TollGate Riches an easy way to make money by just connecting people

• This project required building a list for the Yosemite Mariposa Tourism Bureau
• This was a different twist to an old problem
• The money is in the list but without a list there is no money

 In this project we were hired by the Tourism bureau to build a list for Yosemite prospects.  Believe it or not Yosemite has been declining each year in terms of visitors to the park.  Our job was to put together a plan to spike Bay Area interest and get people to the valley once again.  We did this by first building a SuperBlog ™ for Yosemite.  The SuperBlog we conceived and build for a few destination clients in the last year.  To go see what a SB looks like go to www.yosemitemariposa.com and take a look around.  Anyway we tied the SB to a radio promotion in the Bay Area offering a bunch of prizes just for going to the squeeze page and providing us with first name and email address.  It was a killer promotion which had over 12,000 people opt-in for the promotion.  In fact the powers at the Yosemite Mariposa tourism board have told us it is the most successful promotion they have ever done.  We all know what you can do with a list and this is a great example of thinking outside the box and really ramping up a killer promotion quickly.  We did the entire promotion including the building of the blog, making the radio ads and getting it on the radio in about two weeks time.  I’m sure that would be a record in anyone’s book.  In this TollGate project we were paid as consultants on the project

• This is a great deal with a terrific result
• I was brought into this deal in 2005 to help a world famous breast cancer surgeon help raise awareness and money for breast cancer
• I’m sure you all remember the Lance Armstrong LivveLong yellow wrist bracelet.  Our deal was to make a multi-colored bracelet for women to wear

 This is an all around great story for a great cause.  The cause was helping raise awareness for breast cancer.  The recipient of the funds was www.curebreastcancer.org founded by Dr. Ernie Bodai.  In a few short moths we produced over a million bands and were able to give a sizable amount of money to his charity.  This was a real feel good deal that worked extremely well and helped in raising much needed funding for Dr. Bodai and his organization.  The three person crew assembled to put it all together was able to open over 2,000 retail accounts in just over six months.  I would love to work on another project like this in the near future.

• Finally a move away from fun stuff and into big business (this was in 1996).  A friend calls me and asks if I would like to salvage one of his branch offices in the mortgage business
• I’m on a roll so I see little risk in giving it a shot…besides I know a little about the business so it would be an excellent challenge to test my skills in a new industry
• My job was to motivate a bunch of old over the hill loan agents…LOL

 So not knowing any better I set out to do just that and gave it my all for 18 months.  In just 18 months I had turned one of the worst performing offices out of the 20 or so California offices into one of the best performing offices.  How did I do that?  I used and put in place various tactics that brought in more agents, moved to a large office space (got to think big to get big), hired an ex-athlete to be the company spokesperson but most importantly I ran the following ad.  “Think you can’t qualify for a home loan…think again.  Think you don’t make enough money…think again.  Think you have too much debt…think again.  Stop thinking and call us today.”  This ad was so successfully that we had to turn of the phones.  We had 100’s of people calling us for weeks.  In 18 months we went from a paltry 5 million in originations to over 40 million.  Finally a success in a field outside my niche.  Nothing could stop me now or so I thought.