Expecting Leadership – Tony Rush’s Formula To Lift Up Your Team

Practicality dictates that everyone's results will vary as we are all unique and different. Basically, it takes hard work to make a substantial income in this business, and some people will make no money at all. The earnings of an Empower Network affiliate will be 100% dependent upon their skills, work effort, commitment, leadership capabilities, and market conditions. Common sense would suggest that in most opportunities, one would find exceptional individuals performing well above average, while others perform under the average. Empower Network does not guarantee any level of income or your success.

To see our full income disclosure, please visit our website at www.empowernetwork.com forward slash income dot php. Hey, good evening everybody. Tony Rush here calling in from my home office in beautiful Dothan, Alabama. And it is Monday night, February the 4th. Man, we have already gone through a January.

We are kicking off a brand new month, and you could not be in a better place. At a better time than to be right here on the Empower Hour on Monday night, February the 4th. We are glad you are here. We have got a packed house. And I tell you what, I love dialing in early.

I love dialing in early to listen to the vibe and the energy and everybody's excitement on this call. If you dialed in early and you have never been on this call before, you probably thought, what in the world is that racket? Hey, that is just the Empower Hour, baby. That is just how we roll around here. We love to make some noise.

So, yeah, you are in the right place. This call is every week, every Monday night, every week. We have done it on the same line, same number, same PIN code, same bat channel for, I think, 15 months now. Occasionally, we do this as a video. Occasionally, but we always make sure that people know that in advance.

But anyway, if this is your first time attending, let me tell you what this is. Number one, it is our centrally located place on the schedule. Where we can let you know what's going on at the home office, what's coming up in the community, what announcements are going on. We've got contests, incentives. We've got all kinds of stuff happening.

So, this is the place where announcements get made. Also, this is an open forum. We don't mind you inviting your guests to attend. We've got a lot of people on the line tonight who are not yet involved with Empower Network. And those of you who are on the line, who are sort of peeking over the fence, we're delighted you're here.

You're our honored guest here tonight. And we appreciate you choosing to spend your evening here doing something a little bit more powerful than just watching TV tonight. And if you're brand new to Empower Network, let me be among the first to congratulate you and welcome you aboard. Congratulations for living your life on purpose, right? Not just knee-jerking your way through life.

Actually, getting out of the passenger seat and getting over into the driver's seat of your life. Very exciting stuff. So, we're thrilled that you've done that. Also, I've got to say congratulations. I'd be remiss if I didn't say congratulations to everyone who had their first $100 day or their first $1,000 day.

Maybe even more important, the people who had just their first $25 sale as an affiliate here at Empower Network. To me, you guys are the most important people on the line, the people who are just getting started. So, we're thrilled you're here. Let me, just as a bit of housekeeping, let me kick this off. Let me kick this off with a little bit of a quick income disclosure.

We actually like doing this, by the way. This is not, you know, a lot of companies don't like having to mention the fine print. We actually like this. We're actually excited because our income disclosure is badass. It's incredible, really.

We're excited to show you what the average people in our company earn because our numbers are just ridiculously awesome when you look at it in the proper perspective compared to what else is happening in the Internet marketing world, or the network marketing industry. But since we are going to be talking about some specific experiences tonight, we want to give you our income disclaimer and disclosure. You can find that on our website. If you go over to EmpowerNetwork.com, at the bottom of any page, you'll find a link to our income disclosure. And here's the thing.

This is network marketing for grown-ups, right? This is Internet marketing and affiliate marketing for grown-ups. So, if you're not in the business yet and you're looking to join, you know, our disclosure is you might make a lot of money. Right? I have.

You might make a little bit of money. Some people like to sit on the couch and eat Doritos, and they make no money at all. And some people come here just because they enjoy our products, and that's fine, too. So, it's all up to you. We're all adults here.

No wussies allowed. Right? So, if you're looking for something for nothing, if you're looking for, you know, hey, you can sign up and do nothing and get rich, then this is not for you. You can go ahead and find something on television, and we'll give you a spot on the call to someone a little bit more mature. But, on the other hand, if you are serious about your goals, and I know you are, if you're willing to do what it takes to get the results that you deserve, you and your family, if you're the kind of person who doesn't put conditions on your success, if you're really ready to create the kind of income you deserve, oh, man, what a great place to be.

Right? I'm fortunate. I get to, in looking back in 10 years, in 20 years, how fortunate I am to be able to say, hey, I was in Empower Network. When they first got started, I wasn't there on day one, but I was there in the first year. And what a magical time.

What a great time to get started to start living life on purpose and doing something that has just never, ever been done before. So, man, I'm excited. I love it. And I love getting a note from David Woods saying, hey, man, David Sharp and I are doing a little bit of scheming tonight, and we were wondering if you could host the call. So, it's always an honor to be here, and I appreciate the opportunity.

So, let's get to it. What are we talking about? Well, first of all, it was so good to see you guys in Austin. Oh, man, it was incredible seeing you guys in Austin. I always love the events.

The events are incredible. We had 4,000 absolutely incredible, powerful, amazing people in Austin, Texas. And, man, it was so good to put a lot of faces with names for the first time. I think I shook hands with every one of you. And I don't say that.

I was tired, yeah. But, I mean, oh, my goodness, what an honor. To be able to look so many people in the eye and take a photo or a video or have a quick conversation in the hallway or got a chance to have a bite to eat with a few of you or a cup of coffee. And it was certainly my honor, and I got a chance to spend a little bit of time on stage, which is, for me, the best seat in the house, just to be able to see so many people living on purpose. And in my talk in Austin, I discussed five things.

And one of them is, you know, one of the things that I think is really important to me is to be able to be a part of the story that has been just incredibly instrumental in my career. For those of you who don't know me, I'll give you a very, very abbreviated version of my story because I know many of you have been here for a while and you know who I am. But for our guest today, let me just kind of briefly give you the snapshot. I've been in the industry for going on 20 years. I think, let's see, the first time I ever got started in any home business was 1990, oh, 1992.

So I'm 19, almost 28. So I've been in the industry for 20 years around this industry. And, you know, that first opportunity, I don't think I ever got over that. You know, I will say this. When your boss looks at you and says, hey, would you be interested in making money from home, that might be a clue that you probably haven't chosen the most powerful job in the world when your boss is building a little something on the side as well, which, you know, was a good thing for me.

I thought he was offering me a raise. He said, you want to make some extra money? And I thought he was going to. You know, I thought he was going to give me a little bump. But, no, he invited me to come down to the hotel on Thursday night to watch a guy draw some circles on a whiteboard, and I was mesmerized.

I was hypnotized. It had never occurred to me that I could do something from home, that there was something I could do from home and not have to go to a job. I was blown away. And that was in 1992. I was 22 years old, perhaps 21.

And I got started in that company, and I made, I think, a couple hundred. And I didn't have any training, didn't know what I was doing. Long story short, I revisited the industry a few years later when I was working as a bookstore clerk for Walden Books. I got started in a vitamin company, and I worked my butt off. Man, I thought I'd arrived because I didn't have many bills, wasn't married, no kids.

I thought I was retired. I thought I was retired at 25, right? And then fast forward a few years, I found myself married with children and trying to figure out how to get out of this job and back into the home business industry again. And I had some success. I did have some success.

I got started in a company where the commissions were a bit higher, but I found that I was doing a lot of grinding, what we call grinding here at Empower. And I was good at it. I was good at the grind. It took a while, but gradually learning some things, falling down, picking myself up, figuring a few things out, getting around some people that knew something I didn't know, right? That's always helpful.

So, you know, finally I found myself about two years ago, not quite two years ago, having made a lot of money in this industry and completely burned out. As a matter of fact, it's almost two years ago. Okay. That I found myself completely hit a wall. I literally could not do it anymore.

And when I say it, I mean this, you know, the calling, the calling prospects, the calling leads, the leaving voicemails, get a few people on the phone. Oh, is this free? Is this going to cost me anything? The weeding, the sorting of hundreds of prospects a month. To find me.

Maybe two or three that are qualified to be invited to a presentation and, you know, you book them to a conference call and then you call them back afterward and you, you know, you check their temperature. Oh, you know, on a scale of one to ten, where do you think you are? And, you know, and then doing a three-way call and then one thing and another. And here's the thing. It worked.

Everything works, technically. I mean, if you do it long enough. I mean, even if your best effort was to stand out on the street corner and say, hey, you don't want to make money from home, do you? Sooner or later, somebody would say, well, as a matter of fact, I do. What you got?

You know, so anything will produce a result over time. But the question is, A, is it efficient? And B, is it sustainable? And what I found after making a bunch of money beating the phone as a phone drone. That's my new term, by the way.

Phone drone. I coined that. If you hear anybody say that, I invented that one. No, that's not true. I actually heard that on a Doctor Who episode.

The phone drone. That's what I felt like, though. Now I'm all sidetracked because my wife's a huge Doctor Who fan, and she's got me watching Doctor Who. British science fiction. Funny stuff.

But that's where I was at. So I've made all this money, but I am completely burned out. My friends, Toby and Layla, talk about selling the dream and living the nightmare. Pretty close. Pretty close to that.

Enjoying the money coming in. But just not. I'm not able to actually do it anymore, the grind. And here's the thing. When you emotionally hit a wall and you're like, you know what, I just can't keep doing this.

I'm just getting crispy around the edges. I'm burned out. I didn't do anything for the rest of that summer. Literally nothing. At the time, I couldn't really see what it was.

I was a little concerned. Maybe I'm depressed. I don't feel depressed. I just don't want to do what I'm having to do. I don't want to have to fool with these hassles.

Of making money the way I've been making money. But I did reach the point where suddenly, financially, for me, the red flashing light is blinking. Emergency mode. The bank account is starting to get low. And if you had found me a year and a half ago, you'd probably been amazed that somebody who had once made as much money as I've made suddenly finds himself getting behind on bills, trying to figure out what in the world am I going to do.

Because I don't want to have to go back to this. So anyway, fast forward, long story short, Empower Network. And I'd heard of David Sharp. And I'd heard of David Wood. I once saw David Wood in another company enroll over 200 people in a month without a single phone call.

And I thought, you know what? Here is a company that can show me what I don't get properly in 2000, at that time, in 2011 and 2012. And, of course, now we're in 2013. And we're more relevant. We're more relevant than ever.

So, long story short, I didn't come here for the money. Surprising as that may be, for those of you who don't know the punch line of my story, that may seem very ironic. I did not actually come here for the money. I came here to find out what's working now. I came here to find out how I could, as David Wood likes to say, put down the phone and pick up the paycheck.

I had to figure out how to do this business in a fashion, the internet marketing way, that didn't involve me beating the phone, didn't involve me pulling my hair out. Leaving hundreds of voicemail messages and doing all the stuff, all the hassles that are normally associated with a home business. And some of you on the line can relate to what I'm talking about because you've done this stuff, haven't you? I can sort of imagine you nodding along with me. You've done the deal where you're chasing your friends and family.

You made a list of everybody you've known since daycare. You know, you're sitting there. Your sponsor is like, yes, here, make a list of everyone you've known since you were in the nursery at the hospital. And you're sitting there. And you're laying there trying to think, you know, what was that kid's name in the crib next to me?

I wish I could find him on Facebook. You know, right? Doing the little milk and cookie parties in living rooms. I did that for a while. We've all done some of that, I'm sure.

Running around town, doing kitchen table presentations, drawing circles on napkins. We've all done that. Okay? And suddenly I find myself, perhaps for the first time in my life, totally immersed in a leveraged system. And I'm not going to lie.

I thought, you know what, I'm just going to follow this system. And I'll have some leads to talk to about my other business. And I never got around to talking to them about my other business. Within about a month, I was making a couple hundred bucks a day here. I'm sorry, our first year in the business.

And I thought October was really something. And that's a little special, though, because we launched a new product. And that's sort of a special month. We can't really count that as part of regular business. And then lo and behold, four months later, I'm looking back at January.

No launch. No special launch. No special promotion. Just regular business. And so I'm sitting here today in my office in a state of complete gratitude.

A Kelsey Grammer quote, one of my favorite actors from the TV show Frasier. He's got a great biography. And one of Kelsey Grammer's quotes, I love it. He said, My wife is a party thrown for me by my own decisions. And I love that.

I love that because it reeks, it positively reeks of personal responsibility. This did not happen to me. I chose this. This experience that I've had at Empower Network, I wasn't lucky. I didn't happen to slip and fall and land in the right place at the right time.

You're not on this call because of luck. You chose to be here. So there's a level of personal responsibility that I find irresistibly attractive. It's one of the most attractive qualities that I see when I look at my fellow human beings as we walk around this planet. It's people who will take ownership of where they are and what they're doing and what's happening in their life.

Now, it doesn't mean that they won't necessarily like what's happening. But you show me somebody that's like, you know what? I'm in this situation. I'm in this situation I don't want to be in. But you know what?

I did this. This is the result of my decisions and my actions. You know what? I've got more respect for that person than most anybody else that I can think of in my life, somebody that will just own it. And I've gotten good at that.

I used to get good at owning the – because I was so bad at it, when I figured out this was the key to success, the pendulum swung the other way. And then I got to take ownership of everything. Oh, look, hey, that mess right there, that's mine. I did that. I did that.

Man, what a great mess I made. Wow, look at that. I'll just try not to do that one again, but that one's mine. I apologize. Let's just move on.

That attitude served me so well when I was going from poverty to prosperity. Just looking around my life saying, yep, you know what? 25 pounds overweight, that's mine. I did that. I love carbs.

They taste good. They taste even better after 10 o'clock at night. Oh, my goodness. I love carbs. Right?

So I get to own that, because you can't change it until you own it. You can't change it unless you own it. So now I own it. Oh, okay. Well, you know, I want to be around to hug my grandchildren, and I want to be able to play and run in the yard with my kids.

So here I sit before you tonight, 14 pounds lighter than I was 30 days ago, because I got to own it. I own the carbs. I own that. Okay, I get to change it. Okay.

So this concept of personal development has been huge. Now, I'm coming around to where I was. In Austin, what now, two and a half weeks ago, something like that, we're in Austin, Texas. I have 30 minutes on stage to explain five things that I think that I see all top earners doing every day. And we talked about them in a brief amount of detail.

You don't have to be very good at math to know that by the time you do a 10-minute introduction for a talk and you have 20 minutes left before they call the snipers in to shoot you off the stage, you have five things to cover and 20 minutes to cover them in. It doesn't leave a lot of time, right? So I did manage to give a little bit of attention to the first four things. Personal development every single day. You got to have it.

It's not optional for you. Hey, everyone. It's Justin Varenchia here. Tony must have got disconnected or booted off. So I'm just going to hop in.

And I'm just listening to his story. And I am so inspired. I am so moved to hear where he came from to where he's at today. So I just want to say, Tony, you inspire us, brother. So there's, like, I know the Dave's vision this year is to have everything.

The vision this year is to have at least 30 people, the top 30 people in Empower Network making seven figures, meaning making over a million dollars this year. And I truly do believe that vision, that, you know, it will come to fruition because everything that the Dave's have as a vision collectively, thanks to you guys on the phones and, you know, some of you are just listening right now and kind of on the fences and just waiting to get in. So I just want to tell you, stop hesitating and just join our movement. Get back with the person who invited you to tonight's call. Check that email.

Click on that link and lock arms with us. Because here's what happened with me personally. I locked arms with Empower Network 13 months ago. And at that time, I was struggling. Heck, about nine months ago, if I can tell you the truth, I was struggling.

But today, things are totally different. Nine months ago, barely able to work. One of the lowest points in my life to just having a massive breakthrough because I attended one of these Empower Network events in Atlanta at the time. And David Sharp and Tracy Walker and Chuck Marshall and, you know, all the great leadership here. So, what I encourage everyone to do is really just empty your cup, number one, and just increase your teachability index.

I think that is so important. I think one of the biggest reasons most people fail that join the industry is they're not willing, their willingness to learn is so little. It's like, you know. Your mentor will tell you what to do and then you figure, no, they may be living the dream. They may make like 100 times more money than I make in one month than what I make, you know, all year.

But I'm not going to listen to them. I'm going to do it my own way. And that's the reason that I struggled for so long. But when I was willing to empty the cup and just follow my eight core commitments and do exactly what I was taught, that's when my life changed. And that's how fast your life can change.

It can all happen. And an instant, just an instant, a moment, and you're a totally different person. The energy is different. Prosperity and abundance starts to flow into your life. And I don't know, Tony, if you're back on the line, just pop on, brother, but I'll just keep going until I hear someone else because I love rambling, to tell you the truth.

I got my beautiful wife sitting next to me. We're actually in beautiful Medellin, Colombia right now. And it was always our dream. It was always our dream to, like, unplug from the matrix and live overseas. And that's what we've been able to do thanks to Empower Network.

We relocated from Costa Rica and we moved to Medellin, Colombia in this luxury apartment all thanks to this movement. And the most satisfying part for me personally was going to the event and seeing our teammates and seeing just about everybody in the room actually making money. And I said when I was speaking on stage. And all the leaders, pretty much the same thing, were like, how many people here have received a commission and have actually made money with us? And then to see 95-plus percent of the room stand in the air, raise their hands, and start applauding on their feet, that's life-changing.

I've never been in a company where your teammates actually have a great chance of succeeding. I believe anyone who's diligently taking action, they have a high teachability index. And their willingness to learn is high. And they just believe in what we're doing and believe in themselves. And they put the action in as if it's definitely going to work.

Not like, you know, if it works, I'm going to do this or I'll do that. I'm going to try this thing. But making that commitment now because you have all the proof that you need to see. You saw 95 percent of the room stand up that's actually making money, meaning 95 percent of the people who follow directions and follow their A-class. Right.

And have a core commitment to get to the event are going to make money here. And that's just profound. Never seen it before anywhere in history. I believe it was for last month. I heard Dave talking about it.

And you just don't see that too often. And I think I heard Tony or someone pop on. Hey, Justin. Thank you, brother. My pleasure, man.

I'm glad to have you back, brother. I don't want to steal your thunder. But I appreciate the technical call. It's golden, dude. Oh, not at all.

I appreciate that you were on the host code and could pop out here real quick. I was introducing my guest, and I couldn't hear my guest jumping out. And I thought perhaps he was having technical difficulty. And I looked down, and I had been disconnected. And, man, you ought to have heard what I was talking about for the last seven minutes.

It was solid gold. It always is, brother. Take it away, homie. I'm going to mute myself. Thank you, brother.

That's Justin Varangia, one of the guys in leadership here who's absolutely a rock star. I'm going to go fast because I'm not going to recap what I just went through not knowing that I had been disconnected from the toppers. So here's the scoop. So in Austin, I laid out five things that I see top earners doing every single day, every single day. And I got to go through about four of them.

And this last one, though, this last one, I wouldn't say that any one of these is more important than another. But this last one, you've got personal development every day, visualize your goals daily, mastermind with leaders, income-producing activities. This last one is, to me, this is an amazing one. I won't say it's more important than another point because they're all important, kind of like your lungs are just as important as your brain. You've got to have them all, right?

But there's something about this fifth one that, for one thing, you don't hear it talked about at all. The first time I ever heard it talked about was from my guest who is going to be out here with me in just a moment. But here's the thing. This is not cotton candy. This is not a frothy milkshake.

This one is an entree. This is number five. This is the fifth of these things that's done daily. This one is one you can make a meal out of. So I love talking about it too.

And I just didn't have time in Austin to get to the nitty-gritty of this particular one. But this has the dual benefit of not just affecting your business, but if you actually take what this fifth concept is and apply it, it will change how you look at the world. It is a business concept and a personal development concept rolled into one. It's absolutely fantastic. Now, let me tell you where I learned this because my guest tonight is a – he and I have known each other for years.

He was the first person I ever heard to explain this. So he was a huge personality on the landscape when I first heard the name John Lovenia. He was hosting a Monday night call at the time when I met him. As a matter of fact, he still hosts the Monday night call, ironically, and he's on our call tonight. But – so he was at first an example of a business concept.

He was first an example of what was possible for me. Then he was a friend. Later, John and I actually started a software company together, sort of a niche thing that we did for about, I think, three or four years together. And today we're close friends years later. So we've traveled the world.

He's a dynamite guy, and he got started here in Empower Network five months ago. Now, he can tell his story, but I do want to – I want to highlight this. John came here like I did, coming out of some financial adversity. Didn't come here with a big budget. Came here with no list to speak of.

No – didn't come here with all these years of experience building up this big, monster listing and blew into town and just snapped his fingers and had money flying in. No. In fact, John will tell you that he was better at sales than marketing. He didn't really know list building. And so – and, yeah, he's come here.

He's done. I'm wanting to say it's somewhere around $60,000 or so in the last five months. In January was his first month. So he's a great friend. I hope you got a pencil and paper handy because this concept, this fifth one that I didn't have time to get to in Austin, you get an opportunity to hear it discussed by the guy who I first heard this from.

It's a powerful concept. You're going to love it. John, are you out there, brother? I am here. John is here.

Hello. Can you hear me, John? Hey, I'm here too. How about that? Two of us in the same place.

God bless technology, man. Good stuff. Yeah. Well, John, first off, let me say welcome to the call. I know you're on this call every Monday night anyway, but this is your first time, I think, speaking on the call.

And it's so fun to be working with you again. I'm having a blast, but I'm also – it's fun to watch. You just have come in here, head down, blinders on. Follow the system. You went all in.

And you're having nice occasional $1,000 days and $3,000 days, and you've got pass-ups and team growing, and there's all kinds of stuff going on. So I kind of set the table a little bit for both your story as well as this cultivating the expectation of leadership. That's the phrase for tonight, guys. That's the topic that I left off in Austin. I didn't get time to get to that John is going to talk about.

So, John, banter, two-way dialogue, whatever you want to do, man. I'm sure people would love to hear some of your story. But I'm eager again to hear this cultivating the expectation of leadership and what that can do for somebody when they really get their teeth into it. Yeah, that's a huge concept and philosophy. And although this is my first time coming out live on the Empower Hour – and let me just stop everything and just say this.

I am so frigging grateful for Empower Network. God bless Empower Network. And God bless you, Tony. I mean, look, if it wasn't for you dragging me into Empower Network, kicking and screaming – and I'll tell you how that happened, everybody, here in a second. That's part of the story.

Okay, but I don't know what I'd be doing right now. I mean, literally, I was kind of like bumbling around planet Earth trying to figure out what's life about and stuff. And that's after having had plenty of success. And as you already mentioned, that's after having had plenty of success. And as you already mentioned, you had met me years ago, and I was already making millions of dollars.

So certainly, certainly this guy, John Lavinia, must have arrived. He levitates and heals lepers and turns water into wine and stuff like that. No, no, not at all. So we're all on the path. And I'll speak for myself.

I have not arrived. Anybody who has arrived, let me know. But no, I have not arrived, despite the fact that we've had the success. I've written books, and that's all cool. But here's the point.

You already brought it up, Tony, and that's what's working now. You see, the thing that I love – there's a lot of things. But one thing in particular that I love so much about Empower Network is that it's what's working now in the world of marketing, which is 90% of business. I mean, you've got to know how to market. And what is marketing?

Marketing is reaching into the public and pinching on their space and putting their attention on that which you offer. It's literally increasing the demand for that which you supply. And that's what this is all about. But it's built on the rock of principle. And that's something that I've been studying for 25, 26 years now.

I got on this path of personal growth back in 1986. And the reason is simple. It's because I had to. I had to start taking responsibility – there's the other word you brought up, Tony – responsibility for my own evolution because my life wasn't working, like not even close. Like a miserable, miserable person I was.

As an adolescent. So I had to take responsibility for my own evolution. I discovered that nobody else was going to do that for me as well-intentioned as others in my environment may or may not have been. And most of them weren't, by the way. So that being said, here's why I'm here.

Here's how I eventually got here for people who don't know who the hell is John LaVenia and all this kind of stuff. Back in – like I already mentioned, back in the 80s, I decided I was going to do something more with my life and clean up my act. A lot of people know our co-founder, David Sharp, just recently celebrated an anniversary of clean and sober living. Congratulations, Dave. I don't know if you're listening or maybe you'll hear this on a recording.

That was a decision that I made back in October of 1986. And that was my initiation into personal growth and what we could call on-purpose living. And from there, I learned a trade. I figured, well, I'm going to do something productive here. I learned how to be a mechanic.

I actually went to – this is my professional training, everybody. I went to Nashville Auto Diesel College in Nashville, Tennessee. It was the first time I had left New Jersey where I grew up and where I was running the streets and all this kind of crazy stuff. I went down south to learn how to be a mechanic. And I got a job.

Once that was done, I got a job in New York City in the harbor working on tugboats. So that's my skill. I was a great leader of men in sales. I was a professional in all this, having mentored thousands. Yeah, I know how to fix broken machinery.

So I did that for some years. And I got to a point where I realized that I left that job. I got into other jobs. I was tired of living on tugboats with drunken sailors and stuff. So I got a job on land, and I was fixing trucks and cars and all this.

And I realized at one point I could run this business, this auto shop that I was working at. I could run it better than the guy who was running it. He was a drunkard. He was going through another divorce and going bankrupt and all this stuff. And I was like, I'm going to be an entrepreneur.

And I had tried my hand as an entrepreneur just in the music business. Some people know my history. I'm a die-hard, dyed-in-the-wool, long-haired, heavy metal biker dude. I love extreme music. So I'm going to get into extreme music, which is not terribly profitable.

I did heavy metal bands and stuff. And then when that didn't work out, I decided I'm actually going to go make some money. I bought a franchise. Brilliant, right? I bought a franchise all on borrowed funds and about $100,000 there.

Doing what? Selling tools to mechanics. That's something I knew about is machinery and tools. And I did that, working 80, 90 hours a week, shipping, receiving, warranty issues, blah, blah, blah. I did that for a few years.

And then a customer walked onto my tool truck one day and said to me, hey, would you be open to some other ways of making money? I don't know how many people on the line ever heard that before, but I had never heard that before. So I was like, well, yeah. And next thing you know, I was dressing up in a suit and going to a room where some guy in an even better suit than my suit, he was drawing circles on a whiteboard, and I was signing up for my first MLM deal. And great education, lousy business.

Next thing you know, I'm in another MLM deal. And spent about two and a half years full time selling the dream and living the nightmare. And at that point, I met my wife-to-be. We've been married now for a long, long time. It feels like a really long time.

But I met my wife, and she said, hey, you're going to have to get a job or something. She was a schoolteacher and just, you know, we were living in deficit. I was like 70 grand in credit card debt. And I wound up thinking, well, I'm going to have to abandon entrepreneurship. It's just not working out for me.

Again, I don't know how many people have experienced that or maybe guests experiencing that on the line right now. You just don't know what to do. And so I wound up getting a job, again, in an area that's familiar to me, which was cars. In this case, I went into sales, selling cars. I figured something to pay the bills, anything, right?

And I developed through my entrepreneurial experience in the music business and then in selling, you know, with the franchise, a bit of communication skills and all this. So I was okay at it. I was able to do that, and I started making money. But the entrepreneurial bug never left me. And it was around – it was 2002.

It was the summer of 2002 where I found that I was having a health issue because of the stress of the job, working 80 hours a week and getting my pay cut three times a year, which the boss called a promotion. You see, that's a promotion. Bottom line was I was making more money than some of the other managers, so they had to keep me under control. Because I was motivated, man. That's one thing I never lacked is motivation.

And so I started thinking again, well, you know, how am I going to reach my goals? Because this car business thing isn't doing it. And I remember seeing, Tony, I'm sure you've seen this too, the velvet ropes at the big rallies or the MLM rallies, right? They're the untouchables, right? They're behind the velvet ropes.

I was never able to hit it in anything. And I thought, yeah, right. I've seen it all. So there's a little skepticism there. But I realized that what's gotten me this far in my life in terms of improving myself is being open-minded and not knowing everything.

My best thinking got me here but not further. Okay, so I'll go ahead, and I'll check out what this is all about. And 90 days later, after years of not having reached my goal, 90 days into that new business model, which I had never heard of before, direct selling, very different than standard MLM. But 90 days in, I had hit my goal. I doubled my income.

I walked into my boss's office, and I said, I can no longer afford to work for you. I figure I lose a couple of thousand dollars every day I show up here. And that was it. I was done. They didn't even want me to give a two-week notice.

I was out. And I made millions. And that's when you and I met, Tony. I was known as the Godzilla of personal growth. And then I wrote the book, Integrity is Everything.

And when I got started, full-time again, in home-based business, I was like, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. This is back in 2002, 2003. I didn't look at what is the average income.

I know you mentioned earlier in the call, we've got the income disclosures. That's all cool, the legal disclaimers. Okay, fine, because some people are interested in that. A lot of people are interested in what the average person does. But I am so not interested in what the average person does.

I wanted to know who was the top guy. Wow. And I said, well, then that's what I'm shooting for. And my seventh month, I broke his record. And here's how I did it.

You brought up these principles. I actually went and I asked these people, like this guy Steve and some other people, how did you do it? And I simply modeled. And, again, this is such a beautiful thing of why. Empower Network is so I'm so damn excited about Empower Network.

Okay, but here we are years later. That company had a great run, seven and a half years. And then some people lost their minds, made some amazingly, spectacularly bad decisions. The whole thing came apart. And so here I was.

This was 2009, end of 2009. And I figure I'm just going to go. I'm going to focus on my publishing. I'm going to produce some more courses, which I did. I made some courses.

I'm selling training products now. And I'm just going to be an advocate of the entire home-based business industry and do my philosophy and stuff. Okay, so now keep in mind I'm not up where Wayne Dyer or, you know, some of these guys are that, you know, they can basically take a crap on a page and it will be a best-selling book. Okay, I'm not there yet. I don't have that kind of publicity.

And in that seven and a half years of making millions, guess what I learned how to do? Injunction with all that. I learned how to spend millions and millions of dollars. I learned how to be irresponsible with money. Okay, and that was a bit of a, I guess, some misdirection about what prosperity actually is.

Prosperity doesn't mean you have to spend money as fast as it comes into your hands. But I didn't know that. Okay, because I came from abject poverty, living in New Jersey as a kid and the poor family and abuse and all this kind of stuff. So I overcompensated for all that. So for 2010.

In 2010, 11 and much of 2012, I was bouncing around different programs. I helped another buddy start a company and it was undercapitalized and mismanaged.