The following few pages are an outline of my life. This is my true story to the best of my memory of what led me to my pen business.

Before I start, I want you to know that it is not my style to be as open with my life to total strangers. But I have learned that this is my best chance to begin to  build a trust with you.  I realize that you're a real human being who wants to know about the people you do business with.

If I want you to believe anything I say, I know I have to take a risk by letting you in on some of my very personal life experiences about what has made me who I am today so you'll have an understanding why you may want to do business with me now or in the near future and or why you may not. I know I have to back up with proof everything I say to win you over.

If you can get a feel for me from my personal true story, I hope somehow we can start to build a trust with each other. Who knows, maybe you can rely on me as a long term advisor, teacher, mentor or supplier of great educational products. Or may be, I can rely on you for the same.

Anyway, here is my best effort in describing what I am all about, exactly what I have done to get to where I am now and why you should care to know about any of what follows in the pages below.

Even as a child growing up  in Atlanta Georgia, I knew I would never work the long, excruciating hours my father did. My father a lady's clothing salesman, spent most of his time, and most of my childhood, traveling out of town.

My Dad owned an orange, 26-foot Winnebago Itasca motor home. That motor home was his bedroom on his long road trips.  He slept in it on trips that lasted up to a week at a time.  Every time I looked at that orange rolling bedroom, I promised myself that I’d find an easier, less stressful way to earn my living.  I was just a kid, but already I knew that the only way I was going to be in control of my time, and my life, would be by owning my own business.

How I Started Selling At An Early Age

l plunged into the business world early. My first taste of the "entrepreneur lifestyle" came in grade school. I created and sold cinnamon-flavored toothpicks that I made by dipping regular toothpicks in cinnamon oil I purchased from the drug store. Hey, it was a great idea!  I also sold Bazooka bubble gum, Charms pops, Wacky Pac collector stickers and anything else I could think of.

My locker at school was always mobbed as a growing crowd of sugar-hungry fifth graders shoved their way toward me, and my locker, number 1248, fighting to hand me their quarters before the bell rang. I adored collecting all their nickels, dimes and quarters. Already I was hooked on this funny thing called “being in business for yourself.”

How I Failed At My Fist Job As A Jerk

I liked working for myself.  And I really liked earning money. So I didn’t mind working the usual low-paying jobs reserved for teenagers. My first paying job was as a counter person at Dipper Dan's Ice Cream Shop on the corner of Rowell Road and Hammond Drive in Sandy Springs, Georgia. The owner was Chinese. His son was training me as a soda jerk. I really did feel like a jerk. I was making $2.85 per hour.  I had a hard time figuring out how to give proper change from the cash register and how to work the milkshake blending machine. I remember once, the blender shot the milkshake all over my face and a customer’s freshly laundered dress shirt. The Chinese owner was yelling at me in Chinese, the customer was upset. I said to myself, “this job stinks!”

How Racquetball Got Me Out Of Working A J.O.B.

Then I bounced to an even more horrible job at a racquetball center called Court South. It was in the same shopping center as the ice cream shop. I'll never forget this. Every Tuesday night at 7:00 PM, the owners held aerobic classes inside two of the racquetball courts. Have you seen the size of a racket ball court door? It's about three feet tall. It was my job to drag this huge, heavy, rolled up padded carpet three hundred feet down a long hallway.

Then I would have to make a sharp 90-degree right angle turn and squeeze my load through the short, narrow racket ball court doorway.  I remember even more vividly, cleaning their filthy dirty bathrooms and toilets. Another required task of this job was to wipe down the benches in the men's sweaty locker rooms every hour. To my teenage mind, this was utterly disgusting stuff. I knew there had to be a better way to earn money.

I tried many other jobs as a teenager in need. I held multiple “bus boy” jobs.  I was also a waiter and a clam shucker at a seafood restaurant called the Crab Shack. I worked in a great hamburger restaurant called Around The Corner.

This place served over 26 kinds of hamburgers. I quickly moved up from burgers to steak, landing a job in a fine-dining restaurant called Bank's and Shane's. But that wasn’t enough. Not for me. I cut grass on the weekend.  I painted address numbers on curbs. I cleaned gutters. I cut wood, I painted. I picked weeds. I raked yards. I sold greeting cards.  I sold Cutco cutlery, encyclopedias and even women's perfume.

How I Stopped Punching A Time Clock.

It’s been more than 20 years since I’ve seen a time clock, but I saw so many as a teenager that I can hear the sound now. I’d punch time clock after time clock to earn those pitiful pay checks that were handed out every two weeks. No matter how many times I hit the clock,  those biweekly checks never seemed to add up to much. On top of that, the huge chunk of my money taken out --without my permission ---for taxes was startling to me.

Somehow I sensed that this tax thing might be an unnecessary rip off. I had this sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that working hard for someone else was leading me down a dead end road.

How Working For Tips Changed Everything

I looked for alternatives to “hourly wage” jobs, and found one. While I was still in high school, I took a job at a rib joint called Tony Roma's Ribs. My best friend’s older brother worked there and he brought my friend and me onboard as bus boys.

This was my first experience working for tips. At last, I actually felt I had some control over my income. I learned very quickly the amount of tips I received from the bartender, waiters and waitresses was directly related to how much help I gave them during the shift. I figured out fast that if I made their job easier by promptly clearing their tables, filling water glasses and having hot bread ready for them to take out to their tables, they’d be able to provide better service to the dining customer and make more tips. I was a fast, dependable team player. The waitresses loved working with me. They handed me more tips then they doled out to the other bus boys because of my excellent service I gave them.

Man, this job was fun. I had about ten of my high school friends working with me as bus boys, dishwashers and line cooks. Did we have a blast! And money! I was pulling in good cash money for a kid in high school.  Best of all, Uncle Sam did not have his hand in my bus boy tip pocket. These jobs toughened my determination to call my own shots in business.

How A Job In Collage Started Me In Advertising & Marketing

After I graduated Riverwood High school in Sandy Springs, I set off to pursue a more formal education. I was no straight A student. I could not wait to get out of school. I knew these classes on history, math and science would have no benefit for me. I applied to two southern universities:

The University of Georgia and the University of Alabama. I was accepted into the University of Alabama, so off I went to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, a small college town an hour north of Birmingham Alabama. I joined the only Jewish fraternity on campus,  ZBT.  Yes, it was fun. Let’s face it, attending college is not only about books and classrooms. It’s about segueing to adulthood, living on your own and testing your independence.  This was my first experience living away from Mom and Dad. I met great people from all over the country and had a blast. 

When the school told me I had to choose a major, frankly, I was stumped. I had no earthly idea what direction I wanted to go in. When they pressed me, I said, “Fine.  I'll major in Home Economics. I found myself in classes with nothing but girls!  Sure, I knew baking cakes and learning how to vacuum was probably was not a good direction for me if I wanted to be financially independent, but I liked those girls…….

How Not To Be a Millionaire

One day, I was consulting with my college advisor. Over her desk hung a huge poster of Rubic’s Cube. She was talking, talking, but my mind was on the poster. I can remember asking myself how could I take a product like this and sell a million of them. I knew the guy who invented Rubik’s Cube had to be set for life! A real millionaire. I wanted to be like that guy. All I needed to know was how to go about it?

I financed my education at the University of Alabama with government grants, loans and a required financial aid work/study job. One of the requirements for my GSA loans was to working at least 12 hours a week. The money I earned went to repay a portion of my loans.

I landed a job in the office of University Relations for the University of Alabama.  My duties included answering the phone and welcoming people into the office. This department was responsible for producing all the advertising and promotional material for the University. Every piece of promotional material for the university went through this office. I was exposed to the entire process of what it took to put out a mailing, produce a color catalog or layout ads.

I used an old PMT machine to photograph the layout art. I would run it through the developer and create black and white art. I would do paste-ups of the art on a waxed coated layout sheet.

Yes, these were the “Dark Ages” of production. Well before computers began doing all this stuff so effortlessly. The office staffed two art directors, one editor and one graphic artist.  It's pure serendipity that I landed this job. All completely by chance.  It had influenced me towards advertising and marketing in several ways.

Stuffing The Envelope

While still putting myself through college with a 12 hour per week work-study jobs, I was always on the look out for new ways to earn extra dollars.  I clearly remember answering two classified ads I found in the back of the college newspaper that had a profound impact on my business education. The first was an enticing ad with the headline, “How to Buy a Jeep for $44.”  I sent my money in for this book that essentially told you how to buy at government auctions.  I liked the approach of having people send in money for information products.

A classified ad with the tease “How to Make $600 for Every 1000 Envelopes Stuffed” really reeled me in.  I sent my $20 plus $7 Shipping and handling in only to find out this was a scheme, but I liked the concept and figured if it could work for them, it could work for me. My brother was attending the same college I was and together we launched Senco Enterprises.

Our plan was to take the same approach, promising to show people how to make $600 for every 1000 enveloped they stuffed, but to do it better.  We utilized the resources of the University Relations department to create a professional looking logo.  We rewrote and typeset the letter. Then we printed our offer on high quality card stock and closed the ivory envelope letter with a beautiful gold seal.  It was first class and very professional looking.   

We placed the exact same ads in the college newspapers and bingo! Orders started coming in. This thing was working! We were puling in the dollars! Our post office box at the college was stuffed—stuffed with responses and checks. Soon we had hundreds of checks for $20. We were making great extra spending money.

Pushing The Boundaries

It was almost too good to be true, and we were beginning to get a little nervous with our success.  We had reason to be nervous.  Everything came to a fast halt with a single alert from the post office that we were on the borderline of legality with our envelope stuffing scheme. We were selling information, true. 

But it was questionable if we were delivering precisely what was promised in the ads.  We had to cease and desist immediately, but we had a great run. The successful foray in the mail order business heavily influenced my career in Direct Mail. You can still see the same ads running in papers everywhere today!

Thursday Night Drink Or Drown

By my second year in college, I learned something important. I needed more money if I wanted to go drinking with my fraternity brothers. Many of my fraternity brothers had Mommy and Daddy pay for everything. Many of my wealthy frat brothers were driving Beamers, Saabs and Mercedes. I learned something else. A mere 12-hour work/study job was not going to cut it. 

I remembered my early stint as an entrepreneur, selling cinnamon-flavored toothpicks.  Toothpicks were not “in” so I decided to make and sell tie-dye tee shirts. My plan was to rent a space in the lobby of the university post office right in the path of the university book store for $20 a day plus a 10% cut on my gross sales. I’d display my tie-dye tee shirts and hope people would buy. I remember being nervous as hell when I first started.

My first shirts were, in a word, ugly. I made them using Rit dye, the kind you buy at any grocery store. But I was determined. Driven by a strong motivation—I really did want to go drinking with my frat brothers—I eventually developed a process and my own unique style. Soon, I was turning out professional looking shirts with quality, permanent fiber reactive dyes.

Some of my designs were those shocking bright ones that you might see at a Grateful Dead concert.  But I also learned that there are many people who would never consider wearing one of those freaky pot smoking grateful dead shirts. I made my shirts for a more conservative market. After all, there are far more conservative people in the world then grateful dead fans. My designs would not “bleed out” in the wash or fade. They were forever.

My tie-dye tee shirt business took off.  One year later, I was exhibiting and selling at craft shows. I owned a tie-dye T-shirt manufacturing business.  I opened a retail store and did all the manufacturing in the back. I developed a full color catalog and began selling wholesaling to major retail department stores in the south. I even modeled in my own catalog.

Before long, I was a B.M.O.C. (Big Man On Campus) as "The Tike Tie-dye-guy". "I manufactured, retailed and wholesaled tie dye tee shirts for seven years. My last two years of college, I converted a back room of my retail store into a bedroom and lived in my retail shop. I had a plumber install a shower, then I cancelled the lease on apartment and eliminated my apartment rent.

Tie-dye tee shirts were my main source of income throughout college. The business was profitable, but required intensive labor for creating the shirts and for staffing and managing the retail store. Dealing with employee problems, maintaining expensive inventory, dealing with the retail sales tax, corporate deadlines, banks, retail overhead, manufacturing hassles, and the long retail hours left me feeling stifled, and once again limited by my time.  Was this really much better than my dad’s orange motor home?  I closed the store and began my search for a better way to financial freedom.

How I Drove 3000 Miles To California.

This was a pivotal point in my life. I learned some very important lessons and began to understand the meaning of leverage. It was clear manufacturing tee shirts was not the path to financial freedom. I continued my quest. I would find something better. Something I could leverage my time with.

After graduating in 1990 with a major in advertising and a minor in marketing, I closed my retail store and moved to Nashville, Tennessee with my tee shirt inventory. Although I didn’t mention this before, I’m part of a set of triplets. We are not identical, --I have a triplet sister as well as a triplet brother--but we are triplets. 

When I relocated to Nashville, I moved in with my triplet brother, Joel.  We shared an apartment in a complex about 20 miles outside the city. At the time, Joel was working his first 9-5 job out of collage, a cable and fiber optics company called Anexter Communications.

I was flush with cash from my tee shirt business. I’d built up a bank account of about $20,000 and felt like I had all the time in the world to explore new business opportunities.

During the day I would venture out to sell my remaining tie-dye tee shirt inventory.  I developed a technique for selling my shirts with absolutely no effort or “selling” involved. All I would do is walk around town clutching a bunch of the vividly tinted shirts in my arms.

The colors were too bright to ignore.  Anyone who saw them --and was attracted to them --would ask me if they were for sale. My answer was always, “ well, no, not really, but I guess it won't hurt to sell one or two.”  Was that easy, or what!

I remember one day I walked into a busy T.C.B.Y Yogurt shop. There was a huge line of girls with their moms standing in line waiting their turn for yogurt. By the time I walked out of the shop, I’d sold over $200 worth of shirts. 

I learned some important lessons in human nature. 1) Sometimes, when you try too hard to sell something, you push the prospect away. 2) People don't like to be sold, they like to buy. 3) People want it to be their idea.

All the ladies who bought shirts from me were proud that they “luckily” found such a beautiful tie-dye tee shirt from a guy who “happened” to be standing in line at the same yogurt shop. They were proud that they got the shirts at more them half off the retail price. "What a deal," they can tell their friends. This is the joy of buying.

I allowed these women a feeling of importance. I satisfied an insecurity. Question: Why do you think many women love to shop? Answer: The real reason is because shopping gives them a feeling of power and control that they may not have in any other areas of their life. It makes them feel important.  Shopping satisfies their insecurity in the world, even if only temporarily.

Make Great Money Selling On Consignment

Another effective way I sold off my remaining tee shirt inventory was by placing my tie-dye shirts in local retail shops on a consignment arrangement. For every shirt sold, I would take 60 percent of the retail sale price, giving the shop owner 40%.  The shop owners loved this deal because they had nothing invested in the inventory.

They had nothing to lose. No risk. If you have a product that you know will sell in a retail location and you have the capital to invest in the inventory, consignment selling is a great way to go. What's the lesson? When you remove the risk --the insecurity or fear of loss-- you greatly increase your chance of a sale.  I levered this concept to build a successful pen business. More on that later in the story.

Multilevel Marketing Doesn’t Work

One day I answered a Sunday Ad in the paper and received videotape titled, How to Make $20,000 A Month With Your Own Business. This was a promotional tape put out by a guy named Mark Yarnell. He was a successful MLM distributor with a new and upcoming network marketing company, NuSkin. This guy was doing a very effective sales pitch on NuSkin and the distributor opportunities available with the company. He was making $20,000 a month. He was living in San Diego, California and you could see the beautiful San Diego Bay behind him in the background. Sailboats, blue water and sunshine all year long looked good to me. A month later, I was a NuSkin distributor.

A collage friend of mine and I packed up our cars and headed west --3000 miles to San Diego California. I drove a 1987 Honda Civic. My dream was to make a million dollars, surf the pacific, roller skate on the boardwalk, live on the beach and retire filthy rich. 

The first nine months in California I blew through my $20,000 on NuSkin, other network marketing company opportunities, ocean front apartment rent, and daily living expenses. I found myself broke and completely frustrated that I was not a millionaire. I was ready for a change. This first year in San Diego was a “bust,” but a great learning experience, nevertheless. I learned that network marketing is a very difficult way to make a living.

Most people are drawn to MLM network marketing companies because they promise easy money. “Sign up with this company and I'll put 5, 10, 15 people under you,” is what they tell you. In fact, you become the recruiter for their business opportunity. Very few of the people signing on are going to do actual selling of product. There are too many details to go into here, but take my word for it, network marketing is not the easy road to riches.

Everything I Know About Selling, I Learned From the “Old Masters”

After breaking up with one of my girlfriends, I took a month off to visit my brother Joel who was now living in Washington CD. I planned to stay there until I figured out exactly what I was going to do next. During the day, while my brother was working, I would take a bus downtown to the National Library of Congress. If you’ve never seen it, this is the most complete library in the world. Surrounded by stacks of rare and important books, I would research and study anything -- old or new--related to sales and selling. 

I discovered hundreds of great books on selling, books that almost no one had heard of today. The authors were the real pros. Men like Elmer Wheeler, Elmer Letterman, Frank Begletter Sidney N. Bremer, Ph D. They were all pioneer sales masters back in the 1930s, 40s and 50s.

I knew by studying and learning from these master salesmen from the past, that I could leverage my business and my selling education in a big way. Fired by enthusiasm, I would stay all day at the library, then head home for dinner. After dinner, my brother would lend me his car so I could go drive to nearby residential neighborhoods to install peep holes in the doors for homeowners.

I’d park the car, get out and knock on the doors; doors with no windows or opening for viewing the person outside before opening the door. I had a simple sales pitch.  Totally committed to memory. With my green Makita drill by my side, it looked like a gun, I would simply say..."Hi, I'm the guy installing all the peep holes in your neighbors doors, did you want one?"

It was as simple as that. If the homeowner asked how much it cost for the peephole, I knew they were sold. Each sale meant another $20 dollars cash in my pocket. If you are ever in dire need of a fast way to make cash, try this.

How To Make $150 An Hour With A Makita Drill

I could go out with my Makita drill and a pocket full of two-dollar peepholes bought from the local Home Depot and make $150 -$200 in two hours flat. That was more money then my brother made all day long at his desk job--and in one-fifth the time. 

I thought selling was the key to my financial freedom. But there was a missing link I had yet discovered.

Even installing peepholes and painting address numbers on curbs imposed limitations. I was limited again by my time. If I could duplicate my efforts somehow, If I knew how to multiply myself, If I could learn how to clone myself to 100 Michael Senoff's, then I would be RICH!

How I Got Skinned by My Skin-Guard Partner

I thought I had found a way to at least double my efforts when I teamed up with a friend to sell Skin Guard, a hand-lotion that created a barrier to protect hands from chemicals.  My partner and I sold the product under our own private label.  We had no money of our own, so were back rolled by a financier who took a huge portion of our profits. 

We were busting our butts to make it, and making progress.  Then I discovered that my partner was embezzling some of the money put in by our financier. I’d had it. No more partners.  No more splitting profits. No more placing my faith in anyone but myself.

How To Have The Courage To Go It Alone

To this point, all my moneymaking projects while in San Diego were with partners. There can be some benefits to having partner, but in my opinion going it alone is best. I’m the type of person who makes fast decisions and works fast. I think fast and act on my ideas immediately. I like to take all the risk. I want the control. A partner can stifle that control, slowing down the momentum you need when working on a project.

Many times, people partner up because they are afraid to fail on their own. My advice is go it alone.  Take the risk reap all the rewards. Answer only to the face in the mirror. Your confidence will skyrocket and you won't waste time stopping to ask your partner if you can write a check for five bucks!.  Or even worse, wasting time with a partner who turns out to be not quite as honest as you thought.

How When Your Down There Is Only One Way To Go And That Is Up.

I was busted!  My partner’s embezzling landed me in debt.  I moved from a house into a tiny studio. When my trusty Honda Civic died, I had no money to fix it, so had to push it from the house to my studio.  This was the lowest point in my career.  It was so low, in fact, that I actually took a job working for some one else.  Selling vitamins for a telemarketing company. It only took me a few days to discover the huge mark-up on the vitamins—what a rip-off—and I couldn’t continue.  I walked out. Now what?

I drove the streets of San Diego looking for items to buy and sell for a profit.  One day, as I was wandering around, I walked into a printing company. I was talking to the owner and soon learned he had been in the bumper sticker business. He was selling to major national accounts.

The partners had recently had a falling out, and they were on notice to vacate their building within two to three months.  Upstairs they had thousands and thousands of bumper stickers.   I asked them if they may be interested in selling me some.  After I took a closer look, I decided I could hustle these stickers by the thousand and make some fast cash selling the bumper stickers. 

I made a deal to buy them for a penny and a half each as needed. I arranged to leave the stock in their store, and take trays of 10,000 at a time to sell. 

I’d load up my brown $900 Honda Civic with these heavy trays of bumper stickers and hit the road. I called on liquor stores first to resell the bumper stickers. My strategy was to take Polaroid snapshots of the liquor store owner with the bumper stickers, then use that as a “testimonial” when I pitched the next liquor store. 

There were tons of liquor stores in the area, and all the owners knew each other. In fact, I think they were all from the same town in Iraq, and all nicknamed “Sam.”

My marketing technique worked.  I unloaded the bumper stickers at a tidy profit and learned two essentials of marketing. One, photo presentations help sell product. Two, a mark-up of 900% is good,

	bumper sticker customers
	more bumper sticker customers

How I Discovered The Pen Business

The key for me was finding a product that had a mass-market appeal and took up very little space, cost very little to make, and could be sold with a high profit margin. After searching through import catalogues and checking out products at trade shows, I made my discovery.  Eureka! Pens were the answer. Simple and inexpensive to make, yet with mass market appeal, pens were to be the instruments for writing the next phase of my marketing success. 

A pen that identified counterfeit currency captured my attention.  You swipe it on real money and the ink stays yellow. Swipe it on counterfeit, and the ink leaves a black streak. The secret is a basic chemical interaction between the ink and the starch found in almost all types of paper, except the paper used by the US Treasury to print bills. 

I called pen manufacturers and ordered sample pens, took them apart and began experimenting with making my own. I learned the key parts of a pen: barrel, tip, filter and reservoir. I discovered that the “miracle” starch detector was plain iodine. Yep. The stuff you put on your skinned knee or cut finger.  The interaction between starch and iodine was textbook high school chemistry. The Blue-Black Complex simplified.

It took me a few months to figure out how to load the barrel with iodine.  My first try was with a pen barrel made of aluminum that turned the iodine white.  Once I found the right combinations, I was off and selling.  I didn’t have a phone, so spend my days in a nearby coffee shop making calls using prepaid calling cards I’d received from promotions.

I now knew everything there was to know about manufacturing and marketing, pens so began looking to expand my product line.  When I first stumbled on the “Red Eye” pen, I didn’t even know what caused “Red Eyes” in photos.  Pot smoking? Staying up all night?

These pens were selling for $7.95 each.  I knew I could make the same pens for about 25 cents each. The blue color ink cost me about $20 a gallon. One gallon of ink will make 3000 pens.  I went into production, purchased a list of one-hour photo labs from a list broker.  

Rather than simply offering the pens wholesale, I let the retail stores know that because I was the manufacturer, I could sell to them at a lower price.  I also provided retailers a way to display the merchandise and provided their customers with a sample “Red Eye” photo to test the pen’s effectiveness.

My pens are displayed at point-of-purchase displays I designed and manufactured myself.  Each display comes with up to 100 pens and a huge stack of test photos to demonstrate the pen’s effectiveness. The test photo challenges lookers to "Test Your Skill" and invites the customer to test the red-eye remover pen before buying it.  I gave the retailer a proven way to sell pens to his customers. Other red eye pens manufacturers simply shove an order form and invoice in front of the retailer and ask them to buy a dozen at a time for $3 each--and then good luck.

Red Eye Pen Display	Try It Before You Buy It Offer	Test Your Skill Offer

Within a year, I had placed my own “Red Eye” pens in over 1,000 one-hour photo shops.

Suddenly Success, at Last!

I founded my now successful firm, JS & M’s Marketing, with five pens: -one that detects counterfeit money - one that detects pH in paper-one that is a vanishing ink pen-one that marks property with invisible, permanent ink- one that eliminates red-eye from photographs

Note: I no longer manufacture the Counterfeit detector pens, due to patent disputes.

All of my pens are hand-assembled, piece by piece---no machinery-- by part time home workers.  I had tried selling various products --with minimal success-- before hitting "pay dirt" with the counterfeit currency detection pen.  Below are nine photos of my current pen making operation as of November 2003

Back of my home "The Factory"	Pen Parts 100,000 pen fit in a closet	The anatomy of a felt tip pen
My son's baby sitter making pens	Alma ruberbanding the filters	Your ink in a 2.2 liter bottle
This is how you get the ink in the pen	Drop thefilters in the whole	500 pens ready to ship for a customer

I learned how to manufacture my pens in a one-bedroom studio apartment when I was without resources.  With my low overhead, I was able to beat all competitor prices. I built the business one phone call at a time. Some days I spent 10 hours on the phone, until my ear was aching.

Now that I have a thriving business, I use the US mail, a fax machine and an administrative assistant who I have never personally met to do my grunt work. When you can generate leads at will by using direct marketing and have calls coming to you rather then having to go out cold calling for prospects, your life will change. Your chances for a sale are increased dramatically and you spare yourself the rejection and stress of cold calling.

My Red Eye pens have been sold in over 1200 one-hour photo labs and camera retail stores worldwide. My marketing secret is to provide solutions for the retailer.   I come to the retailer and say, “I am a manufacture not a wholesaler. Try my red eye pens with no risk at half the cost. Try out my proprietary retail display to merchandise your red eye pens, try my red eye pen test photos to demonstrate how my pens work to your customer before they buy” Because I sell them a solution and a system along with the merchandise, they’ll stay with my products for years to come.

My method helped me sell 100 pens per store while everyone else in the market was selling a dozen. I offered a 100% --better then risk free --money back guarantee. If the customer wasn’t happy, they didn’t pay a dime. I offered to pick the pens up and even pay the shipping to get them sent back. 

This positioning is what marketing is all about. To learn more, including how you can write your own success story manufacturing and selling my pen brands, click here.

How My Red Eye Pens Became A Cash Cow

My pens were “cash cows” that made it possible for me to move into a house, marry a wonderful woman and start a family.  The financial cushion provided by the steady income stream gave me time to explore more marketing opportunities. I now had a customer base of over 1,000 loyal accounts. It was time to leverage that. I was learning to up sell. To joint venture. I was driven to succeed at even higher levels.

To expand and refine my marketing skills, I began to reread and to study the masters in depth. Jay Abraham. Tony Robbins. I watched videos. And studied even more. I learned effective, powerful teaching methods. Now I want to teach others.  To lead others to discover the marketing secrets of the great marketing gurus.

I have another web business and site, called  http://www.hardtofindseminar.com, This is my chance to change the lives of thousands of people by making the hard to find books and audiotapes of the great marketing minds available.  Instead of being able to reach and affect only a handful of people, with my web site, I can reach and affect thousands of people. It’s my way of paying back some of the good fortune that good marketing brought into my life.

Everything that I’ve accomplished can be accomplished by anyone reading this. (Yes, that’s right, I mean you.)

I reached my goals. I’m earning good money, and still get to spend every day at home with my family.  When my young son wakes up in the morning, I’m here. When he’s ready for lunch, I’m here.  Whether it’s dinner, a bath, a bedtime story or a romp on the sofa, I’m here.

I took charge of my life, and it’s great. I can’t imagine it any other way. That big orange van that was my dad’s rolling bedroom placed miles between him and his family. I keep my work and my family life inches apart.

The Rest Of The Story

Communicating my ideas, knowing that I did it right, and can now share what I know with others through audio files and the Internet makes all the effort and hard work worthwhile.

If you’re interested in “the rest of the story,” go http://www.hardtofindseminars.com  Enjoy and I hope you prosper.

For more information about Michael Senoff, JS&M Sales & Marketing products, or for interviews for your magazine, newspaper, newsletter, or radio program, call 858-274-7851 or send an e-mail to michael@michaelsenoff.com