I invite people to go to www.mrfire.com, where they can read dozens of them all free. The story that comes to mind that’s probably in there is of a young woman from Austin, Texas, who came to visit us one day. She was new to the Internet. She knew how to do email, but she didn’t know how to do the website. Actually, she wasn’t even sure people could make money online. She wasn’t even sure I was really doing it, that’s how skeptical she was. But yet, she came to our estate. I visited with her.

Narissa and I talked to her. She asked me a lot of questions. Well, I took her under my wing so-to-speak, never charged her, this is my Karmic marketing. I kind of coached her, and I asked her what she was interested in doing, and she would talk about food, and she’d talk about dieting, and she’d talk about fitness, which was all-interesting. Then, along the way, she said she also taught herself how to play the guitar. I said, “Well, tell me a little bit about that.” She said, well, she taught herself how to play basic guitar in two days. I thought, “Oh man. That’s an eBook.” I said, “Can you write that down in a way that you could teach your method to others?” She drug her feet because she was kind of talking herself out of it. But I was there saying, “Come on, do it, I want to see the outline. I want to see what we can do.”

Well, she ended up writing this book on, how to play the guitar in only two days. Then she wrote a website on how to do it, and then she ended up putting the website up and selling the eBook through ClickBank. I don’t remember how much money she made right away, it wasn’t a tremendous amount, but she was making money when the woman was broke. This was the real icing on the cake, somebody who came across her eBook, who knows about Internet marketing, said, “I would like to buy your eBook outright, so I can sell it myself.” He gave her $10,000.

David: $10,000?

Joe: Now, this is the woman who was actually like a student in college, and she was broke, and she was still getting money from her parents because she was almost starving. She comes up with an eBook when doesn’t even think eBooks will sell, she’s not sure anybody will make money online. She makes some money selling it, and then somebody says, “I’ll give you $10,000 to let me take your eBook.” She thought about it for a while. She needed the money, so she sold her eBook for $10,000.

She still sells her eBook, but she’s an affiliate for her own eBook. So, she can still make money selling it, and she sees that she’s got 10 grand in the bank. Now, this is from nothing to $10,000.

David: What I want people to understand: it doesn’t take a lot of money to do this, to put up a website, to convert something to PDF files.

Joe: I’m glad you said, it took her nothing because she was already broke. The putting up the website, she either found software to help her, or she found some kind of free service online that would just change whatever she was writing into HTML. Her website was nothing much, but basically a sales letter with a picture of her holding her guitar. She’s an attractive woman, so it’s kind of an attractive picture.

As a sales letter, she used my Hypotonic Writing message: she wrote her own sales letter for it. Putting it on ClickBank, it costs $50 to open an account at ClickBank. From there on out, you only pay when you make a sale, which ClickBank deducts from your sale. So, it’s all brainless, and ClickBank sends you a check every two weeks. I love ClickBank, so many products are sold through ClickBank. I get numerous checks every two weeks from ClickBank. I look forward to it. It’s all passive income.

Once you put your product up, and you start promoting it, then you just keep promoting it. But for the most part, everything that comes in is residual money. Based on, this is the whole point, it was based on her personal experience that she was discounting.

David: Yes. Yep.

Joe: I was saying, “I learned how to play the guitar, but who cares about that? People can learn how to play the guitar from other books.” That’s not the point. She had her own method! She taught herself, and she created an eBook. People will often talk themselves out of doing an eBook saying, “Well, there’s already a fitness book, or there’s already a book on guitar-playing,” and I’ll say, “Don’t you believe there’ll be another one next week?”

For example, with cookbooks, isn’t there going to be more cookbooks? Aren’t there already enough? No! There are going to be more cookbooks next week, and in the parallel, there’ll be more diet books next week. So, don’t talk yourself out of it just because it’s been done before, because it hasn’t been done by you. You will put your own spin on it. You will bring in your own personal experiences. You will have your own stories to tell, which make it unique.

David: What is step 2? We’re talking about having that clear, like, clearing yourself. I mean, it’s so true. Like, I still work a full-time job at Sears. I’m a top salesman for fitness equipment. I was going to interview one of the mechanics to help me sell better. I was going to put a CD together. Well, this guy does not think he’s an expert, but he’s been working on treadmills and lawnmowers and things like that for 18 years! I’m not joking, Joe, he does not think he’s an expert, but he is. He’s totally an expert.

Joe: It’s so amazing. Well, one of the writers who inspired me was Rod Serling. Rod Serling created the Twilight Zone. He’d always introduce those old episodes. I met him when I was a teenager, and I asked him if he was going to write his autobiography, and he said, he wasn’t going to because nothing had ever happened to him.

David: You’re kidding me. Wow.

Joe: I thought, “Man, talk about dismissing your whole life.” He of course died when he was 50 years old. Guess what? People have written his life story. They thought it was important. He didn’t think it was important.

David: That is amazing.

Joe: So, they’ve come out with books. There’s like, biographies of Rod Serling out there, but he didn’t write his own life story because he dismissed it. So, I don’t want people to dismiss it. The people listening, you’ve got gold in your own backyard. It’s in you! It’s in your life experiences and something you love to do. It could be anything from the way you do makeup in a certain way, or you’ve got a knitting expertise, or maybe it’s a product that you’re creating. I don’t know what it is, it’s prayer beads, I’m just winging it, but whoever’s listening, you’ve got something.

It doesn’t have to be this mass appeal-type experience because the beauty of the Internet is, there are blocks of niche people, just like the guy selling just tires for golf carts. I never would have thought that would work. It’s working, you know. There’s all kinds of other ones like that. I would encourage people to get that book, “The 505 Weirdest Online Stores” because that’s inspiring. I would encourage them to get my book, “The Attractor Factor” that walks them through these steps. I want to encourage them to get a book called “The Next Millionaires” by Paul Zane Pilzer. In “The Next Millionaires,” he talks about the fact that the Internet is just coming into birth.

We’ve tried a lot of things, but we’ve certainly not tried everything, and the market is incredibly rich for new blood with new vision, and new strength, and new energy, new youth to come in and see what they can make. There is gold in cyberspace, it’s waiting right now. It’s in areas we never even thought of like the guy, the college student thinking, “Oh, let me sell a blank page and sell pixel ads on it.” It’s insane.

David: Changed his life. Yep.

Joe: Yes. He made over a million-some bucks and became famous. He’s only, like, 27. So, I would say read those books, as well as re-listen to this interview, as well as the other ones. There is gold here, there is real gold here.

David: Joe, thank you so much for doing the interview, and this is exactly what I wanted to accomplish with this interview, and say, “Look, you can do it, it’s out there,” with their personal experiences combined with your five steps for attracting wealth. It’s done. You just have to create and take action on it.

Joe: Yeah, take action. If something doesn’t work, just do the next action. Just learn from it and keep going because the beauty of the Internet: try things instantaneously, get instantaneous feedback, and just keep working. Just keep playing, it’s not even work, it’s fun! You can play.

Joe: So, David, this has been great. Thank you for including me, and Godspeed to everybody.

David: You, too. Alright, bye-bye.

A missile silo home is just one of the items Don marketed on Ebay. Don is known on Ebay as the “Big Ticket Ace” for marketing big ticket items like an actual missile silo home on Ebay among many other cool items.

This was an exciting interview. It is almost hard to believe. Don Peters is a guy that sells weird and expensive items on eBay. He is known as the “Big Ticket Ace”. He started out selling stuff in his house, but then found a niche selling items like a missile silo home on eBay. Enjoy the interview.

David: Don, so give me some background as far as, you know, what you’ve done for a living before eBay.

Don: Ah, yeah, right out of college, I went to the Citadel, which is kind of a military college, down in South Carolina. A second generation—my Dad went there, and went into the Army immediately afterward, and flew helicopters, starting-off in the Army, and then got into airplanes and helicopters. Then, I got out and got into the IT world. One of my good buddies was an IT consultant, and I had a computer science background, so then I went into work with him as a consultant and, basically, I’ve been a consultant ever since. I’ve been project manager for USAA insurance company, and Computer Sciences Corporation, where I was handling multi-millions of dollars in projects. Then, basically, in Spring 2002, I got laid-off from Computer Sciences Corporation as a project manager, which was a very good six-figure job as an outside consultant. The project ended and they couldn’t fund us into the follow-on project because I get paid too much. They had to lay me off, and I didn’t know when that other project was going to be funded, so we were just kind of in limbo. So, I just started looking for work all over the place. I was an outside consultant, you always have your game ready, so I couldn’t find anything because the job market was crashing, unemployment was rising, and it just happened to be one of those time periods, it was just a bad time to find a job, especially as a project manager. So, we were living in New Jersey at the time, my wife was eight months pregnant, and we had just bought a brand-new vehicle, overwhelmed in debt.

David: Now, did you have any other kids?

Don: I had one kid, and we had a second one on the way and then, this happened, and you get use to a certain lifestyle—a six-figure lifestyle. You know. But, we did save a lot. We put away a lot in savings, and I couldn’t find a job anywhere. I went on unemployment, and couldn’t find work up in New Jersey, we decided we’d come back to Texas and find work here because we’re both from Texas, and we went out to New Jersey for community. So, we came back to Texas, and couldn’t find work here either.

David: And you’re still trying to get in the IT field and stuff, right?

Don: Still trying to get in the IT field.

David: Okay.

Don: A management job, trying to get anything, actually. But there was just nothing out there to be had, so I started selling stuff out of my house on eBay just to have some cash, and getting rid of all the downsizing and everything else.

David: Was half the stuff you were selling just stuff in your garage?

Don: Tape sets, all of my, equipment, any kind of electronics, you know, whatever was not tied down, pretty much. I didn’t have my whole house full of storage to use. So, I got rid of everything I could, and I ran out of stuff to sell. Therefore, I thought, gosh, you know, I could sell stuff for other people, and I came up with a name: www.IwillsellyourstuffonBay.com and cause someone—had read somewhere that you just tell people what you do, and it’s part of your name, and makes it easier. So that’s what I did. Kind of a long name and everything, but eBay came after me, and they said I couldn’t use the word eBay, then I changed it to www.Iwillsellyourstuff.com and that’s basically been the company since.

David: Wow, now, have you had—do you have any experience whatsoever? I mean, I know you got a computer science background, but, yeah I mean, did you build websites before? Did you? You’d never Done anything, you just said, “Okay, this eBay thing is huge.”

Don: I’d been on eBay as a buyer, bought a lot of stuff on eBay, and tried selling a couple of times, and it was pretty easy to sell. So, I knew it could be done, so I wasn’t afraid to go and just jump in and start doing it. Plus, I’ve always been on the Internet, so I’m kind of savvy, you know, some Internet savvy., When people were on AOL, I was already on the Internet, so I already—I was kind of ahead of the game in that aspect.

David: Wow. Alright, so what are your websites?

Don: www.Iwillsellyourstuff.com. That was the main site that started it, the whole thing.

David: Okay, now what type of stuff? When you started selling, I read that you had put business cards together, and you were passing business along. What type of stuff, just, other people’s stuff that was sitting in their garage? Nothing real unusual, really?

Don: Right. What happened was, I started going to a couple of local businesses that had items to sell, refutable items—one of them was a car dealer, and with him, we sat down and worked out this thing were we could sell his cars on his lot. He basically had a consignment lot. We would do, you know, do car sales on eBay, give the opportunity to people that didn’t want to leave their car on the lot. They could sell it on eBay that way they could drive around with the car and still have it out there for sale. I mean that was my first real customer. I went up to him, and he said, “Yeah, that’s a great idea.” It was that easy. Then, we started going around to local businesses, anybody I could find, and looking for things to sell. You know, just odds and ends, antiques and stuff. Then, I went to a family reunion in Connecticut, and I ran into a cousin of mine. His name is Bruce Francisco, and Bruce is a developer. He owns a property in upstate New York in the Adirondacks. It’s an actual missile silo that was retired from the air force. He and his cousin bought this missile silo. I mean, think of it as a tube, going down into the ground, about 180 feet straight down. Where this missile would actually, stand, and be ready to launch from underground. You know, the doors would open-up, and it would shoot out. You’ve seen the pictures.

David: Yeah.

Don: Then to the side of it, there was a two level, round, underground complex where the mission control center was, and where the people stayed at night. It was all underground. So, he has a runway beside it, and he built a sleigh. Kind of like a ski sleigh, on top of the opening above the missile silo. So, what he had was an aboveground home, and then he went down into the basement into another home underneath the ground, a two-level missile silo in the complex. Then, you went through this tunnel, and then there was the big, huge shaft, which nothing was done with that just a bunch of metal and stuff. Raw metal. Which has lots, a lot of opportunities, too, because you could actually construct 2000 square foot apartments, you know, by putting a floor in. Probably put about, I think, about seven floors. You could get seven underground apartments if you wanted to with this place.

David: Wow, this thing’s enormous, isn’t it?

Don: Yeah. So I said to Bruce, I said, “I’ve got this new business I’m selling on eBay,” he goes, “aw, that’s great!” Because, I wanted to put, you know, this missile silo on eBay, but I don’t know how. He said, “Well, we’re a perfect match!” and we cut a deal. We started work. He is a great marketing guy, knows a lot about marketing. You know, getting in the news, so we were in the news all the time, but I learned secrets of how to do that, and how to get into USA Today, Good Morning America, Today Show, etc. We were getting on all the shows, and the sale of this missile silo got a lot of attention. We had thousands and thousands of newspaper reports, and articles, and interviews and everything else on TV and radio and everything. So the first month, we didn’t know what it would sell for. I said, “You know, man, what can we do, we can put it up with a Buy It Now price of 25 million,” we had no idea, and just see, but nothing happened the first month. We got some tire-kickers. The second month, we had two people bid on it, and the winning bid price was 2.1 million.

David: 2.1 million?

Don: Yeah, 2. 1 million. So, we had a sale, and it was great. We ended up getting on, 60 minutes, too, for the sale, and everything. Free publicity!

David: Well, and now, it’s not the largest transaction, you know, in eBay, but it’s the largest real estate transaction on eBay, isn’t it?

Don: At that time, it was the largest real estate transaction on eBay. The sad part of the story is the actual sale fell through.

David: My goodness. Who was this person that did that?

Don: He didn’t want to be revealed or anything, but basically, he was in a lawsuit with his company because he lost his leg during work. He was under a compensation suit, and supposed to make tens of millions of dollars. At the same time, he was at the final stages of this suit, and we had already qualified him because he was supposed to have the money within six months. So we were all good, and everything was great, and they had a weird deal going on. We were getting ready to close, and he was getting ready to settle the suit, and a tornado came through, and they canceled the court appointment. This tornado came through the thing, and then something happened, and their lawyers found a loophole, and found a way to cut him out of this whole deal, so now, he’s back in court again or whatever, trying to get that money. So, they had to stall the deal. So, anyway, that fell through a year and a half after we’d done the sale. On eBay. So, what happened to me in that time period, I thought, “Oh my God, this is a great opportunity because look: I can sell 2 million dollar items. “Not much work, I mean, it was a little bit more work, but not much more work than selling a bunch of little things. In that year and a half, I started going out and looking for other unusual items to sell. The motivation from selling the silo lead to other ventures. I came up with—,while I was in a chat room, chatting with someone about the missile silo, and this guy goes, “Yeah, what you should do is put one of these airplane homes next to the missile silo, ha-ha-ha. “So, I went and looked, and I saw this site, and it was this picture of an airplane, kind of over water, attached, and the boat going underneath it, and I thought, “Kinda hokey,” so I called the guy up. I said, “Tom,” Tom Bennington, the owner, I said, “Tom is this thing for real, can you really make these?” He goes, “Yeah, I have the patent and everything else.” Another opportunity.

David: Cool!

Don: I said, “I’d like to sell these on eBay for you.” He said, “Okay, you know, whatever,” and we cut a deal.

David: You’re talking about homes—actual airplanes that are made into homes?!

Don: Right.

David: Wow!

Don: What it is an actual 727. He guts out the plane. He’s a parts dealer, so he takes engines off, sells them, takes all the seats out, sells it, parts, instruments, all that stuff’s gone. What’s left was the shell of a body, and he would have to cut it up for scrap metal. He hated doing that, so he designed this way that you could actually live in it like a home. It sits on a pedestal about five feet off the ground, up to, I think about 20 or maybe even 30 feet off the ground. The airplane rests on this, and it rotates 360 degrees my gosh. Kind of like a rotating restaurant.

David: Restaurant. Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. Wow.

Don: So, he designed it, got the patent, got it all creative, and set it up so you could have rooms on the inside. You could have the wings as decks. You could put a Jacuzzi in it. It’s really nice.

David: So you found this guy, and you wanted to sell his stuff.

Don: I found him, and I said, you know, can I put this on eBay for you? We had a sale within three months. Three months? Wow. He’d been putting it in, like, the Robb Report, or one of the high end things and gotten no success. With eBay, three months later, I sold my first one.

David: Wow, what how much money are we talking about, as far as, what are these airplane homes going for?

Don: They cost 300,000 dollars. I get 10 percent of anything I sell.

David: 300,000 dollars! Wow, and you actually had somebody in 90 days, buy an airplane home. That’s amazing.

Don: We’ve had two more since then. So, I’ve sold three, now. I haven’t got paid on those yet because they haven’t been built. However, I just got a note from one of our buyers, the third buyer, he’s up in Connecticut. His name’s Dave Kayer. He got commercial land, and he wanted to put this plane on top, and it would be an awesome billboard or something. All in all, part of his office complex, and what happened was the town was fighting him. They said, “No way, we’re not going to do let you build here. “So what he did was, he became part of the town You know, officers, city representatives, something close to the town mayor. He didn’t make mayor, but he got into the system. He said, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.”

David: You’re kidding me.

Don: He just wrote me, and said, he thinks it’s going to pass in the city. So, once he gets done, we’ll begin construction on his airplane. So you’ve got three of these under your belt, you’re just waiting for the money to come in.

David What type of other stuff does, I mean, have you been selling, you know, since your first transaction of the missile silo? What other things have you been doing, as far as big ticket? Anything that comes up that’s unusual?

Don I get a LEGO White House that’s unusual, all the way to a lot of high-end stuff, paintings, like Picassos, murals.

David: So, how do you find this stuff? You hear about somebody, or you just call them up? What’s that?

Don My people find me, and they ask me to sell their stuff for them.

David Wow. Well, you’re out there now, I mean you’ve been in Good Morning America, and thousands of newspaper articles now, so I guess the traffic’s definitely coming to you now.

Don: So now, I’m really choosy because I have three Internet businesses now, so that’s a small part of my business now. I only take very high-end business, right now. I’m working on a transaction for a hotel in Costa Rica, five and a half million. In fact, a call comes in today to see whether I’m going to represent them. I have an island property in Lake Superior. Now, we didn’t have a sale at the auction site; however as soon as the auction was over, I had four buyers that were fighting for the property. We have one right now, and it’s under contract for 1.9 million. But again, it’s a very high risk thing, you’ve got to wait. So, by the time this books out, I don’t know if I’ll have been taped to that one too. You know, the weirdest thing about it, you sell one because you have a hundred million dollar items. If you just sell one, you’re doing pretty good at just 10 percent, you know, and you’re right, it doesn’t take that much extra time to just list something, just taking pictures, and list something on eBay. Yeah, because it’s a lot of fun and work now. So I can be picking and choosing. So I like to have maybe one or two properties a year that are about a million dollars. About a hundred thousand dollar income per item, if it sells. So, if I can represent two that sell in a year, that’s on it. That’s how I’m moving my business to that kind of level.

David: Well, cool. Now, do you work full-time or part-time?

Don: Full-time.

David: Full-time. Okay. What are your other businesses that you do?

Don: Well, I have a business called, www.infobonus.com, which spawns from the www.Iwillsellyourstuff.com

David: Okay, and what do you do on there?

Don: Let me tell you a story. But basically, there was a guy named Greg Reid, he’s the Millionaire Mentor.

David: Okay.

Don: He found me selling high-end things on eBay, but he wanted me to help him, show him, you know, the roads, how to do eBay. We came up with a plan to sell him on eBay, so we sold him as an inspirational speaker on eBay. It was the first time Done. He got so pepped-up, and I was telling him my story, and he goes, “You know what? You need to talk to a guy named Steven E, and tell him your story, and get it into a book. So I said, “Here’s my story: I went from unemployed to selling big ticket items on eBay, blah-blah-blah, and living the life I love. “The series that Steven E has is Wake up, Live the Life you Love.” So, I told him my story, he said “Great, write it up,” and I wrote it up. We got it in a book, and about four months later, that book became a number one best seller.. It was like, seventy authors had a story in this book—a compilations book. As for the authors, we all helped to make it a number one best seller by using our friendships to help sell the book. Throughout the process, I learned the system and the formula to become a number one bestseller. There’s a system and I turned it into a kind of automated business. But, what www.Infobonus.com does is collect bonuses. Bonuses would be like I have a bonus called “The Five Steps to Get Started on eBay.” It’s an audio series, and a guy named Thundy Melundras, he’s a famous radio announcer in San Antonio. He interviewed me over a period of two or three months. So, I recorded these interviews, and it was basically a step-by-step how to get started teaching people on the radio. I packaged it up, and I made it into a free product that I gave away to people. I mean like twenty dollars, but I give it away free, and hopefully they like my stuff, and they’ll buy other stuff from me. —All in all, there are speakers out there that have products. They would give away in order to expose you to their products. Altogether, I collect all these bonuses into my system, and I bundle them with books that make them sell. So, if you have a book that you sell for $14.95, you can get 3,000 dollars worth of bonus materials for buying that book.

David: Wow!

Don: Yeah.

David: And so, it creates an irresistible offer, and a lot of people buy the book to grab the bonuses. For example, if you walked into a store and you saw a Colgate package of toothpaste that you needed, and a Colgate with a toothbrush attached to it, which one are you going to buy? Easily, the one with the toothbrush.

Don: Even if you just need toothpaste that day, and you saw one with the toothbrush attached to it, you might buy it anyway. So, and that’s the concept, and we have an automated system for authors. In the last year, now, I started this business, I started building it in August of last year of 2004. Later on, we launched it on January first, with the first book, and, we made the book a bestseller. Since then, I’ve made one book a month, a best seller. So, I have a hundred percent track record. Every book that uses my system has become a bestseller.

David: And what is that website again?

Don: www.Infobonus.com.

David: Okay, so you’ve got, those two sites. What’s that one that you actually, market as?

Don: Oh, the third site I have is Big Ticket Ace. One of the co-authors in the book, his name’s Joel Christopher. We’re on the phone, all the authors are on the phone talking about how we’re going to market this book, and Joel Christopher says, “Oh my god, you won’t believe this, Don, but I’m having a Big Ticket seminar in January. Would you—can you speak at it?” I said, “Yeah!” I sat down with Joel Christopher; we created a product to sell back in the room, and I spoke at his seminar the first time standing up, so they kept calling me Big Ticket Ace, so I became this Big Ticket Ace, Since then, I’ve sold more than five items because an Ace is someone who shoots down more than five airplanes, or whatever in a wartime. So, I had this aviation persona background, and everything else, it came out because I sold Big Ticket things or Big Ticket Ace. Anyway, I did a speak at his seminar, and spawned off a product to teach people how to sell big ticket items. You know that I sell for about a hundred bucks, an audio product, so that’s a spawned off business.

David: You actually have your own product for teaching people how to actually do what you’re doing?

Don: Right. www.bigticketace.com.

David: Wow and they can get that for like a hundred dollars?

Don: A hundred dollars and then, what I found was that there’s people that wanting to do what I do, but don’t know how to get started. So, I have two other programs: the scout program, where you can go out and find help to sell my properties for me, let’s say I have an airplane home, and you have a buddy who would like to buy one.
You put him in touch with me, and I’ll split my profits with you. So you do the scout-drop for me, and I also have the bird-dog program, where people go out, and they’ll go find whatever to sell, bring those to me, and if we make a sale, then I split profits with that person. People work for me. It’s great.

David: Wow, so there’s no risk. You just put contacts together.

Don: No risk for people, so if you know somebody who wants to buy an airplane home, you can make a couple thousand dollars on the sale. Those two things kind of spawned off—and that’s where I got the Costa Rica motel. I have a guy who lives in Singapore He put me in touch with those guys, so he’s my bird-dog. He’s finding me, people that want to sell stuff. So, I don’t have to go out there and hunt them down anymore.

David: Wow. Man, that is really good.

Don: I split-up to 33 percent, on a million dollar property, that’s 100,000, you could make up to 33,000 dollars.

David: 33,000 dollars?

Don: Just by finding that property and bringing it to me. We make a sale. It’s weird because when I first started, “I will sell your stuff.” I didn’t know where the path would lead me, so it got me to the book, which led me to the bestseller “thingamajig,” which led me to the Big Ticket Ace. It’s just, weird how it’s all interconnected, you know?
David: From unemployed to like three Internet businesses?

Don: I actually have one more Internet business.

David: You do? What is that? What is this one?

Don: Although, I didn’t really count the Big Ticket Ace as an Internet business.

David: Okay.

Don: Kind of goes along with Big Ticket and will sell your stuff. But, the other one is www.apachebillet.com.

David: Apache what?

Don: Apache Billet? Billet is spelled—it’s a type of alin.

David: Okay.

Don: One of my businesses, I went to playschool with one of the guys who owns a cutting business. He has these C&C machines that cut alin, and he came up with this grip, a real nice slip-on grip that goes on Suzukimotorcycles, slips right on, and it’s made of alin, and it’s chrome-plated. He wanted me to help him market it on the Internet. So, we built apachebillet.com, where we sell these grips, GSXR motorcycle grips, on the Internet. They’re selling like hotcakes. It’s crazy because everybody’s making the Harley grips, but no one’s been making them for the little Suzukis, and Yamahas, and Hondas, which we’re diversifying.

David: My goodness. Well, they say it’s all about niche, I mean, you market to everybody, you know, no one’s your market, I think that’s what the quote says, or whatever, so right now you’ve got Suzuki people and that’s who’s going to buy it.

Don: I get to keep my aviation theme because both of us are aviators. The alin is aircraft grade alin. So it all kind of ties in, so we decided on Apache Billet for the name of the company.

David: Gee, that’s brilliant and speaking of aviation theme, I’ve noticed, you know, seeing you on different shows like Good Morning America, and different things, you always seem to wear like an aviation outfit. Is that correct?

Don: I wear a flight suit.

David: Flight suit? Yeah, Wow, that is brilliant.

Don: It has all my logos on it, so you know who I am and what I do. The thing that’s great about the flight suit that I’m basically a walking income booth.

David: My goodness. Yeah, totally.

Don: It’s funny, I was at eBay live, one year, and we were down in New Orleans, or something like that. These people all paid hundreds to thousands of all sorts for their booths, and I walked around in a flight suit, and I had people coming left and right, wanting to know: “Here, you want to know how to sell big ticket items. Here’s what you do, go to www.bigticketace.com.

David: So, how do you have any employees?

Don: No.

David: No employees. Okay, so, it’s just you. Do you outsource anything? Is there anything to outsource?

Don: I have to have programmers, so I have to outsource those kinds of things.

David: Like for the web design and things like that?

Don: Well, most of the web design I do myself. I use Template Monster to start, and they usually have good Flash designs, and then, I learned how to change Flash designs. I just got in there and figured out how to work Flash. Hands on learning. I know how to use FrontPage now, so I can create my own sites. So, I’ll take the template and manipulate it the way I want like www.apachebillet.com is totally a template, thus redesigned to make it fit. It’s like the motorcycle was an Italian motorcycle, we had them put a (high used) motorcycle in there, and other. You just make it work. Work the way you want it to.

David: Cool. I mean, what is the Internet lifestyle like, as far as, what is your typical week like, you know, now that you’ve been doing this for, what, three or four years now?

Don: Well, the nice thing is your’re not an employee of somebody else, and you get to enjoy your family.

David: Yeap.

Don: Some people don’t get to enjoy activities with their kids and watch them grow up. I know guys, I feel so sorry for them, they come home and go out, before it’s light. They leave home when it is still dark. They return when it is dark, so they don’t even see the kids. So, you know, the weekends are the only time, and they have to spend every second with them. It’s just tough because they can’t, sometimes don’t feel like they can discipline they kids because—“what right to they have?”, so their kids go wild and crazy because they don’t see them. They’ve got to be good to them the whole time. So, it’s just kind of a weird relationship. For me, mine is so totally normal, being home, I’m the one who starts the day with my kids. I send them off to school. I cook them breakfast, and I spend time with them in the morning. Then I go in, and I do my e-mails, and I basically catch-up and return all my e-mails. Next, I spend a lot of my time on marketing. How do I increase my market share? How do I increase the traffic to my site? How can I get more new? How can I get more hits? How can I get more sales? Altogether, that what I spend my time doing. Unreal, but really, takes on a lot less stress than having a boss over you, and going to a job that you hate. Yeah, every client is a boss, so you have a thousand bosses. They all have different personalities but I don’t have to punch tickets. I’ve been to some jobs where I’m twiddling my thumbs after the first two hours. That’s how I learned eBay because there was nothing to do at work, so I’d get online and learn how eBay works. But, you have to be there because you’re punching the clock. You know what I mean? So, there’s a lot of workforce out there, people that work in their jobs that are bored half of their day because they have nothing to do. That’s why they socialize! They go talking to their friends. They go to the water cooler. They do everything else because they can’t keep you busy every single day for every hour of the day.

David: No.

Don: Most people, anyway. So why not maximize your time?

David: Wow, so what type of fees like if you were brokering, what type of fees are you charging for say like real estate, or these airplane homes? Is it just a general, across the board, ten percent, or do you go deal-by-deal?

Don: I go deal-by-deal, but typically ten percent.

David: Okay.

Don: So that is what I look for, the real estate transactions, I have to do a flat fee, because, you’re not allowed to take a commission, so I basically give them a flat fee. Upfront is how much it’s going to cost you to get started, and on the back end is how much it’s going to be, and I don’t do automobiles anymore because Texas law says that you can’t, or you’re considered a broker if you do automobiles that are not your own. You can only sell so many in a year

David: Really, as a broker?

Don: I didn’t want to play that. I didn’t want to fight that issue, so I just stopped selling cars. I had some sweet cars like a ’57 Chevy. I had a 60-something Cadillac that was in a movie, and old trucks. It was pretty cool.

David: My goodness. Well that’s getting a little bit more common, as for selling cars. I had a friend who just, a couple weeks ago, sold his brand new Mustang, 2005 Mustang, on eBay, and he bought a Mercedes. He drove up to Indiana and got it. It seems kind of weird like holy cow. He just bought it off eBay! But, you know, it’s getting more common nowadays, I guess.

Don: Well, one thing that’s good about eBay, first off, when you walk into a store. Okay, could you imagine on the front of the store, there’s a big poster that automatically updates, and on this poster it says, “This is how many people love this store. This is how many people hate this store.” Transactions or whatever, right at the storefront, so there’s a lot of stores where people hate and say, “I would never go into that store again,” and I’d love to be able to put that sign-up. As an eBay seller, I have a sign called my Feedback Rating that tells people exactly where and how I stand with my customers. Currently, I have a hundred percent feedback. Positive feedback. Now, I only have a small number of transactions, just over 400, on “I will sell your stuff.” However, I have three different eBay sites, but “I will sell your stuff” only has 400 because I don’t do a big number of large amounts. I do small quantity but larger value.

David: But you have a hundred percent feedback of 400 people?

Don: Right.

David: That’s huge.

Don: Feedback is one thing that indicates what kind of a seller you have.

David: So feedback’s really important on eBay, right?

Don: Sure, well, it’s one indicator.

David: Okay.

Don: What I do, when I go to buy a car, you look for some Feedback Ratings. You say, “Okay, they have a ninety-five percent or better rating,” so you go into their feedback, and you see where the negative ones are, and a lot of times it’s just people that were too impatient, who are giving bad ones because it didn’t get sent in time. There are always some bad ones. So, you find out that probably this guy isn’t really a bad guy to deal with and then you can look for things like Square-Trade seal, which will tell you they’re a Square dealer, and ID Verify is the thing in eBay where you can check. ID Verify says that the guy who’s selling is the person who’s selling, not some guy using a fake ID or something. So, when they sell a car, they basically have to tell you everything that’s wrong with it. Because if you went there and it’s dripping oil on the ground, and you look under it, you can cut the sale right there, and say “I’m not buying this, even though I told you I’m paying you 15,000 for this thing, I’m not paying a cent because you didn’t disclose this.” So you can get out of the deal real easy. If someone has to ship it to you and you’re going to send it back twice. The shipment going to cost them lots of money because it’s about 500 to 1000 dollars per shipment. So, when you sell a car, you’ve got to make sure you disclose everything. So that’s the good thing. See, the shifty car dealers of the past, or whatever you see on the street, won’t effectively work on eBay.

David: No. I see.

Don: Those guys will die.

David: Exactly.

Don: Because their sign says, “I’ve had bad transactions with this guy.” So, buying a car is pretty safe on eBay. Same thing with properties and million dollar items and everything else.

David So cool. Let me ask you this, how do you get traffic to your listings? What are some of the things that you’re getting that makes you stand out and get people to check out your eBay listings?

Don It depends on a high dollar listing, I’ll do all different kinds of ways to market. I’ll do press releases. I’ll submit a worldwide press release usually on the property and use Google Adwords.

David: Google AdWords? What is that?

Don: Google AdWords is a paid advertisement, when you go into Google, and you say, “missile silo,” over on the right-hand side, you’ll see these little squares, and these are paid advertising, paid per click, so you might see my little ad over there for eBay, this missile silo, but it doesn’t cost me a thing until you click.

David: So, it’s very targeted to traffic.

Don: So, I click it through, and it comes right to the eBay advertisement, and if they buy, then great, if not, whatever. There’s a lot of tire-kickers out there, but it’s still another way to bring traffic. eBay has this similar thing called Keywords, and what’ll happen is if you type in, like, missile silo, Adirondack. I can use a bunch of keywords, and what’ll happen is they’ll give me a banner, so even though my listing may not show up on the page, the banner will show up at the top, and you can click on the banner. It’ll bring them right to my auction.

David: Do you pay extra for that type of service?

Don: You have to pay for those things.

David: Okay.

Don: And I pass those through to the seller. They pay the fees, and I don’t pay anything. Because I first started, I was selling these things for free, for people, and racking in the fees until what I found out as a perfect example: I had a guy who had a Prowler, a Plymouth Prowler. He wanted 40,000 dollars for it. I caught him a bidder at 36,500. Okay. He refused the bid. He wanted 40,000, okay? So, I lost the sale and two weeks later, I see this Prowler up in the dealership because this is a small town, and I talk to my consignment buddy. He said, “Oh yeah, he was desperate for money, He sold it to the dealership for 30,000.”

David: You’re kidding me!

Don: Like, two weeks after he turned my bid down. So, it was just like people get greedy and they don’t take a good bid because sometimes underbids are so good. $36,000, $6,000 more than he gave it away for to the dealership. So, it was taking the risk, I was losing. I ended up losing a lot of money starting up, and then I said, “I’m not doing this anymore, they’re going to pay for every listing.” So, I make them pay for the listing, I make them pay everything upfront.

David: So, Don, do you have any competition? Like, you’re really the first person I’ve ever heard doing this.

Don: No, in fact, I’m the trail blazer. Down with Makewood Men and Winterford VPs and there’s no one else doing this—at least a couple of years ago.

David: Now, Makewood, she’s the CEO, right?

Don: She’s the CEO, yeah.

David: Well, cool. How important is it to like build a brand? Like I’ve noticed, you’re brilliant at branding, and you’re wearing the flight suit, as you’re going out or whatever.

David: Has that helped you?

Don: Absolutely. I mean, I was at a seminar where they actually had children at the seminar, and hell was just breaking out because I’m a pilot and before I even spoke, I would just walk around with my flight suit on, and talk to people, and so they knew immediately I was the guy who was going to be talking big ticket on eBay to really communicate more effectively. People come up, talk to me. I think branding is very important. Absolutely, brand is what makes a lot of companies. Their brand is so key that’s why eBay said, “You can’t use our name in your company because we don’t want to dilute it,” you know?

David: Gotcha, yeah.

Don: It’s a very important thing. So, I think if you could figure out the niche or the brand, mine just all tied together perfectly. I mean with the airplane homes, being an aviator, and you know what I mean? It was an airstrip at the missile silo. It was too much, too easy for me to not go with the aviation theme.

David: How many, roughly, how many hours do you think you work per week doing this business?

Don: It fluctuates and goes. I probably work longer and harder than I ever did with any company.

David: And it is yours, too, I found out. I’m an entrepreneur as well, you tend to work more, because it’s yours, it’s your passion. Is it the same thing with you?

Don: Yeah , I am actually at work 24/7, the phone rings all the time, and the e-mails come in, and I answer them, but I don’t physically have to sit there at my desk for that entire day. Make sense? So I may have a 16 hour or 20 hour day of work, but actual sitting in front of the computer may only be three or four hours. The rest of it may be some phone time, and then the rest of it’s whatever I want to do.

My days are long when I’m producing more work for myself, when I’m working on the next deal, or doing the next thing, or improving my sites, or looking for traffic that’s when I spend a lot of time in front of the computer, and really have the long days. But, typically from making sales and stuff like that doesn’t take long in a day. I mean those kind of things don’t take long. It’s all the marketing and saving and traffic generation.

David: Yeah. What do you think the biggest key is to your success, as far as a characteristic that you’ve had since you’ve started or whatever? If you just narrowed it down?

Don: Not quitting.

David: Not quitting? Wow. It seems like the trade with everybody, I just read a thing about, John D. Rockefeller, the famous guy from Standard Oil —from the early 1900s in American industry. He could have said anything, and he said: perseverance, and not quitting, makes all the difference.

Don: When the missile silo thing fell through, I was devastated. That was a nice 200,000 dollar check, just stuck in my pocket, so I could’ve quit right then, but I knew that there was more to this. Plus, I had been working on my business for that year and a half anyway, and that kind of devastation can make people quit. But, I think that’s one of the main things.

don’t quit and don’t listen to the nay-sayers. I don’t know how many times people have said, “When are you getting a job?” When I hit hard times, and there are hard times, there are times when before this election came up, nothing was selling at Big Ticket. I was selling small stuff just to keep up and stay alive because everybody’s holding on to their wallets. Now, their wallets are wide open again, so you know, it’s cyclical.

David: Let’s just say that I’ve been working a job for 10 or 20 years, and I hate my job. I want to do something on the Internet. I hear about eBay, but I’m new, I check my email and know how to use a computer, but I’ve never built a website, or I’ve never even sold anything on eBay. What’s the quickest, easiest way that you would suggest getting started on eBay? I’m just a brand new guy.

Don: Okay. The first thing is to go out and buy something.

David: Okay.

Don: Something like a two dollar thing, three dollar thing, whatever. Buy something, so you know what the process is like, and you learn how easy it is to sell, buy, and find out all the details. Also, the feeling of what it feels like to bid against somebody and just get in a bidding war.

David: Yeah!

Don: It’s very exciting, and you don’t know from the stellar point of view that you’ve Done any of the fire-spawning. So, find something that you really, really want, and then start bidding on it. See what it’s like to have someone steal that away from you in a bid, and then you have to go bid again, or whatever. So, that’s the first thing I’d say. Go out there and do it as a buyer.

David: Okay.

Don: A few times as a buyer. Then, just find something in your house. Take a picture of it, and put it on as a seller. eBay is so easy to get started: you just click on “Sell,” and it just walks you through the steps. If you know how to take a picture, upload it, that’s probably the most difficult part. So, computer-wise, the other difficult part is just getting the right words out, picking your writing and write-ups that takes some talent sometimes, but if you look at how other people are selling their items, then all you have to do is copy other people, if you’re selling a, clock radio. Go to a guy’s page that has a clock radio and read what they say about it, how they describe it, the pictures that they take of it, just do what they do. It’s that easy.

David: Wow, that’s smart.

Don: Because you can go to completed, you can see where sales really completed and made money. Just copy those guys. That’s how I started off. I copied the guys that were making the best sales.

David: Wow, that’s about as close as a guaranteed sale as you could ever get really. You’re finding someone that’s already successful, and “I’m going to do what he did.”

Don: Yeah, do what he did! If you do what they do, then you’ll most likely get what they get. You know, mimic other people, and do it. Start something off at a dollar that you don’t care about. This clock radio is not worth 20 dollars, big deal, who cares, it’s not worth a penny to you now. Let it go for a penny and see what happens. Someone may buy it for 5 bucks and that’s more than you should ever get for it anyway. So, it’s a good way to find out if this collection I have of Marilyn Monroe playing cards is worth a gazillion dollars. Therefore, you go on eBay and find out they’re selling for $12.50 all over the place, twelve dollars and fifty cents.

David: Well, I’ve got one more question, just again, this is for people because they’re skeptical, probably been ripped off, they’re nervous, fear stops a lot of people. I want you to mention, any products that you have that could actually help people. The quickest and the shortest way possible, just go ahead and name your products, and how they can actually get them, which website, if they search those things on eBay.

Don: Okay, if you go to www.bigticketace.com, that’s pretty much the only product I’m selling right now.

David: Okay.

Don: It’s an audio audio eBook. I did the audio, all three hours to four hours, and then I created a website based off that audio, so whatever I talked about in the audio, I made links and references and information, so you’ll be able to click through and find all these things I’ve mentioned: Template Monsters, click here, and it’ll take you to www.TemplateMonsters.com, you know, or if you need to get, SquareTrade, click here, and it’ll get you a SquareTrade seal.

David: Awesome.

Don: I put all those into a kind of a webpage that goes along with his audio. So, it’s all pretty comprehensive. That’s the main product that I have.

David: Okay.

Don: Everything kind of spawns from that, as far as information products.

David: Don, I want to give you the final thoughts, anything that you’d like to add to this interview that may be helpful. Is there anything else that you’d like to add?

Don: I would say, that if you’re in a job right now, and you’re disappointed with it, you don’t have to quit your job to start a business. You can start it while you’re at work. It’s real easy to start on the weekends, start selling stuff on eBay, and taking care of them after you get home from work, finalizing the sale, getting in and figuring how it works. Figuring it out if you even like doing Internet kind of things because the freedom you will get, once you get away from the office is so amazing. I was able to coach my son’s soccer team. I go to every single one of their games. I go to every single one of their practices everyday. I have time for a lot of things that I would have never had time for like my church, and everything else because I can schedule my work around whatever I want. I can compress, if I have a lot of stuff I need to get Done, I compress it into one day, so I can have another day off. We just took off for a long weekend, Thursday through Sunday, camping, this weekend. I can do my work wherever I am, so if I need to go away for a week, as long as I have an Internet connection, I can run my business. I can mix business with pleasure, so I can still go out on vacation, and then come home at the end of the night and do some work and catch-up with e-mails.

David: Awesome. Wow.

Don: So, I would say, start off from work, doing something else. I love Robert Kiyosaki, and his advice to get a multi-level business. Now, I’ve been in multi-level businesses, and that’s where I learned a lot of marketing and sales, and what they teach you in multi-level. So, get into a multi-level business with somebody out there: Shaklee, I don’t know all these people out there, but get in one and get started, learn the trade, learn how to sell to people because you’re learning how to market, sell, which is the key to Internet businesses.

What a great way to get into a business. You get all this great training, and you could do that while you’re still working. Get out there and just sell something off or out of your junk out from inside of your house. Stuff that’s just piling up doing nothing, take a photo of it, put it on the Internet, let it go for whatever it goes for, and start clearing out your house, and you’re going to start a nice little business from that. That’s basically it.

David: Great. Thank you so much for your time, and the information. My passion is actually to help people quit their job, and not settle in life. But go out and actually create something on their own or whatever, and the information that you’ve given us today is going to help inspire someone to actually go start an eBay business up. So, thank you again for taking the time to do this interview.