Meet Casey, the CTO: How David Wood Learned to Stop Running Every Department Alone

You are the marketer, the copywriter, the video editor, the customer service line, and the person staying up late trying to figure out why the tech you are relying on will not cooperate. If that sounds familiar, David Wood opens this session by admitting he lived exactly there for months, answering angry customer emails himself with no employees at all, before introducing the man he eventually hired to fix it.

That man is Casey, the company’s CTO, and the session moves from how Wood learned to stop being every department of his own company to a live celebration of members whose results prove the system now running underneath them actually works.

What happens when you try to be every department of your own company at once?

Wood describes responding to a support email that said the site was not working with a reply that said, essentially, it is not working for me either, stop complaining, and admits it did not go well. For five months there were no employees, just Wood handling everything simultaneously. What changed his mind was watching a video of Richard Branson describing how he runs his companies.

Somebody sent me a Richard Branson video, and I was watching this guy. And, you know, he says that what he does is he says, I don’t know how to run every business. He says, I just get the most talented people to do that. And I trust them.

That single idea is why Casey is on stage. Wood hired a person to manage the tech projects he freely admits he does not understand well enough to run himself, and once that seat was filled, the pace of everything built behind the scenes changed. It is a plain, useful lesson for anyone still trying to personally do every job in their own growing business: the ceiling is not your effort, it is your refusal to hand off the parts you were never actually built to do.

Why do the platforms you don’t own keep failing you right when it matters most?

The session turns practical around video. Members had been relying on outside platforms to host their sales and training videos, and those platforms kept pulling the rug out from under them. Justin Varengia, brought up to speak to exactly this, says his channel has been taken down more times than he can count.

As Varengia puts it, “as soon as I get traffic to it, I attract the hater that don’t like me.” Once enough people flag a channel, it disappears with no manual review at all. That is the challenge Casey’s team built the company’s own video hosting service to solve, so members own their footage outright instead of renting space on a platform that can delete it without warning. The point Wood keeps returning to is ownership. When you own the thing your business depends on, nobody else’s decision can take it away from you overnight.

What actually earns you a standing ovation in a room like this?

The session closes by bringing member after member on stage to be recognized for what they built in the ninety days since the last event. An ex-corporate employee who once had to beg for his old cubicle job back after a failed venture. A team from Portugal building income while never seeing the sun set on it. A man who describes going from sitting in jail years earlier to standing in front of five thousand people. A couple who sat in the front row convinced the whole thing was a scam and left convinced of the opposite. Each story is different, but the pattern underneath every one of them is the same: consistent, unglamorous daily effort, applied to a system somebody else was busy building and maintaining underneath them, compounding faster than any of them expected going in.

Whether you are the one currently trying to run every part of your own business alone, or the one who has watched a platform you do not control take something away from you without warning, this session is proof that neither has to stay true forever, and that the people willing to show up consistently are the ones who end up recognized on that stage.

The full session goes further than what is above, including more of the site’s growth numbers and every member story told that day. Watch it in full, free, when you Create your free account.

The full session transcript follows below.

Transcript

Although you may not know who he is. Yes. Do you want a place to sit down or stand? Yeah, I'm going to sit down.

Let me introduce Casey here real quick, just as edifying. We realized early on, I remember having a conversation with Dave where I was so frustrated because we started to get so overloaded. And the reason we were overloaded is because we had like 10,000 customers, and we were the CEO, the president, the operations officer, customer service, programmers. We just go on making all the sales videos.

We literally had no employees for like five months. None, right? And then I'd get the emails for customer service, and people would say things like, Dave, the site's not working. And I'd respond, and I'd say, it's not working for me either.

Stop complaining. And that didn't work very well, right, at all. So one day I'm like responding angrily. And I cc'd Dave into the email.

And I thought that my response was funny. And then Dave gets it, and he says, I don't think we should be doing customer service. So we hire the first person who's a contractor for us. I believe she's actually, I believe that person's actually here.

But we hire one customer service employee, contractor, then two. Then we hire our first employee. And then we get to a space where we're overwhelmed again with like maybe five employees. And we're talking about this.

We're talking about this. We're talking about this. And they say, Dave, why are you running your company? And I was like, what do you mean?

And they're like, this isn't what you do. You sell stuff. You know? And I was like, shit.

Somebody sent me a Richard Branson video, and I was watching this guy. And, you know, he says that what he does is he says, I don't know how to run every business. He says, I just get the most talented people to do that. And I trust them.

And so we started looking for a guy to run our company. We hired one talented guy. Who's really good at hiring and hiring good people and firing bad ones, Jerry, right? Jerry then like tripled the size of our staff.

And all of a sudden, it's like I had all this time in the day to be creative again, right? But our tech was just brutally slow, driving me crazy. I don't know if you remember these conversations. I'd call them mad.

I started to receive the hairline I was so mad at the tech, you know what I mean? Because staring at the website doesn't make it run any faster, you know what I mean? And especially when you get mad, you know what I mean? And the Jedi powers of hypnosis don't even help.

So I was talking to Jerry and I said, you know, we need somebody to manage all these tech projects because I'm responding to all these people that are building different things and they're all doing it slowly because, of course, I don't understand what I'm talking about so they can get away with just kind of slacking. I think that's the truth, right? So I was like, I think we need a person who can do this. And Jerry says, we need a CTO.

He says, it's not cheap. And I said, what's a CTO? He's like, chief technology officer. And I said, let's get one, you know?

So this guy is the most talented tech guy we've ever had. And ever since then, everything's just been popping fast. So give him a hand. That's Casey.

Thanks. Hold on, hold on. We do it for Jerry. So Casey, Casey, Casey, Casey, Casey, Casey.

I had to. That's all right. Good having you. I appreciate it.

Thank you. Yeah, yeah. Let's just, you want to just go around? Yeah, so, so, yeah.

And I just want to say, Casey, thanks, man. You really, you, you, I mean, I know I shaved my hair off, but if I didn't, then I would have been pulling it out because, I mean, we were the frustrated marketers, you know, trying to, you know, run a site that's now what? What is, what is our site? Give us some stats.

We've gone from when I started, because I started the Money of Austin, right? And we went that first week, launched a new site. We broke them in in Austin, guys. Broke them in in Austin.

Just, first thing we did, launched a brand new website that Saturday. Yeah. In one week, so. Then we were sitting around 250, something like that, by Alexa.

A couple of weeks ago, we were 152. We were above, yeah, 152, absolutely. We were above NBA.com, MLB, Ticketmaster, Dell, Priceline, Overstock, MySpace, so quite a few. Over, over MySpace?

I mean, I used to have one. I, I think. I still do have one of those profiles. Yeah, we got the two behind Disney, but we had 45 million page views and 22 million unique visitors last month, so a lot of site, and that's for you guys.

Give yourselves a hand. That's a lot of traffic. I'm curious about a couple of things, and then we're going to get into this stuff here, is how much do we spend every month between video bandwidth, servers, and other tech that's not like people working on stuff, but that's just like, you know, bandwidth and servers. The infrastructure cost.

The infrastructure, yeah. About 50 grand a month. Just for infrastructure. Just for infrastructure.

That's what runs in Power Network, just so you guys know, if you're wondering. That doesn't look expensive to run, you know, $50,000 a month for that. So we got that. How many servers do we have right now running our site?

About 25. 25 servers running our site. I don't even know what a server looks like, truthfully. It's probably like a big box or something, you know.

So that's some fascinating stuff. So he came in here in this disorganized tech space and just started organizing all these amazing projects. And right now, I'm not actually even sure what we're spending. But I think we're spending, like, between that and then the development, probably a couple hundred thousand dollars.

Oh, at least. We went from about three people working on the site in Austin to we got about 25 people working on projects around the world right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All over the place.

So we got some really, really cool stuff that's being launched right now. Also some cool stuff being worked on. So like Dave said, we should just go right into this stuff and show them. We did a little bit of cleanup on some of the site we want to show you guys.

Why don't we start with that stuff and then get into the videos and some other stuff here. Order page. We revamped some of the design on some of our order pages. That's live now on the site.

Checkout pages look the same. Revamped back office design. Back office. That's the new back office.

Way easier to navigate. Now, inside of the back office, though, and this is cool. Now, with the checkout page, it's all about conversion. See, that's one thing that a lot of times when guys try to go and start companies and a lot of guys who do own companies have no, I mean, you ask them what a conversion is and they start, it's like a mathematical formula or something they start trying to spout up.

I mean, when we talk about conversions, it's all about converting sales of traffic that you send to the funnel or leads into sales, right? I mean, that's all that matters. And that's one of the things and one of the only things that we're constantly thinking about and is on the top of our mind. Because if you send traffic to our site, we want to help you convert it because we don't want you to have to go.

We're worrying about, like I did, used to make all the sales video and write all the copy myself. I mean, I was working 36 hours a day, like Vic said, trying to, you know, build my own funnels and stuff. So, guys, we want to create the best funnels for you. And honestly, we're about to revamp a lot of that stuff as well.

But what we decided to do, okay, because we were having all of these issues with the YouTube situation and everything like that, guys, we just decided. We decided to go out there and create our own video service, okay? Now, let me point something out to you guys, okay? Remember, we're 15 months into our company.

There's other companies out there like Vimeo and Viddler who all offer these different, these packages for, you know, a cost. But their lowest package is $50. So, for somebody like me, when I first got started, that was very, that was expensive. An extra $50.

What? When I very, very, very first got started, I had to really watch my budget each month. So, what we wanted to do is we wanted to start, and of course, there's value in paying for hosting your videos. This is something that I found out, right?

Because with YouTube, what is the real issue with hosting your videos only on YouTube? They can delete it. They can slap your account. You can lose your videos, right?

So, when you own your videos, right, then you own your videos. What we want to do is we want to make this a safe place to where you can host your videos, and as long as you're not doing absolutely something illegal, right? Which, what is illegal? I don't know what you can and can't put on video, but here's our goal.

Guys, here's our goal, is to give you a safe place to host your videos that you do not have to worry about it. You know, one of the things, and I want to talk about this for a second. I'm actually going to bring Justin Varengia. He's coming up here in a sec.

He's coming up here in a minute. He's had his channel shut down, like, 18 times. And so, he has, like, this complex system where he stores them on his hard drive and then automatically uploads them the second they get shut down. But he actually was one of the guys who originally came to me.

He's like, dude, you need to sell video service. I'm so sick of my channels getting shut down. You know, because the truth is what happens on YouTube, you know, the soup nannies attack, you know. You know, they say, we don't like home business.

And then they start flagging people, right? So, we just decided to do this. It's super easy to use. When I talked to Casey, one of the things we talked about, making it grandma-proof.

Yep, absolutely. Right? So, you can upload videos of any format. Okay?

They're going to transcode and play and stream. You can embed it in any domain. Very simple and easy and point and click to use. And it'll play on any device.

So, very cool. Now, this guy. I want to talk about, real quick, because Justin has made, hello, hello. I think that works.

Nine. I think you've made, like, most of your money from videos. Yeah. Video I've had the most success with.

Without video, no one would know the hippie Jedi. The hippie Jedi. I didn't actually know he was the Jedi. I just knew the hippie.

Yeah. I added that in to sound cool. His team breakout will be very exciting because of the date today. I won't mention anything about it.

I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Five people know what I mean, right? We're all in Justin's team excited.

Now, how many times has your channel been shut down? Oh, man. I don't even have a channel right now that I do because, like, it just gets shut down any time. Like, as soon as I get traffic to it, I attract the hater that don't like me.

And they just know how to shut down channels. All you need is multiple IPs and you just flag the thing. And there's nothing that YouTube, like, looks at manually. They just delete your account if you get enough people flagging it.

You know what I mean? Now, that's it. Give him a hand. He's badass.

I just want to let you know why we're doing this. Now, here, I want to show you guys just a couple of things I think are cool. And we're going to be adding some advancements with this here in the next little bit. Can you go on the settings, Casey, and just show them some of the cool stuff?

Sure. Just show them some of the options here. Again, super easy to use. But one of the things I've always hated about all the video servers, is it's a pain in the ass to do everything that I want to do to sell stuff.

If we go to, I think it's, where do you add the embedding options? I think it's get embedding code. Or get the code. Oh, okay.

To get the code where you can test them on the player? Yeah, where we can make unpauseable videos and stuff like that. Oh, okay. Sure, sure, sure.

Right, so if you see here, what you can do is, some of you guys, you know, on sales videos, it's better if people can't pause them and stuff. You know what I mean? And it's usually a pain in the ass to get everybody to do that because they don't understand why wouldn't you want anybody to be able to rewind and fast forward your video. Well, it's because if they rewind it and fast forward it, they skip to the end to see how much the price is, right?

And then you can't sell them. So you can disable forward seeking, disable all seeking, you know. Do things like that. Casey, since I know nothing about videos, I don't know if there's any tech stuff to tell them about this other than that.

Just buy it. Sure, sure, sure. Well, and that's ultimately what you do is just buy it. Because, I mean, ultimately, yeah, I mean, one of the things that's really cool, too, is you're not going to have YouTube links.

So we have everything in your embed codes. It's going to be media.empowernetwork.com. So even on YouTube, your videos, you're able to show everybody where you're actually hosting, where things are coming from to be able to promote back to the service. But, you know, like you said, we have auto start, disable seeking, loop playback, those sorts of things.

We have privacy options. So if you want to be able to allow others to be able to see your video, you can mark it as public. Or you can actually, you know, if you want to just play with your library or something in the back office right now, mark it as private, and then it won't be able to be viewable on the web. Also some basic settings, just to be able to get some titles and some video management.

But ultimately, we built the service so that way, it doesn't really matter what you're, what kind of camera you use or, you know, what kind of video you end up getting off the internet or whatever you want to upload to your back office. Ultimately, you can just upload it. We do all the encoding ourselves. It encodes on the server, and then it's immediately ready to use.

So we really did try to make it grandma proof. Yeah, that's the most important thing. Give them a hand, guys. And guys, this is the most affordable of any service out there on the net.

I believe the cheapest package that you can buy with Vimeo or Viddler is like $50. Yeah, like $50. Right? So for $25 a month, which is honestly, man, I mean, like pennies on the freaking dollar compared to how valuable your videos are.

How many gigabytes do you get? What are the packages again? We have three different packages we're starting out with. We have a $25, a $50, and a $100 plans.

For $25, you get 50 gigabytes of bandwidth and storage to basically be able to, and that's going to be plenty for most people. You know, but as you continue to build your business, we hope you grow out. Because we want to be able to support you to be able to have all the video streaming that you need because that means you're getting a lot more site traffic. So we have those $50 to $100 plans for 100 gigabytes and 200 gigabytes of streaming.

If you need something more than that, that's awesome. Just call customer support and be able to work with you to be able to create a plan that fits your needs. Yeah. That's awesome.

Well, let me tell you why I'm the most excited actually about this. You know, we didn't even make a sales video for this because people are buying video hosting anyways and most of the time it sucks. That's just the truth. So, you know, when I got involved in internet marketing, I bought Amazon Video and I used EZS3.

I don't know if anybody here has ever used that. Anybody here use EZS3 before? Well, somebody told me, I actually used it because I saw one of Frank Kern's videos and I thought, you know, it was a really good looking video. I didn't know he had like 10 employees and I right clicked on it and it said EZS3, right?

So I just went to EZS3.com and I bought the service, right? Which is something to manage videos in the Amazon cloud, right? Some of you already, they're lost, right? Well, you know, about 18 hours later, I was still pissed off that my videos wouldn't play on the internet because I had to sit there and I'd upload my videos from my camera to my computer.

I would render them out of like iMovie and then I'd grab them from iMovie and then I had to move them to, and I was trying to upload them online. I didn't know why they wouldn't play. I couldn't figure it out. So I had to then look online and figure out how to make an H.264 video in a small enough format to play on the internet, but big enough so the quality was good.

And I figured that out because I'm ADD and I'll sit there for four days like clicking through and figuring out H.264 codes, right? And I realized something that a lot of people in the room, even if you would learn to do that, you'd prefer to not learn to do that. Plus, that was actually more expensive for me, really fast, using less bandwidth than what we have right here. And it took me a long time to figure out and I still couldn't make the videos that couldn't rewind and fast forward.

It took me like ages to figure out how to do that. Our goal here is to make things simple because I want everybody in here to be able to just make a video, upload it, and be able to have it play on everything, right? That's why I'm excited. I want you guys to make sales videos, upload them, and just have them play.

Hey, Casey, one question I've got on the videos and then let's move on. This is in the back office, in the new back office. You guys can log in and get it now. If everybody in this room bought it and uploaded videos at the same time, would it be able to handle it?

Yeah, everything we do at this point, especially with our site traffic, we're ready to be able to take it and be able to help you with it. So, we can do it now. Won't have any problems at all. I think that's good for that.

You want to move on? But wait. There's more. There's more.

So, you know Facebook, right? Now, we didn't go and make another Facebook because honestly, we're moving in a different direction. It's like Facebook's just, we got bigger plans, right? Bigger vision.

But what we did want to make available for you guys was the ability to be able to move fast. So, you know, we had some of these different, you know, link rotator things. The first one was at Social Media Bar. Now, that was actually one of Chris Record's things.

And, you know, that's just, give him a hand for that. You know, what I like, what I like about our people and our leaders here is the fact that, you know, they're self-taught. Yeah. They're selfless.

I mean, if we've got a situation, if we've got an emergency that, you know, we need a solution to, people move in. It's like the Empower Network Red Cross, you know? I mean, people, they're there. Our leaders are here to serve, you know?

So Chris said, hey, you know, that's, it's cool. Everybody can use it. I won't collect leads. It will make it kind of generic.

But hey, that's still Chris's service. So what we wanted to do is we wanted to create one for everybody, right? We wanted to make a generic one. And we decided to call it, and I think you guys will think this is kind of relevant, the Badass Button, OK?

Now this is, guys, this here is still in the earlier phases, but it works fast, OK? I think Casey said in a week this will be installed on all the corporate, all the blogs on EmpowerNetwork.com. Is that what you told me? Yeah, one of the things we, yeah, this coming next week, we're actually going to have with the new blog theme, which we're going to provide the corporate blog theme available to everybody.

So that's going to actually be available in your back offices next week. And by default, the Badass Button will be there. It's already pre-installed on the blog. Yeah, so instead of having to do anything, you can just hit it, and then it'll create the iframe that'll rotate between a bunch of domains.

In case one of them gets blocked, we just replace it. And it'll be impossible to block. So that's an example of the button up there. You click it, and it just bam.

Casey, you want to just, is there anything else we should know about? Can you just do that again to show them? Just go back and show them how fast that is. Go back one real quick?

Yeah, so ultimately the button. We just wanted to make it fast and easy. Yeah, so let's just start back here. So the Badass Button can actually be installed on any, it's going to be on all of the Empower Network blogs.

We also have a WordPress plug-in. So of any private WordPress blogs you have, go ahead and install it. You can scroll down the bottom of the page. Yep.

So you'll be able to install it there, too, and use a Badass Shortcode to be able to have the button pop up in any kind of blog post, anywhere that you want. So once you hit the Badass Button, what it does is it actually creates a link based on that link rotator. And so you go ahead and you click the link. You have an iPhone.

You have an iFrame blog. And you can share directly from the actual iFrame content up at the top. So like here, we're just bad-assing the BadassButton.com link. So I can click Like.

I need to be able to log in. So let me just want to have a feeling. Yeah, I think this email box is about to get flooded. It's fine.

It's fine. Just don't email Casey. We'll change your email address again if people find it down. Don't worry about it.

Guys, please don't email Casey with random feature requests. He is the CTO, not like a guy sitting there taking requests all day if you somehow discover his email or something like that. So yeah, you just like it. Yeah, fair man.

I can go. The point is it's fast and easy. You know, one of the problems that we've got isn't with you guys, it's with new people. Who in here has had a new person join, and then they try to like their own blog post and get mad?

So usually they get over it, but this will give us a way to where what happens is it rotates the iFrame automatically between lots of domains. And so if one of them gets blocked, and the suit man needs to attack the domain, we'll just keep replacing them. But wait, there's more, OK? To back up, now we've ran these contests, right?

We've ran these contests up until this point, and they've really been all based around production, you know, all based around event ticket sales and things of that nature. And what I think is so special about Empower Network is I think, the fact that somebody just getting started can have a victory in their business or in their life. Somebody can be recognized or feel good here for quitting smoking or running a marathon or working out, losing weight, or whatever your goal is, right? We'll recognize you, and we'll celebrate you.

What we want to do is we want to create an atmosphere to where more and more people want to be involved with us, whether it's for the money or whether it's for the family, whether it's for the events or whether it's for the product, right? Whether it's for the fact that they can just come here and get a small victory and be in an environment to where we'll recognize them and really celebrate their successes, no matter how big or how small they are. So I say all that to say that what we decided to do, because of the new video hosting service, and we wanted to really bring this in with a bang, we want to get you guys using it, and we want to reward you for it, right?

And we want to have some fun at the same time, because I mean, if we aren't, there's no shenanigans, then what the hell? You know what I'm saying? I mean, it's just no fun. So what we wanted to do, and if you can put this slide up here that we've got for the contest, hopefully that's ready.

But we're going to do a contest that's based around using the video service, OK? So here's kind of how it's going to go, is we're going to do a kind of American Idol-style video submission contest. And how this is going to work is by the end of this month, OK, by April 31, now you have to own and be using the video service. And you have to post your video on your blog.

And then you have to submit that post to the company. By the end of this month, April 31, we want to hear your best event story, OK? We want to hear anything that you've got to say, any breakthrough that you had, anything that you experienced here that was a big or a small change. Use the video hosting service.

Record it. Now make it short and concise, OK? Try to keep it to two minutes or less, or else we'll never get through all of them. But submit it.

And by April 31, now the next category is going to be best product. Now what we want you to do is make a video about what you love about one of the specific products, whether it's the blogging platform, the Inner Circle, the Costa Rica Intensive, 15K or Masters, and submit that by May 31. Best success story. Now what does success mean?

Some of you say, well, I'm not making a bunch of money, so I can't be a part of that. Bullshit. You can. Guys, success here means anything, right?

Whether it's some sort of a success that you had, because of somebody that you met here at Empower, a breakthrough that you had, something about your story, part of your journey of getting to an event, it doesn't matter to me personally, right? You overcame an alcohol addiction. I don't care what it is. Or you made $20 million in six seconds.

There's somebody in the room that's bound to do that sometime. Get that video on your blog and submit it by June 30. And here's what we're going to do. Each month, we're going to pick three winners out of that.

Those bunches of those three categories. Those winners are going to get, number one, their video posted on the front blog, OK? This is a big deal for a couple of reasons, and I think you know why. Hey, hold on just one second.

I want to real quick, is Chris Daugherty in the room? I think he is, but I'm not sure. This is actually something, if he is in the room, I want to point out with him. If he's not here, I'll talk about it too.

If somebody knows if Chris is here, and if he's here, just send him up, and I want to talk to him here real quick. Is he here? What? Where is he?

Daugherty? There's a bald guy back there, but I don't know if it's Daugherty. Somebody's like, I'm bald, can I go? Let me just actually share how Chris actually started to take off.

Chris got started online. This is before Empower Network. And before Empower Network, he had made no money ever. I ran a personal video contest in my team, and it was just for whoever made the best testimonial.

I did this in my team. And Chris was like, this is my chance to get in front of everybody. He has that voice. This is my chance to get in front of everybody.

And he made this bad ass story-based video. But I watched it, and I was like, what the heck? You know what I mean? It was like he shot failure in the face or something like that with a gun.

But it was like a story. It was like a skit. And I took that thing. I plastered it all over the place because I thought it was so funny.

Well, what I didn't realize is the power of exposure, Dave. And when that happened, all of a sudden, Chris wrote an article. And that article, I think it was called How I Won a Contest from the Candyman, David Wood. He thought I looked like the Candyman, right?

Which then I saw the movie, and I was like, I don't know whether that's a compliment or not. At first, I was like, what are you talking about? And he says, here. And he shows me this old movie, and this guy is like this with a hat.

You know? And I'm like, oh, I look like that guy. But in any case, he wrote an article about how he won this contest. And that was enough exposure to start making his life easy.

Exposure is a big deal. And so this is your chance to win a contest. And also, I wanted to point something out. The video service, it is going to pay a little bit different because there's costs and bandwidth and stuff like that on it.

It's not something that we can just pay out 100% commissions on. And that's going to be what we're actually doing with that. You guys are just going to have to come to the next event. But the profits for this, for now, they're going to go into a bonus fund that we're going to announce in a little bit here, what we're going to start doing with that.

And so just so you guys know, you do want your teams using the video service. I'm just going to say that. And then I'm not going to say much more other than that our goal is to make all the leaders' incomes double over time with this and other things like this. And so get in the contest, get the video hosting, and win.

That's what I would say. And we can make a story out of you. That's what I think is beautiful. So on top of the exposure, on top of the exposure, we're also going to pick three winners out of each category.

The exposure really should be enough, but we aren't going to stop there. We're going to do VIP treatment to the next event. Now, VIP treatment means that we fly you out, we pick you up from the airport in a limo, we bring you, we pay for your flight, and we put you up in a bad ass room, and we sit you right down in the front. And just make a big deal about you.

You know what I'm saying? Basically. Okay? So from each category, there's going to be three winners.

And then what we're going to do with those winners, now they're all going to get everything that we just talked about. Okay? The VIP treatment, the front blog exposure, the whole, you know, you'll sit in the front row and I can spit on you the whole time, you know, as I'm up here talking. We're going to bring all three of those up here, and we're going to recognize you on stage.

Okay? We're going to celebrate you. We're going to play your video. We're going to make a big deal about it.

Right? We're going to let everybody in the event hear your story, get to know you. By the time you leave, everyone will know exactly who you are and moved by your story. And then we're going to use some really cool technology and have everybody vote inside of the audience, kind of like American Idol style.

I think that's fun. You know what I'm saying? It's kind of a fun way to pick a winner of a contest. And the winner from each category, now it's not going to be, then we're going to put those three together.

The winner from each category, is going to win $5,000 cash. Okay? And also, which I think is more important, and this is what we're going to start doing with a lot of these contests, is, you know, money's cool, but so is badass jewelry that you can walk around with and kind of wear that says you won the contest right. We want to do like a million-dollar earner's ring and start, you know, congratulating and giving people jewelry and different stuff that they can wear around and kind of show off.

So we're going to make this badass bracelet, right, that you can wear as a contest winner. And then, guys, we'll just kind of drool over you and just, you know, make just a big deal about you here. Guys, we want to get you involved in these contests. We want to let somebody who's just getting started, or maybe your goal is not to make a whole bunch of money, we want to give you a reason to get up here on stage and be celebrated.

So I'm excited about this, guys. What do you think? I want to say one more thing here about this. In particular, and then I think we probably should move on to the next subject, is, you know, we're about innovation.

Well, I might say, like, three things, but I'm going to try to keep them relatively short. I think we've got to leave by 6, which, by the way, it's an hour and a half more about until the ticket price increases to $87. We're not kidding. Who in here has bought your tickets now, by the way?

About an hour and 35 minutes left for that, okay? I'm actually, tomorrow, I'm going to go through a process of how to build momentum with content when I talk and really take off with it. I would actually encourage everybody in here for a period of time, especially this weekend, to make as many videos as you can. And this here, if you guys think our Alexa score is hot, wait until we've got 1,000 people, even 1,000 of you uploading a video every single day, and our Alexa score will go to the top 100 within 90 days.

Just watch. That's what it's going to do is just give us more credibility, so I'm excited about that. The other thing is, guys, leading into the next event, everything is, this is starting. You know, right now we're adding in, what is it, Casey, about 600 people a day?

Do you know how many people we're adding in? Last month it went from 358 to 406 last month, and then this month it's been closer to 600. We're actually starting to push a little bit even over that, so between 600 and 700. So between 600 and 700 new customers a day.

These aren't leads, okay, just to be clear, right? I want you to think about this for a moment. When we had our first event, remember we had been shut down, we rebooted. Our merchant decline rate was 38% from the time we rebooted until about a week ago when we turned on our new merchants.

You guys know the big decline rates? They should all start going down significantly. Who here is excited about that? If we can add in 10,000 people 10,000 people one month, 12,000 the next month, and this month I think we're already over 11,000, aren't we?

And it's what, the 20th? Every month we're surpassing the last month within 15, 16 days. Easy. I believe that this is what's going to happen, guys, and there's a big deal, and the reason why we're starting to talk about the next event today this time is we want to give everybody a chance to buy tickets before you go and get discounted tickets, because I believe that next event we're going to go and start adding in immediately 3,000 people a day.

After that next event. There's something big coming out there that I'm excited about, and Casey knows, and Dave knows, and some of the leaders know, and we're just going to keep it a secret and keep you guessing because you're going to have to show up to find out. I'm excited. So let's move on.

Give Casey a hand, by the way. Good job. Casey! Casey!

Casey! Casey! Casey! Casey!

You know, isn't it cool, and I want you to think about this, isn't it cool that we get to even celebrate the people who work for Empower Network and lift them up, too? You know? Isn't that cool, right? That they get to be a part of what we're doing here and that we can lift them up and inspire them, too?

Who's been to Empower Network's headquarters in here? Anybody in here been to a headquarters? You have a couple of people here. We had some leaders down.

It ain't your normal corporate headquarters, okay? We've got about, I think, close to 50 employees in there now, and I'm telling you something, it's a live atmosphere. It's energy, right? They're actually talking to you guys, and you guys are calling in, and they're inspired.

I mean, sometimes they gotta try to get you off the phone because you want to, like, tell them your life story and why you're so pumped up and why you're here, you know? And that gets them fired up, and I just want to just relay the message to you guys that, you know, you've changed a lot of people's lives that you don't even know. You know, these people, they're inspired. They're pumped up to work here and work for you guys, and I think that's a beautiful thing, and we're gonna move right into checks.

So, we've got some people that we need to continue to celebrate, right? It's all about recognition here. So, we're gonna give away some checks. Now, what these checks are, and this is really gonna be an interesting proof demonstration for a lot of you guys, is this is just the income these people earned from the last event, right?

It's just a three-month cycle, a 90-day cycle of the income that they've earned from the last event. So, you know, we're gonna see what's possible that somebody can achieve here income-wise just in a three-month period. What did I say yesterday when I was talking to you guys? I said change happens fast, right?

Success happens fast. It doesn't happen slow, and this is gonna be a good example of that. So, let's bring them out. First, first check.

I think you guys are just sending people out. We're gonna line people up here, and then we're gonna just bring them all and just kind of jump around like crazy people so who's ever forced, bring them up. Everybody in here who has a camera, this is actually a really good time to take photos. Sam Crowley, guys.

Yeah. Dave, you got a microphone? You got a mic? Not so fast, not so fast.

Let's go out to the middle, Sam. Sam comes on stage and we start breaking stuff. Did you rock, brother? Awesome, man.

Sam, wanna give you the microphone here, brother? Now, I just hung out with Sam here on, uh, on, uh, what was that, about a month ago? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We had a great time.

We had an awesome time. Now, very quickly, I, I just, a quick story about Sam. I went to Tony Rush's event, did a little team get together. They were all ranting and raving about this Sam Crowley guy.

He's the best motivational speaker ever. I'm like, who in the heck is this guy? And I didn't even realize that you, well, you go ahead and just tell a little bit about where you come from and why you're here, brother. Yeah, I'm an ex-corporate slave, and, uh, about eight years ago, my daughter used to ask me all the time, Daddy, is tomorrow Saturday?

Daddy, is tomorrow Saturday? When I would come home from work, tired, exhausted. And I told her, uh, unfortunately, honey, tomorrow or the next day is not Saturday, but someday soon, every day will be Saturday. And, uh, I quit my job.

I went bankrupt. I lost $300,000 in a bad business deal. Had to go back to my boss, beg him for my job. He wouldn't give it to me, put me in a cubicle.

I got mocked, ridiculed, made fun of. And, uh, I started to say that my latest setback was set up for my greatest comeback. And… That's why I really, uh, admire Dave & Dave and the Empower Network.

And you guys are plugging in to an unbelievable machine here. Uh, events like this don't happen. I don't know anybody anywhere in the world, anywhere, that can put 5,000 people in a room. And, uh, it's just an amazing experience, guys.

Thanks. Cool. Thank you, brother. Thanks for being here, man.

Guys, give him a round of applause. Hey, you're awesome, brother. Stone Evans, you here? If you're here, Stone, go backstage.

Um, come down here and get somebody if you're here. I don't know if you are. Silvio Fortunato. That was kinda weak.

Silvio Fortunato. Portugal. Now, are you… Silvio, you guys, I did a hangout for you, right?

Yes. Just tell us a little bit about why you're here and what your vision is for the future. Well, this is tremendous because it represents the shape, the transformation of all industry. It's not only the transformation of our personal stories, but we represent the transformation of the industry.

That's what I see. And we have millions of people that goes through the same struggles in the in our industry all over these years. And a lot of people have the mindset, have everything, but they don't have the vehicle. And sometimes they only need the vehicle.

I've never seen… Amazing. When did you get in, by the way? How long have you been in?

Six months and a half. How long have you been working this? Because last month, what did you make? I made 35, but right now I made…

3,500? Yes. No, 35,000 last month. Yes, in the total is 100 and…

I don't know even the name, the numbers in English, you know? 110 or… No, no, 20, 120. 120?

Oh, so this is off. So it's 120,000 now. What did we make the check like five days ago or something? Right?

How many people in here think it's cool that you can build a team all over the world and never have the sun set on your income? I just think you guys are awesome. Congratulations. Thank you, thank you.

And we really appreciate that you put everything together to help a lot of people and we don't have words to thank both of you. Yes. That was awesome. The crazy guys always comes to my team.

I don't know why, but… Yes. Hey, hey, just real quick. Cheer if you're in his team.

That's incredible, man. Yeah. You got it. Hey guys, make some noise for them.

Yeah. Thanks to our team and thanks to Aron, Sofia, Rushkin, because they help us a lot too. Okay, thank you. Thanks to our team.

Bye. Huh? Hurricane Arthur Tubman. Come on out here, brother.

And he loves haters. Look at his shirt. He loves haters. Arthur, Arthur, Arthur, you just can't stop making money, dude.

It's crazy. Tell us a little bit about yourself, what your vision is here, man. Well, my name is Hurricane Arthur. I go by Hurricane Arthur.

When Hurricane Sandy hit New York, Chris was my name, because I just started coming out and producing, getting results. This is crazy, man. This is absolutely crazy. Seven years ago, I'm sitting in jail, and seven years later, I'm in front of 5,000 people.

I'm fucking real. Awesome. It's unreal. It's unreal.

Hey, where do you live now, by the way? I live in Costa Rica now. There's no space left. Guys, it's just amazing the power of events.

I went to San Diego, and my team heard this last night. I was kind of negative. I was kind of in the back of the room. I was walking around that wasn't really there.

I had a bunch of excuses of why I can't do this business, because I don't have any time. My business is too busy. I have too much stuff going on. And it's impossible when you have a business partner and a friend like Chris Record to make excuses, because he'll start with the reframing, and the stuff that you guys heard about today is just impossible to make an excuse.

What happened was, you guys actually had those guys from Singapore and nudged Dave, and I said, hey, can I come with you guys? Interesting story is I left my cell phone at home. I don't know how many of you left your cell phone at home just going to work or wherever you go. I left that at home going literally halfway around the world to Singapore.

I got to really get to know you guys. I got to really get to know the vision of where you guys are going, what's happening here. It was just incredible. When we got back, I just took advantage of the contest and gave it a 90-day run, and this is the result of that.

Make some noise for them, guys. Make some noise for them. Michelangelo and Lina, come on out. Oh, are they not…

Michelangelo and Lina, if you're there, go backstage, hook up with somebody and get backstage so we can check. Michelangelo, we got you right here, brother. Come up on the stairs so you don't… Just don't hurt yourself is all I'm saying.

Let's go ahead and bring out BAM Crew. Let's go ahead and bring out BAM Crew. Got the ladies involved. Got the ladies involved.

Now, isn't that something when you just get the whole family involved? Doesn't it change things, Mike? Yeah, it changes everything. Hey, who thought he did a great job today?

Guys, first… I know he said it, but first speech ever. You know what I mean? Give him a hand.

Come on. You know, the money here, it represents a lot of things, but the amount of people we've been able to help in doing this, you know. We have team members like Franco who's made close to $200,000 underneath us. Kevin, John Penberthy, Travis Holder, Robert Brown and a lot of other people that we were able to help because of this.

It's not just about the money for me, it's about Huffington and other people and I'm just so proud to be a part of this company. Hey, Adam, want to say anything real quick? Adam's good. He's like, I'll just take the money and go, man.

It's fine. I'm cool. I'm good. I'm good.

Congratulations. Hey, guys, just real quick, and by the way, I've known this guy for years. A lot of people don't know that. I met him three years ago when I just started online.

He swiped one of my PowerPoints slide for slide and just kind of said, hi, this is Mike and I live in Costa Rica. He virtually copied the whole thing and I called him. I was like, dude, make your own stuff. But then we became friends years ago.

So I saw him from nothing, built his business in the military, built his business from zero online. Now here's what I want to point out on stage. It's not just about this guy here. Look at the different styles of personalities we have succeeding as we continue, guys.

This is not normal in direct sales or the internet, is it? We got, you know, you look at this guy and he's quiet and it's given his first speech ever. Most of our speakers gave their first speech ever today. You know what I mean?

Look at the diversity here as we continue. Who here's in his team? Who's here in these guys' team? You guys are awesome.

Nicole Cooper. Good job, brother. Hey, proud of you guys. Hey, hugs, hugs, man.

Now guys, I want to just point out something real quick too. Nicole, now I've gotten to know Nicole a lot over the last, you know, 12 months or so. But I also now am getting to know her husband. And I'm going to tell you something, guys.

Because now Cooper's in the mix. And I'm going to just look at this guy. I mean, honestly. Talking about tearing stuff up.

Now they're combined forces. Talk about whatever you want. But I'm just happy to see both of you up here as a team. He's so ready to talk.

I'll let him start. I'm sorry, y'all. Really, I feel like I want to kick my own ass to be honest with you. Because, you know, I wasn't one of the dudes that supported this thing, man.

But here's what I found out. You know, being the spouse of a woman that's in this business. A powerhouse that's in this business. You know, in power, we family.

Listen, man. I just had to put my ego down, man. Put my ego down and put that energy into support. You know, put that energy into helping her shine.

Freeing her up. So if that meant watching the kids clean and cooking. That's okay. Because I'm still a major player in the power.

I know my role. You know what I'm saying? I don't want to go long. I can go forever.

But that's my deal right there, man. I appreciate you. I just want to say thanks, Dave Sharp. And to all of the spouses that are battling right now with your other spouse.

Here's the secret. Produce results to make them believers. Keep moving. Don't create dissension.

Don't fight with them. Because sometimes it's for your protection. They're worried about what you're doing. We're going to have to start.

I sat down with my husband and looked him in the eye and told him, look, support your wife and you guys are going to go far. That conversation was two events ago and here we are. And now he's always pumped. Like, where's Sharp?

Where's Wood? What are we doing? Where's the next event? Thank you for love, my empire family.

And give him a hand. Give him a hand too. We're going to have to see how fast income can increase when you make a small shift like you have today. Now, this is the last three months, right?

Last three months. Okay, what was last month? 42. Just saying.

That's a wrap. All right, guys, congratulations. One last time. Make some noise for them.

Kevin and Melissa connect. You know what? Another powerhouse couple right here. Here's something about Melissa and Kevin.

Whenever I see them, just excitement. You know, we just met, right? 12 months ago. Now, real quick, they were sitting in Atlanta in the front row with this look on their face like I'm here to prove it to myself that this is a scam and why I shouldn't get involved.

And by the end of the weekend, I know I'm going to be convinced. And you were convinced all right, weren't you? I had it on a cellular level after that event. And you know, guys, this represents something really amazing for us because myself and my kids since Austin have had quite a few health challenges.

And so we've been on autopilot. We've really not, quote unquote, worked our business. So it's pretty amazing, wouldn't you say, the number when you build your foundation here. So if you will just do the things that we continually say then if you have to take some time off, it's amazing what keeps coming in because you have taken that time to build that foundation.

And in one year, with everything that's gone on in our lives from bankruptcy to over a quarter million dollars in one year. I don't know what else to say after talking last night. I just love you guys. Who's here from the Xtreme team?

Is there anybody here from our Xtreme team? You guys so inspire us. Thank you so much who have laid the foundation for us. They're going to be coming out here in a minute.

I just want to say thank you guys. Thank you Dave and Dave for having the authenticity that we've been waiting, gosh, 16 years of network marketing to find. You guys are just doing it every single day and I think people in the audience are starting to get it. And I think the next time around we're going to have a lot more people up here on stage getting these big checks.

You know, the truth is, is that we've got so many people here and you saw that last night. And we just don't have time to get everybody up here on stage. So guys, what you're seeing here is just a result of some people who have gotten in recently and some people who have been in for, what, 12 months, I think Atlanta. About right at 12 months, right?

So these are people who have been in the game. And that decision happened quickly though, didn't it? To get started. Back in Atlanta.

Next person to bring out is Mack. You back there, bro? Simon, Simon! Simon, not Mack, Simon!

Make some noise! So Simon, now, this guy's just brilliant. You know what I'm saying? He's over there in the UK drinking a cheeky pint.

You know what I'm saying? Checking for commissions, right? Got to meet your family last time. A wonderful family.

What's your vision, man? What's on your mind? Congratulations, by the way, too. Every time I come to these events, the American people really do blow me away.

Seriously, you're so friendly, you're so exciting. I get empowered at these events. I want to say a big thank you to you guys for making us feel really welcome. You are awesome, seriously.

And all the leadership, I want to say thank you to all you guys because you're so friendly and any kind of advice, those are the most amazing, badass people I've ever met in my life. I've never seen anything like this and I think Dave just said there's about 5,000 people in the UK, but this is a global business. I've got people all over America, Canada, Australia, all over Europe, and this income is very part-time. Seriously, it's an automated system and I work no more than an hour a day, guys.

So I want to inspire you guys. Seriously, this is absolutely the biggest thing I've ever seen in my life. This is just the start. And seriously, this income is just going to go higher and higher and higher.

So again, big thank you to everybody. All my team, also the Freedom team. Well done, guys. You're awesome.

Love you guys. You're the best. Thank you. Make some noise for them, guys.

Make some noise for them. Love that guy. Michaelangelo and Lena Lopez, bring them out here real quick. Michaelangelo, you guys back there?

Michaelangelo and Lena, come on up. Make some noise for them, guys. Good job. Now, you just recently got in, didn't you?

Well, here's my story. I got in on September 11th, but I've been an affiliate marketer doing other stuff. So on Thanksgiving week, November, I just said, you know what, let's go all in. I said yesterday, I believe in putting all your eggs in one basket and watching them grow.

So ever since, man, this has been the biggest blessing of our lives. It really has. It's easy money. I've been online making six figures, but not this fast, not this easy.

And we got the Hispanic market. Folks, there's a lot of money in Pedro and Maria. There's a lot of money. So we're tapping into the Spanish market.

Yeah. Guys, who's excited about the possibility of very soon tapping into the Spanish market? Oh, man. We're excited about that.

Big deal. You're welcome. Make some noise for them, guys. Make some noise for them.

Come on. Obviously, the income examples discussed in this video are extraordinary. The income claims presented are not intended to serve as a guarantee of income. Instead, they're designed to give you an idea of what's possible.

Success in this business requires leadership, hard work, and dedication. Since we want to help you make an informed decision, we've gone above and beyond with our income disclosure document. If you want to see the average earnings, please visit the page at www.empowernetwork.com forward slash income dot php.